How history judges sore losers: Donald Trump, be warned

 https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-donald-trump-sore-loser-20201111-gpzb45misrhxbl3xne7pp5fwja-story.html

 Whether Trump eventually demonstrates the same dignity and graciousness is hard to say. He is beyond unconventional and his deepest base of supporters have a cultish affection enjoyed by few previous losing candidates. But no one gets to defy every convention.

By not leaving on a high note, he may find himself in a political purgatory that Thomas Dewey, the losing Republican candidate of 1944 and 1948, likened to the drunk who passed out at a wake. “If I am alive,” the man said, “what am I doing in this coffin? If I am dead, why do I have to go to the bathroom?”

It’s Official: Donald Trump Is a... | The Daily Social Distancing Show

Biden wins Georgia recount as Trump setbacks mount

 https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55006188

 On Thursday, Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, said the hand audit of ballots had not altered Mr Biden's victory in the state.

"Georgia's historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state's new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results," Mr Raffensberger said in a statement.

Trump told ally he's trying to get back at Democrats for questioning legitimacy of his own election

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/19/politics/trump-democrats-election/index.html

 President Donald Trump told an ally that he knows he lost, but that he is delaying the transition process and is aggressively trying to sow doubt about the election results in order to get back at Democrats for questioning the legitimacy of his own election in 2016, especially with the Russia investigation, a source familiar with the President's thinking told CNN on Thursday.

The President's refusal to concede, as CNN has previously reported, stems in part from his perceived grievance that Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama undermined his own presidency by saying Russia interfered in the 2016 election and could have impacted the outcome, people around him have said.

  

The President, this source said, "doesn't see" how bad the aftermath of all of this could be for the country, and for democracy itself. As usual, he's focused on himself -- not Covid-19, nor the transition.

Mitt Romney says consequences of lame duck period are 'potentially more severe' than delayed transition

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/19/politics/mitt-romney-lame-duck-transition-consequences/index.html

 Republican Sen. Mitt Romney is warning that the consequences of actions taken by President Donald Trump during the lame duck period of his term are "potentially more severe" than those caused by the delayed presidential transition.

"The consequences of what's happening during this lame duck period, I think, are potentially more severe than the consequences associated with a late transition process," Romney, who represents Utah, told CNN's David Axelrod on an episode of "The Axe Files" podcast released Thursday.

Romney cited the Trump administration's plan to remove more troops from the Middle East as one lame duck move that could cause more damage than Trump's refusal to formally begin the transition process, saying he's spoken with foreigners who are "alarmed" by Trump's plan and wonder if they can still "trust" America.

Georgia to release recount results; Biden, Harris to speak with governors

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/19/election-2020-updates-georgia-release-recount-results/3775154001/

 Election officials in Georgia say they are on track to finish their weeklong hand recount of the presidential race, with results released by noon Thursday.

Georgia audit on track to finish Wednesday and affirm Biden win, official says

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/17/politics/georgia-recount/index.html

 Georgia is on a "good schedule right now" to finish an audit of the presidential election by Wednesday and thus certify its results by Friday, a top state voting official says, and the vast majority of counties are reporting results that are "spot dead on" to the initial tallies or finding only minor discrepancies.

 

 

Trump continues to claim he won the election. He did not.

 https://edition.cnn.com/business/live-news/election-2020-misinformation/index.html

President Donald Trump's campaign and Fox News host Tucker Carlson alleged last week that a vote cast by a Georgia woman named Deborah Jean Christiansen was fraudulent. 

The allegation was false -- like two other voter fraud claims the Trump campaign and Carlson leveled against legal Georgia voters last week. 

The campaign and Carlson said this vote was a fraud because Deborah Jean Christiansen died last year. In fact, the vote was legally cast by a living woman who also happens to be named Deborah Jean Christiansen, born in the same year and month but on a different day. 

Christiansen answered the door when CNN showed up on Tuesday evening.

Ari Melber: Trump's 'Dumpster Fire' Legal Strategy Flailing Under Giuliani

'Confusion and chaos': Republicans denounce Trump's latest purge

 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/18/republicans-denounce-trump-krebs-cybersecurity-437716

 President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening fired Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, after he spent days actively debunking the president’s baseless voter fraud claims. And in a rare turn in the Trump era, Senate Republicans across the spectrum — from Trump allies to critics of the president — criticized the decision.

Ethics experts and Trump critics call for Senate investigation into Graham's probe into presidential election

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/18/politics/lindsey-graham-ethics-experts-senate-investigation/index.html

 Three top ethics experts and prominent critics of President Donald Trump on Wednesday formally requested the Senate Ethics Committee investigate whether Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina violated the chamber's rules in his probe over how mail-in voting was conducted in the 2020 presidential election.

 Graham has not looked into states that Trump won. Asked why not, Graham said Wednesday "because they're not in question. I mean, we're looking at states where there's a contest. I'm not looking at states that he lost. I'm looking at states where there's a challenge."

The end of the Trump White House is *exactly* as bad as we thought it would be

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/18/politics/donald-trump-chris-krebs-fired/index.html

 The end of Donald Trump's time in the White House was always going to be ugly. Just how ugly is now coming into clearer focus.

The removal of Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, on Tuesday night is the newest abomination of how a government and a president should work. While it's impossible to say it's the worst or most damaging thing Trump has done while in office -- they all run together after a while -- what can be said is that what the President did on Tuesday night runs directly counter to the healthy functioning of a democracy.

Why? Because Krebs was fired for telling the truth.

New Pfizer Results: Coronavirus Vaccine Is Safe and 95% Effective

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/health/pfizer-covid-vaccine.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

The drug maker Pfizer said on Wednesday that its coronavirus vaccine was 95 percent effective and had no serious side effects — the first set of complete results from a late-stage vaccine trial as Covid-19 cases skyrocket around the globe.

The data showed that the vaccine prevented mild and severe forms of Covid-19, the company said. And it was 94 percent effective in older adults, who are more vulnerable to developing severe Covid-19 and who do not respond strongly to some types of vaccines.

Pfizer, which developed the vaccine with its partner BioNTech, said the companies planned to apply to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization “within days,” raising hopes that a working vaccine could soon become a reality.

If the F.D.A. authorizes the two-dose vaccine, Pfizer has said that it could have up to 50 million doses available by the end of the year, and up to 1.3 billion by the end of next year.

 However, only about half of its supply will go to the United States this year, or enough for about 12.5 million people — a sliver of the American population of 330 million. Americans will receive the vaccine for free, under a $1.95 billion deal the federal government reached with Pfizer for 100 million doses.

Georgia election audit finds 3,039 more uncounted ballots in 2 counties

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/georgia-election-audit-uncounted-ballots-two-counties

 Unless additional uncounted ballots are found during the audit, it does not appear that the audit will result in a change in the state's election result as President-elect Joe Biden had been leading by approximately 14,000 votes. Sterling said the updated count in Fayette County trimmed the lead to just under 13,000.

If the audit were to end up with Trump winning the state, he would still only have 248 electoral votes, with Biden remaining at 290.