Hours after the United States voted, the president declared the election a fraud — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power.
Thursday the 12th was the day Mr. Trump’s flimsy, long-shot legal effort to reverse his loss turned into something else entirely — an extralegal campaign to subvert the election, rooted in a lie so convincing to some of his most devoted followers that it made the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable.
For years, Republicans have used the specter of cheating as a reason to impose barriers to ballot access. A definitive debunking of claims of wrongdoing in 2020 has not changed that message.
Fox News and CNN stuck with the White House news conference, but reported afterward that the president offered no evidence for his accusations of vote fraud.
On Thursday, MSNBC was the first outlet to break away from Mr. Trump’s news conference, after just 35 seconds. (MSNBC, which has a large liberal following, has been more aggressive than other channels in choosing to hold off on airing the president live.) The move “was not done as a stunt, or out of theatrics,” the anchor Brian Williams told viewers, but rather, “we just can’t have it. It was not rooted in reality and, at this point in where our country is, it’s dangerous.”
"The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due."
-- So if I pay $750 in taxes, that means I'm a billionaire?
Mark Esper's comments reflected the turmoil within the military over President Trump, who has said he could put active-duty troops on the streets to perform law enforcement functions.
"Pentagon officials note that the military is trained in using lethal power against foreign adversaries, not in law enforcement, and what is appropriate in Falluja is not in Farragut Square."
The loss of local news coverage in much of the United States has frayed communities and left many Americans woefully uninformed, according to a new report.
In a world spiraling towards chaos, we can begin to see the fruits of Donald Trump’s erratic, amoral and incompetent foreign policy, his systematic undermining of alliances and hollowing out of America’s diplomatic and national security architecture.
