Election 2020: Friday Night Surprise! Democracy Still Exists!
As part of his ongoing autogolpe (a Spanish term literally meaning "self-coup", where a government tries to take over as a more authoritarian version of itself; previously restricted to places like Peru) Trump met with the Republican leaders of the Michigan state legislature, presumably to ask them to obey the will of the voters as the law requires. There's absolutely no other reason he'd want to speak to them privately, right?
In any event, if Trump expected another result, he didn't get it. The two leaders made a joint statement immediately after leaving Trump's office stating that the will of the voters would be respected, and any accusations of fraud should be handled in a court of law. So much for the autogolpe. Georgia certified its newly recounted vote officially today, Michigan and Pennsylvania are set to certify their vote on Monday, and Nevada on Tuesday. At that point the oncoming wall called "mathematics" kicks in, and the only possible hope for Trump to remain in power (short of a violent military coup) is to convince electors nominated by the Biden team to switch their vote and become faithless electors. This is somewhat unlikely. There are no further delaying tactics and courtroom maneuvers that can be made.
Although Tucker Carlson, normally a big fan of Trump-favoring conspiracy theories, expressed horror at Guiliani and company's lack of evidence for the wild accusations they made on Wednesday ("Look, we cover UFO stories! We're open to anything here!") the vast majority of Republicans (aside from the usual suspects like Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse) refused to acknowledge that, you know, the President throwing a weeks-long temper tantrum might be bad. It's apparent they're waiting for Trump's train of attempted sedition to derail on its own, which it appears will almost certainly happen, if not over the weekend, by Wednesday at the latest.
Almost 200,000 people contracted COVID-19 today, including the President's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. There is still absolutely no attempt by the federal government to do anything at all about this, and in many states medical systems are close to collapse. The Trump follies are rapidly becoming a luxury this country can no longer afford to indulge in.