President Donald Trump’s effort to unravel democracy hit a dead end at the Supreme Court Friday night, capping five weeks in which he dragged the country along on his narcissistic quest to stay in power after President-elect Joe Biden overwhelmingly won the election.
President Donald Trump’s effort to unravel democracy hit a dead end at the Supreme Court Friday night, capping five weeks in which he dragged the country along on his narcissistic quest to stay in power after President-elect Joe Biden overwhelmingly won the election.
While waiting to hear from the Supreme Court on Friday, Trump attacked another American institution, opening a new front in his war on science and ethics by pressuring the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration to rush the process for granting emergency use authorization for Pfizer and BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine.
“Every American who cares about the rule of law should take comfort that the Supreme Court — including all three of President Trump’s picks — closed the book on the nonsense,” Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse — a rare Trump critic in the GOP — said in a statement Friday evening.
Even Trump seemed to explicitly acknowledge earlier in the day that Biden would be the next president in a tweet calling on the Supreme Court to “show great Courage & Wisdom” and “Save the USA!!” In the same tweet, he alleged that “the Biden administration will be a scandal-plagued mess for years to come. ” But a White House spokesman said the tweet should not be interpreted as a concession.
“I promised that we would produce a vaccine in record time before the end of the year,” Trump said.
At the time of his pressure campaign, the FDA had been expected to grant emergency use authorization either Friday or Saturday, so it was unclear why Trump felt the need to weigh in on a decision that would come within hours.
The team reported that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told Hahn during a call on Friday morning that he needed to grant an emergency use authorization for Pfizer and BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine by the end of the day or he should resign.
