This installment of The David Pakman Show newsletter is free for everyone. I send these emails daily. If you would also like to receive it, join the newsletter today.
Note: This is totally separate from website Membership and does not affect your website Membership in any way.
Trump TRIGGERED: Joe Biden Officially Wins Electoral Vote
Joe Biden officially became President-Elect yesterday when the Electoral College met in states across the country and cast their votes for president and vice president. There were no faithless electors, so Biden ended up with a count of 306 electoral votes and Trump tallied 232. Due to the order of when votes were cast, California electors made it official for Biden when they cast their 55 votes, putting him over the 270-vote threshold. The next and final step is for the House and Senate to count the votes during a joint session of Congress on January 6th. Vice President Mike Pence will have the awkward assignment of counting the votes and cementing his own defeat.
Trump and his supporters have vowed to keep fighting even though the Electoral College has made it official. Republican electors cast votes of their own in several states where Biden won and will try to send them to Congress. There will be pressure on Pence and Republican lawmakers to protest the counting of votes in January but their efforts will be doomed to fail. The Democratic-majority House won’t back the protests and even some Republican Senators have said they won’t go along with Trump’s coup attempt. Trump and his cronies have fought hard but democracy and American institutions will survive the threat.
Trumpists on Fox DESPONDENT as Trump Officially Loses
While the more realistic Trump supporters have accepted Trump lost and are moving on, the dedicated sycophants don’t know what to make of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory. Kayleigh McEnany, for example, took issue with Biden’s speech last night and found it “preposterous” that Biden would call Trump’s coup attempt an “assault on democracy.” McEnany, like many Trumpists, has been trying to flip the script by arguing that it’s Biden who is trying to subvert democracy. It’s all projection, but it works on the Newsmax, OAN, and Fox News nighttime audiences.
Charlie Kirk and Geraldo Rivera battled on Fox News over accepting the results of the election. Rivera said “we have litigated this for six weeks” and that “you have to stop this.” Rivera made an excellent point about why Trump supporters think the election was rigged. “They believe him, they love him, they are following his lead.” It’s not about the merits of the cases or whether they can throw out the votes necessary to overturn the election. It’s about Trump’s supporters listening to every word he says and believing him no matter what. The division forming among conservatives is unlikely to be mended anytime soon and progressives need to do their best to take advantage of it. That starts with voting in the Georgia Senate runoffs on January 5th.
From yesterday’s show:
Supreme Court Says NO to Trump, Trump LOSES IT
The Supreme Court has rejected the case out of Texas that sought to throw out the votes of four other states. The hope was that if SCOTUS could disqualify the votes of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, then Biden would be blocked from reaching 270 electoral votes. The justices turned down the cases, believing Texas did not have any standing to question the election results of other states. Trump, predictably, did not take the news well. The outgoing president said on Twitter, “No Wisdom, No Courage.” He followed up later with, “All they were interested in is ‘standing’, which makes it very difficult for the President to present a case on the merits. 75,000,000 votes!”
--More on the show:
--Graeme Wood, journalist who writes for The Atlantic and author of the book, "The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State," joins David to discuss American democracy, the 2020 election, polarization, income inequality, and much more. Get Graeme's book: https://amzn.to/3nm3BYx
--Donald Trump's Attorney General William Barr announces his resignation, effective December 23, and speculation runs rampant about whether he was fired, and if he resigned, why he chose to do so
--Republican Senate candidate Kelly Loeffler can't explain how it was rigged against Donald Trump in November but won't be rigged against her in the upcoming January 5 runoff election
--Twitter confirms that after he is out of office, Donald Trump can indeed be banned from the platform
--Calls grow for the arrest of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for his recent claims at the Million MAGA march that Joe Biden will be removed "one way or another"
--For the first time ever, Newsmax beat out Fox News in ratings during a particular time slot, raising more questions about the future of right wing media
--The San Antonio Troll, a longtime caller, still doesn't understand anything about how the world works
--On the Bonus Show: COVID-19 vaccination stickers, the people that did well during the coronavirus pandemic, Toyota's game-changing car battery, much more...
--Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership