By now you’ve likely heard that on Monday, General Services Administration Administrator Emily Murphy decided to allow Joe Biden to officially get the resources he needs to transition to the White House, after refusing to do so for more than two weeks out of deference to Donald Trump and the reported fear that she would be fired for doing her job. Shortly after the news broke that Murphy had sent Biden a letter informing him he’d no longer have to start a GoFundMe to raise cash for his transition, Trump took to Twitter to insist that he’d ordered the GSA chief to do so, in a sad attempt to save face that obviously wasn’t actually true:
In her dispatch to the president-elect, Murphy wrote: “I came to my decision independently, based on the law and available facts,” adding that she was “never directly or indirectly pressured by any Executive Branch official—including those who work at the White House or GSA.” According to the New York Times, in recent days, top aides to Trump, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and attorney Jay Sekulow, informed him that the presidential transition needed to get underway, and apparently were only able to convince him to accept the situation by telling him he did not need to utter the word concede, a bargaining tactic that sounds a lot like how governments negotiate hostage situations, or, more accurately, how parents negotiate with toddlers who don’t want to eat their vegetables. While Murphy refuted the idea that Trump had directed her to start the process, she clearly took pains not to inflame her highly flammable boss, going out of her way not to say that Biden won the election, writing: “As you know, the GSA Administrator does not pick or certify the winner of a presidential election. Instead, the GSA Administrator’s role under the [Presidential Transition Act of 1963] is extremely narrow: to make resources and services available in connection with a presidential transition. As stated, because of recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results, I have determined that you may access the post-election resources and services described in Section 3 of the Act upon request. The actual winner of the presidential election will be determined by the electoral process detailed in the Constitution.”
Which is completely insane! Not the part about the electoral process but the one wherein we’re pretending we don’t know Biden won! You can say it! No one thinks you personally are declaring a victor when the decision was in fact made by the tens of millions of people who voted in the presidential election! An outcome that certain people are still not ready to accept, despite the fact that all that’s left to do is let the U-Haul movers pull up to the White House on January 20, 2021, and ship someone’s belongings down to Mar-a-Lago!
In a statement following Pennsylvania’s vote certification, Biden campaign attorney Bob Bauer said, “It’s readily apparent to everyone besides Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Jenna Ellis that this election is over and that Joe Biden won resoundingly.” The White House did not respond to that assertion, but the president did retweet a post from “The Columbia Bugle” this morning with a photo himself in the Oval Office and the words “I concede NOTHING!!!!!”, so that’s probably a good indication of where he’s at.