In this strange interregnum, between Biden’s victory and Trump’s departure, the lame duck and the incoming president have taken remarkably, if not surprisingly, different paths.
Trump surrounds the axis of his delusional offer to regain the presidency, which is pulling back out of his hands day by day. He moves between complaints and dripping dreams, not thinking about the destruction in his path. Biden, operating in the existing world, carefully built a waiting government. And in the two days since Trump’s appointee allowed the official transition to begin, Biden’s team began examining the rusty nuts and bolts of the institutions he inherited.
Biden’s reality and Trump’s fantasies collided on Thanksgiving night.
Trump then invited Pennsylvania Republicans to the White House for a West Wing meeting, two sources told CNN. This is a resumption of a play that the president, with lawmakers from two Michigan GOP states who visited Washington last week, asked for a briefing that the president hoped would give more fuel to make unfounded claims of election fraud. But he received nothing, and Republicans quickly issued a statement afterwards confirming the truth – that “they were not yet aware of any information that could have changed the outcome of the Michigan election.”
Galaxies el
“I know the country is tired of fighting. But we have to remember that we are fighting the virus, not each other. Not with each other,” Biden said. “This is the moment when we need to steel our spines, redouble our efforts and re-commit ourselves to the fight.”
As he did during the campaign, Biden directed his own grief — the loss of his first wife and infant daughter in 1972 and his son’s brain cancer a little over five years ago — to reassure grieving Americans. .
“It’s very hard to care for him,” Biden said of the breathtaking sight of an “empty chair” where a loved one once sat. “It’s hard to give thanks. It’s hard to think about looking to the future and it’s so hard to hope. I understand. I’m going to think and pray for all of you this Thanksgiving.”
Earlier in the day, the first lady of the future, Jill Biden, was spotted dropping bags at a restaurant bank in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where the Bidens spend the holidays. The tiny gesture underscored the enormous challenges whose lives were financially ruined by the pandemic, who turned to increasingly tense charities to temporarily meet basic needs.
“No one in America should starve,” he added.
Kellie O’Connell, CEO of Lakeview Pantry in Chicago, described the painful scenes as striking families coming for help, many for the first time.
Describing a family of four exhausting his savings, O’Connell spoke to CNN Brooke Baldwin about the shame that often accompanies a call for help.
“They came to us to put food on their table on this Thanksgiving,” he said. “One of the parents stayed in the car because he was a little confused about how to get food. And well, it’s very difficult.”
Growing lines outside of food banks have become a bitter hallmark of this wretched season.
Congress is still stuck on the aid package
On the horizon: more pain. An estimated 12 million people will lose the expanded unemployment benefits provided by the federal aid package adopted in March. The outlook for the second round of federal stimulus in the near future looks bleak. A few weeks later, there is a government funding deadline that could provide an opportunity for lawmakers to budget for some new subsidies. But the Democrat-backed House incentive first went through in May and then updated in early October.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to take on this, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has so far refused to consider smaller, piecemeal legislation. Due to the stalemate, desperate American workers are increasingly shifting and pushing entire industries to the brink.
The lack of a central, organizing personality in the White House has also begun to raise concerns about the process of distributing coronavirus vaccines. In light of this spring’s chaos, when local leaders were left to bid on each other for ventilators and personal protective equipment, the Illinois state’s top health official said the federal government had already told him it could not fulfill an initial 400,000 requests for doses.
“We’re still waiting for answers and we might understand why this is, but it seems that the initial allocation we thought was ready to go out – that number has dropped,” Dr. Ngozi Ezike told CNN Nia-Malika to Henderson. “So as a result, all states get a smaller amount.”
Fighting overvoltage
Bundled in Washington and spreading the coronavirus at record speeds, Mayo Clinic, one of the nation’s most prominent health care providers, has announced that it will bring in staff from abroad and ask retirees to return to tackle the virus’s surge. In Minnesota.
By 10 p.m. Wednesday night, Johns Hopkins University reported 178,752 new cases and 2,207 deaths nationwide. This followed more than 2,100 deaths on Tuesday related to Covid-19, the highest one-day number since May. Public health experts fear spending time with and without families with millions of families traveling on Thursday will trigger another wave of infection.
“It’s potentially the mother of all the pervasive events,” White House former medical adviser CNN told Dr. Jonathan Reiner this week.
He then preached behavior that further endangered them all.
“I encourage all Americans to gather,” Trump said, “in homes and places of worship to give thanksgiving prayers to God for our many blessings.”
