WASHINGTON ― Four years after inciting a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that injured 140 police officers and led to the deaths of five officers and four of his own supporters, President-elect Donald Trump on Monday neither thanked Vice President Kamala Harris for overseeing a smooth election certification ceremony nor apologized for his own coup attempt last time.
Instead, he yet again boasted about how many of his followers responded to his call to come to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, with a photo of the crowd that day, and inexplicably accused President Joe Biden of making the transition between his presidency and Trump’s “difficult.”
“Biden is doing everything possible to make the TRANSITION as difficult as as [sic] possible, from Lawfare such as has never been seen before, to costly and ridiculous Executive Orders on the Green New Scam and other money wasting Hoaxes,” Trump wrote in a social media post three hours after posting a photo of thousands of the followers he had assembled on the National Mall, between the Ellipse and the Washington Monument, four years earlier.
Trump’s transition team did not respond to HuffPost questions about his posts.
For several years, Trump has complained that although the news media covered the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they never praised him for the size of the crowd he drew to take part. “You know the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen? January 6. And you never hear that,” he said at a Nevada rally in 2022.
Also over the past several years, Trump has ― with no evidence ― accused Biden of coordinating the federal and state prosecutions against Trump for his various actions, from his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss to his retention of secret documents at his South Florida country club to his falsification of business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.
It is unclear what his complaint about “lawfare” has to do with the transition. The two federal cases against him were dismissed by special counsel Jack Smith because of a standing Department of Justice policy not to prosecute sitting presidents. The Georgia election interference case is stalled in pretrial appeals. And the New York state hush money case is set for sentencing Friday after numerous delays that Trump himself sought.
This entire transition period, in fact, has been a return to norms between presidential administrations ― and a marked contrast between the end of Trump’s first term in November 2020 and the start of Biden’s in January 2021.
Trump began lying on election night itself that Biden and Democrats had stolen his second term from him, and he kept repeating that lie with the help of many Republicans at all levels of government. He never invited Biden to the White House after the election, as had been customary. For a month and a half, Trump even refused to allow members of his administration to cooperate with Biden’s team to ensure a smooth transfer of power.
It was only after his coup attempt failed on Jan. 6, 2021, that Trump acknowledged the election was over, and even after that date he continued to meet with his allies about ways to remain in office. And on the day of Biden’s inauguration, Trump left town that morning and was ensconced in his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach at the moment Biden took the oath of office.
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Harris, prior to taking the dais in the House chamber Monday to preside over the joint session formally certifying Trump’s election win, released a video explaining that she intended to “perform my constitutional duty as vice president of the United States to certify the results of the 2024 election.”
She kept to a script for the proceedings, which were concluded in less than a half hour ― with no attacks on U.S. Capitol Police, no threats against members of Congress and no intrusions on the floor itself by enraged supporters.
“One of the most important pillars of our democracy is that there will be a peaceful transfer of power,” she told reporters afterward.
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