Trump's pledge of an orderly transition is as worthless as he is
Opinion by Colbert I. King
President Trump’s pledge that “there will be an orderly transition on January 20th” is, in the words of Vice President John Nance Garner, not worth a bucket of warm spit.
The process by which presidential power is transferred in our democracy — a joint session of Congress to count and formally certify the votes of the electoral college — was obstructed this week by a mob of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol. They desecrated the building, ransacking offices and forcing House and Senate members to flee the sanctum of their chambers. That swarming horde achieved exactly what Trump so desperately wanted when he egged on the invasion: to halt the congressional proceedings formalizing the victories of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris.
Trump’s pledge of order now is as worthless as he is. This presidential transition has already earned the distinction of being the most disorderly and destructive transfer of power in the nation’s history.
And we should have seen it coming.
The turbulence began long before the rabble gathered Wednesday on Pennsylvania Avenue to march on Capitol Hill. Trump had signaled his expectations, inviting his supporters to rally in Washington on Jan. 6. “Be there, will be wild,” he tweeted last month.
But even before the post-election period when Trump’s malevolence went into overdrive, he had spent more than three years thumbing his nose at the laws and touchstones of civility.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-pledge-of-an-orderly-transition-is-as-worthless-as-he-is/2021/01/08/cd94efbc-5167-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html