Trump Lost the Election. When is Someone Going to Tell Him
Although it took a week to project the results, former Vice President Joe Biden is the clear winner of the 2020 US presidential elections, with a margin of victory significantly larger than the outcome of the 2016 election. But it seems that nobody has informed President Donald Trump that’s he’s lost.
Despite discredited claims of election fraud for which there is no evidence, the Trump campaign has continued to fight on each and every front to somehow overturn the results of the election and stay in power.
So what would happen if Trump simply refused to ever give up power?
Writing in CNBC, Natasha Turak interviews the conservative lawyer John Yoo what would happen in that situation.
“He may never concede; he doesn’t have to concede,” Yoo said. “The thing about the American Constitution is that it doesn’t actually require the sitting president to do anything one way or the other. On January 20th, Donald Trump’s term ends and Joe Biden’s, I believe, will begin.”
According to the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, the candidate with the most electoral votes becomes president at noon on Jan. 20. The current president’s term is therefore over on that day, just before noon.
“And yeah, he could say ‘I’m not leaving, I’m not conceding’ — but at that time at noon on January 20, he’s no longer the president,” Yoo said, “and all of the allegiance of the government, of the military, of the civil service, switches to the winner of the November 3 election, who I think is going to be Joe Biden. And then he will become the president and Donald Trump will become a private citizen, regardless of anything Donald Trump does.”
NBC News reported on Wednesday that there is growing expectation among Trump’s advisors that he will never concede the loss, even when ballots are certified in coming weeks around the country.
“Do not expect him to concede,” a top Trump aide told NBC. It is more likely, the aide said, that “he’ll say something like, ‘We can’t trust the results, but I’m not contesting them.’”