CNN's Jake Tapper isn't reassured by 'cowardly' GOP's private assurances Trump will leave

(Image credit: Screenshot/CNN/YouTube)

published 11 November 2020

President Trump's allies "know he's lost," Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman report in Politico on Wednesday. "They know there's no lawsuit they'll win, or recount that will get him the tens of thousands of votes he needs in the multiple states he needs to get closer to a second term. Trump's aides are looking for the exits, trying to find new jobs. Republicans are readjusting to the reality of a Joe Biden presidency. Yes, plenty of people are pretending otherwise, but it's mostly performance art." But they're keeping it quiet.

Even as the Trump team files new lawsuits, "his advisers privately acknowledged that President-elect Joe Biden's official victory is less a question of 'if' than 'when,'" The Washington Post reports. One adviser who speaks regularly to Trump told the Post, "He wants to sow discontent in the public that the election was illegitimate, so he can say he didn't lose." A campaign-adjacent former Trump aide told Politico, "It's all noise."

It's "frankly chilling to hear" GOP leaders, Trump allies, and Cabinet members signal publicly "that they're unwilling to accept the results of the democratic process," while privately acknowledging Trump's defeat, CNN's Jake Tapper said Tuesday evening. "This is not just cowardly, it is dangerous. Now I've spent some time today talking to Republican officials on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and what they say is: No one out there should worry that our democracy is in actual jeopardy. They say this is all part of walking President Trump through this process emotionally, and that they assume that while he may never concede, he will leave. There will be, they say, a peaceful transition of power to the Biden-Harris administration on Jan. 20. They say that, but that say it on background, because they don't want to upset President Trump and they don't want to get death threats from his supporters."

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"Now, you may or may not find that reassuring," Tapper said, but all those GOP officials "enabling this fiction that the president may have won the election, they are continuing to put their loyalty to President Trump ahead of their loyalty to the United States of America and to the American people, who deserve the truth about this election, not more divisive lies that terrify one half of the nation and misinform and thus outrage the other half." Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.