In what was a strong departure from centuries-old tradition, President Trump boarded the Air Force One, few hours before the inauguration ceremony on January 20 and headed for his home in Florida, bringing an end to a tumultuous four years in office. Trump`s decision to not attend the inauguration of his successor certainly did not come as a surprise to many, considering his claims of election fraud since the results of the election were announced. The decision fit his persona and certainly pleased his base who had largely bought the claim that the election was “stolen”. But while this bold claim and the resulting drama, including the violent assault on the US capitol on January 6, will remain a dent on Trump`s legacy, countries like Nigeria whose democracies are still infantile must look at important lessons that can be learned from the disputes that emanated from the US general elections.
To object to the outcome of an election on the belief that human or technical errors helped to change the overall outcome is one thing; to claim that an election was intentionally rigged in favor of one candidate is another. The latter was Trump`s claim which in itself calls into question the legitimacy of American institutions saddled with the onerous responsibility of ensuring elections are always free and fair. Trump, of course, had a right to raise any objection—no matter how spurious— to the outcome of the election as long as he was within legal boundaries. The former Republican president, George Bush, touched on this point in his congratulatory message to Biden when he stated that “Trump has a legal right to request recounts and pursue legal challenges, and any unresolved issues will be properly adjudicated.” However, he did not hesitate to point out his belief that the “American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair…and its outcome is clear.”
But instead of vigorously pursuing legal challenges and hoping for a favorable outcome, Trump decided to start a whole new campaign centered around the outrageous claim that the election was stolen, and at a point, even declared himself to have won the election. His actions seemed not to have any parallels in US history and all but few of his fanatical supporters saw no merit in the claims. Aided by his allies in the right-wing media, Trump began a fierce battle to overturn the outcome of the 2020 general elections. As the legal challenges continued to be thrown out in state courts for essentially having no merits, Trump’s desperation grew to new heights.
What could pass as the biggest moment of the fiasco came when the US Supreme Court refused to entertain the lawsuit filed by Texas against other so-called battleground states where Trump had lost by narrow margins. Prior to that moment, Trump was probably under the illusion that the three Supreme Court justices he had managed to appoint would somehow help his cause if the elections resulted in litigations that wound up in the apex court. But he was terribly disappointed because as it turned out, all three Trump appointees, including Justice Barrett whom he had fought a highly contentious last-minute battle to “install” few weeks before the election, sided with the majority in ruling that the state of Texas had not “demonstrated any cognizable judicial interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections.”
Trump lambasted the Court after the decision was made, claiming that it “lacked courage” and had “let down” all Americans. In the same vein, he either fired or threatened to fire cabinet members or federal employees who did not propagate the claim of a “stolen” election. Christopher Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an agency which in Trump`s own words was to ensure “that [the US] confronts the full range of threats from nation states, cyber criminals, and other malicious actors of which there are many,” was dismissed for his howbeit sarcastic claim that the 2020 election was the freest and fairest in US history. Not long thereafter, Trump`s attorney general, William Barr, was “forced” to resign after he made it clear that he believed “there was no evidence of widespread electoral fraud” during the 2020 elections.
The events from November 3 to Inauguration Day could have made the United States resemble any third world nation. “Stop the Steal” marches were organized across the country by Trump supporters who had decided without any shred of evidence that the election had truly been stolen. The president was of course quite patronizing of the events and in one instance drove through the marches with his motorcade to show his support. At the other end of the spectrum, a handful of Republican lawmakers were already threatening to object to the certification of the results on January 6. And when Trump supporters began clashing with left-wing “counter-protesters” during the marches, political violence seemed quite inevitable.
Somewhere in the whole drama, it is believed that Trump expected “loyalty” from fellow Republicans in his bid to overturn the results of the election. But Republican leaders like Senator Mitch McConnell seemed to have accepted the outcome of the result by offering their best wishes to Biden while Trump was spouting conspiracies. Not surprisingly, Trump turned to Republican lawmakers who controlled the houses in certain battleground states, as well as election officials, in his desperate attempt to remain in power. The meeting which he held in secret with state lawmakers from Georgia generated a huge backlash from within and without. But the lawmakers told news outlets afterwards that though the meeting with the president was routine, they had made it clear to him they would respect “the will of the people” by certifying the results in Georgia.
Something even more scandalous than Trump`s clandestine meeting with Georgia lawmakers occurred on January 2, four days before the certification of the election results by Congress. In a leaked phone call, the president could be heard telling Georgia`s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, that all he wanted was “to find 11780 votes” just enough to eclipse Biden’s narrow win in the state of Georgia. Raffensperger had voted for Trump in the election and reportedly contributed to his campaign, but when faced with intimidation from the president as he described it, he simply chose duty over loyalty. He completely dismissed Trump`s outlandish claim that 5000 dead persons voted for Biden in Georgia, insisting the number was just 2 and that investigations were ongoing to unravel the identities of the impersonators. This, of course, was not to be the last of Trump`s misfortunes.
There is certainly no doubt that Trump believed that if all else failed, his vice president Mike Pence would somehow manage to keep him in power. He thought that since the vice president was charged with the constitutional responsibility of counting the electoral votes before they are certified by Congress, he could manage to “block” votes from “fraudulent states.” Speaking at a rally in Georgia, he made it quite clear that he “hopes that Mike Pence comes through for us…he is a great guy of course. If he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him quite as much.”
Pence`s letter to congress on January 6, at first, seemed to pander to Trump`s wishes. He stated that “after an election with significant allegations of voting irregularities and numerous instances of state officials setting aside state electoral law, I share the concerns of millions of Americans concerning the integrity of the election.” He went further to assert that as presiding officer he was going to “ensure that the concerns receive a fair and open hearing in the Congress of the United States…Objections will be heard, evidence will be presented, and the elected representatives of the American people will make their decision.”
But in a sharp twist, he stated that given the controversy surrounding the election, some have come to erroneously believe—probably alluding to Trump and his legal and media allies—that the vice president should be able to unilaterally accept or reject electoral votes. He was quick to debunk the notion, pointing out that all through US history no vice president had ever asserted such authority and that, indeed, any such move would be antithetical to the spirit of the constitution. And in what was the final nail to the coffin of Trump’s highly improbable dreams, Pence declared that his oath to support and defend the constitution constrained him from claiming unilateral authority over what votes should and should not be counted.
In a stern rebuke of Pence, Trump roared that the vice president “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution, giving states to certify a corrected set of facts and not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to certify.” Having exhausted all “legal” options at this point, President Trump embarked on what would become the defining moment of his presidency.
On January 6, few hours before the joint session of Congress would meet to certify the result of the election, Trump gave a speech at a “Save America” rally near the White House—a speech that would later be termed an “incitement to insurrection”, resulting in the resignation of some of his cabinet members. In the speech, Trump charged his supporters not to “give up” or “concede” since “theft was involved” in the election. “We will not take it anymore…we will stop the steal…we won [the election] by a landslide…we didn’t lose,” he thundered. Taking aim at the vice president once again, he continued: “all vice president Pence has to do is send [the electoral votes] back to the states to recertify and [I] become the president and you are the happiest people.”
Turning to the Supreme Court, President Trump made no secret of his unhappiness: “They love to rule against me. I picked three people. I fought like hell for them…and they couldn’t give a damn…but it almost seems they are going out of their way to hurt all of us and to hurt our country.” And at the end of his protracted speech, Trump urged his followers to “fight.” “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you are not going to have a country anymore…and we are going to the Capitol, and we are going to try and give [weak Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country,” he boomed.
But just about the time the president finished his speech, an attack on the United States Capitol, where lawmakers had convened to formally certify the results of the election in favor of Joe Biden, had already commenced. Hundreds of Trump supporters had breached the Capitol, giving way to lawlessness, looting, and destruction of property. In the violence that erupted, five persons including a police officer lost their lives. While the families mourned the loss of their loved ones, the rest of the country scrambled to make sense of what had occurred. And as expected, the debate of whether or not President Trump was responsible for the violent attack on the Capitol will continue for a long time despite him being acquitted by the Senate on the charge of “incitement to insurrection”.
Meanwhile, Trump, in his rather unapologetic farewell speech on January 19, disowned the “rioters and looters” who stormed the US Capitol claiming they “do not represent [the] country,” and that they “would pay.” He did not, however, shrink from praising the “patriots” who had come to the rally to “peacefully” make their voices heard. The seeming insensitivity in his utterances certainly did not help the cause of “repairing” his image, but he seemed not to care.
And no matter what one might think of Trump and his last days in office, there is no question that he made for a good test of the strength of American institutions—institutions that proved wholly capable of checking one man`s lust for power. And as Andre Perry of the Brookings Institution noted: “Win or lose, Trump was the mirror that America needed.” He was right.