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RE: Linh Tinh - LeThanhPhong - 2020-11-11
Rememberance Day - Raccoons Galore on my deck
RE: Linh Tinh - LeThanhPhong - 2020-11-12
Why Paying Off Your Home Early Is Important
How to Pay off Your Mortgage Faster (The Truth)
$1000 extra mortgage payment saves how much interest?
10 HACKS To Pay Your Mortgage Off Early
How to Pay Off Your Mortgage In 5-7 Years
How To Pay Off Your Mortgage Fast Using Velocity Banking | How To Pay Off Your Mortgage In 5-7 Years
Which Is The Faster Way To Pay Off A Mortgage Between Velocity Banking Bi-Weekly Or Extra Payments?
What's Wrong With A Credit Card If I Pay It Off Every Month?
RE: Linh Tinh - LeThanhPhong - 2020-11-13
30 Things We Don't Buy to SAVE MONEY: Frugal Minimalist Family Journey: Frugal Living Habits
EASY! DIY Haircut: Cut & Layer Your Own Hair: Step by Step Tutorial
How To Cut Men's Hair With Clippers For Beginners | How To Cut Hair At Home
Perfect Fade in 4 Minutes | How to Cut Men's Hair | Best Tutorial | Tip #2
DIY Quarantine Haircut. Easiest Bald Fade EVER.
RE: Linh Tinh - LeThanhPhong - 2020-11-13
Các tiểu bang thuộc đảng Cộng Hoà từ chối không tuân theo chỉ thị của Biden cần đeo mặt nạ.
Đã biết đeo mặt nạ là phương pháp ngăn ngừa bệnh dịch COVID-19 hiệu quả, nhưng các Thống Đốc thuộc các tiểu bang Cộng Hoà từ chối không ép buộc dân chúng cần đeo mặt nạ. Hy vọng nhờ Tổng Thống đắc cử Joe Biden cũng như toàn thể chính quyền liên bang luôn luôn đeo mặt nạ, dân chúng Hoa Kỳ sẽ bắt chước tuân theo.
Một khi mình bị dính COVID-19, không một ông Thống Đốc nào có thể chịu bệnh thay thế. Nhìn lại, chỉ mình và gia đình là lo lắng cực khổ với mình mà thôi.
Trong thời gian chờ thuốc chủng ngừa, chúng ta hãy:
- Đeo mặt nạ khi ra đường
- Giữ khoảng cách 6 feet với người bên cạnh.
- Rửa tay bằng xà bông khi trở vào nhà.
---ooOoo--
Red state governors reject Biden on mask orders
The politicization of mask-wearing shows how difficult it will be for Joe Biden to build consensus around even basic public health strategies after he’s sworn in.
By DAN GOLDBERG, RACHEL ROUBEIN and ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
11/13/2020 04:30 AM EST
President-elect Joe Biden says he'll personally call red state governors and persuade them to impose mask mandates to slow down the coronavirus pandemic. Their early response: Don’t waste your time.
Almost all of the 16 Republican governors who oppose statewide mask mandates are ready to reject Biden’s plea, they told POLITICO or declared in public statements — even as they impose new restrictions on businesses and limit the size of public gatherings to keep their health systems from getting swamped.
South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, Oklahoma’s Kevin Stitt and Nebraska’s Pete Ricketts, whose states are engulfed by new cases, say mask wearing should remain a personal choice, not a legal obligation — despite recommendations from health officials and updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control stressing that masks protect the wearer, not just people nearby, from infection.
“Governor Noem has provided her people with the full scope of the science, facts, and data regarding the virus, and then she has trusted them to exercise their personal responsibility to make the best decisions for themselves and their loved-ones,” Noem spokesperson Ian Fury wrote in an email. “She will not be changing that approach.”
The politicization of mask-wearing shows how difficult it will be for Biden to build consensus around even basic public health strategies after he’s sworn in.
Though President Donald Trump is on his way out, he’s poised to hold strong influence over GOP officials and voters who’ve largely backed his efforts to downplay the pandemic.
![[Image: 20201112-kristi-noem-ap-773.jpg]](https://static-politico-com.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/static.politico.com/a2/19/87917ab74e73a3b3743b7fcf39e3/20201112-kristi-noem-ap-773.jpg)
In this Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2020 file photo, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem speaks in Sioux Falls, SD.
While some of the same governors expressed frustration earlier in the pandemic about the Trump administration’s lack of support on testing and protective gear, most side with Trump on his aversion to mask mandates. They’ve argued that neither Washington nor state capitals should dictate policies like face coverings, saying they are both onerous and unenforceable. And they’re digging in, even with the virus putting 65,000 people in hospitals and infecting more than 1.2 million people since Nov. 1.
“If President-elect Biden is indeed confirmed to be the next president, and he approaches me about a mask mandate, I would not be going along with a mask mandate,” Ricketts said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
“As far as a mandate, I’ve been very clear I don’t think this it’s the right thing to do,” Stitt, who was infected with the coronavirus earlier this year, said at a briefing on Tuesday. “This is a personal responsibility."
Several of the Republican holdouts, including Ricketts, have required face coverings for employees and patrons of certain businesses while others, like Stitt, have instead allowed their largest cities to decide on mask orders.
Other Republican governors, like Eric Holcomb in Indiana and Kay Ivey in Alabama have had mandates for months, while Utah Gov. Gary Herbert imposed a statewide order on Sunday night when it became clear this month that his state's hospitals were overwhelmed.
Asked about the possibility of a mask mandate, a spokesperson for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee told POLITICO that “nothing’s off the table.” Counties can implement their own orders and so far nearly two dozen, representing two-thirds of the state population have opted to do so. The state reported a record number of new hospitalizations and deaths this week.
“We need to be nimble in our decision-making, but for the time-being, he’s confident the local-based approach is the most effective,” Gillum Ferguson, Lee’s spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Some federal health experts, like White House coronavirus task force coordinator Deborah Birx, have for months urged Americans to wear masks to help slow the virus’ spread and recommended stronger government mandates on face coverings.
The appeals have intensified as November's nationwide case counts shattered previous records, averaging more than 100,000 new infections a day.
Biden plans to implement a science-driven pandemic strategy as soon as he’s sworn in, and has said that if governors aren’t receptive to his arguments, he will take the crusade to the local level by calling mayors and county leaders and urging them to enact mask orders.
He may have little choice with some Republican governors refusing to even acknowledge his election victory, and with the GOP state leaders unified around the belief that mandates don't increase compliance.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced that customers and employees must wear masks at certain businesses, such as salons and tattoo parlors, but she rejected a statewide mandate, saying the decision comes down to individual responsibility.
Asked this week how he’ll be able to work with governors like Reynolds, Ricketts or Noem, Biden said simply: “They will.”
Though he’s blocked from starting to work with federal agencies on the transition, Biden used this week to reiterate that cloth masks are the single most important tool the country has to suppress the virus before a vaccine can be distributed.
"A mask is not a political statement — but it is a good way to start pulling the country together...It's to give something back to all of us: a normal life,” he said during a Monday press conference announcing his coronavirus task force, which is filled with a slate of veteran public health experts.
[/url]In the unfolding pandemic, economic crisis and reckoning on race, governors and mayors are shaping our shared future. Who are the power players, and how are they driving politics and influencing Washington?
[url=https://www.politico.com/series/states/the-fifty/?cid=fifty_m]Full coverage »
Mark McClellan, a former top health official in the George W. Bush administration and a member of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Covid-19 strike force, said he hopes some state leaders will be receptive to Biden’s calls.
“It's actually a good time for him to be engaging with governors on something like this," McClellan said. "He doesn't have the authority of government yet, and this is an issue where you can't just issue a national mask mandate and to some extent, even a state mask mandate alone. It's got to be part of a coordinated set of steps.”
Biden this fall suggested he was looking into issuing an executive order creating a national mask mandate if governors continue to resist his entreaties.
But he's sounded more conciliatory since the election, only discussing executive orders that would mandate masks in federal buildings and on interstate transportation.
“While no decisions have been made about executive actions and no memo about the topic has been sent to the President-elect, he has the same levers at his disposal as all of his predecessors to address the crises facing the American people,” a spokesperson from transition said.
Biden’s transition team declined to comment on when he would begin reaching out to mayors and governors and which states would be the first to get the call.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors says there's been no communication with Biden or his team on the mask question, but noted the group has “made preliminary outreach to the incoming Administration to let them know that mayors are standing by ready to help."
It's not too early to have these conversations, said Obama administration health secretary Kathleen Sebelius, adding the relationships Biden establishes in the next 10 weeks could make the difference between cooperation at the height of a pandemic and a continuation of the patchwork efforts that have allowed the virus to spread widely.
“[Governors] will be at the front line of not only keeping policies and practices in place as safely as possible as we head into these very cold inside winter months, but also being in the front lines of the vaccination effort,” Sebelius said. “I think they need to know that this is a whole new effort by the incoming president, and it will be an entirely new relationship. They will be able to count on the federal government.
- Joe Biden has won the presidency, toppling Donald Trump after four years of upheaval in the White House. Trump is the first one-term president in more than 25 years.
PRESIDENT-ELECT BIDEN
- Trump's fraud claims are a boon for his and his allies' fundraising.
- Fauci and Biden team steer clear of each other — for now.
- Will Biden make Air Force One blue again?
- Biden forms special Covid transition team.
- Here's how key swing states handle recounts and certify election results.
WHAT'S NEXT
- Red state governors reject Biden on mask orders.
- Biden confronts a staffing crisis at federal agencies.
- Trump aides privately plot a flurry of lame-duck moves.
- Top Senate Republicans say Biden should get presidential intel briefings.
- Here's what's on Biden's policy agenda.
- FILED UNDER:
- JOE BIDEN,
- JOE BIDEN 2020,
- DONALD TRUMP,
- DONALD TRUMP 2020,
- KRISTI NOEM,
- PETE RICKETTS,
- HEALTH CARE,
- CORONAVIRUS,
- KEVIN STITT,
- THE FIFTY
- Could Trump Really Hold On? Why Experts Aren’t Worried
- Alito's politically charged address draws heat
- Biden team reaching out to former Mattis officials for help with transition
--ooOoo--
Cô bé chết vào năm 1933 vì mắc bệnh diphtheria lúc còn nhỏ khi chưa có thuốc chủng ngừa. Cha cô bỏ 18 tháng mới làm xong căn nhà búp bê cho cô, nhưng cô chết trước khi làm xong. Ngôi mộ này thuộc tỉnh Lanett, tiểu bang Alabama.
Giờ đây, cha mẹ cô và cô cùng ngủ giấc thiên thu trong vùng đất thuộc căn nhà búp bê.
The girl in the doll house grave
RE: Linh Tinh - LeThanhPhong - 2020-11-13
Johannes Brahms - Hungarian Dance No. 5
Hungarian Dance No. 5 by J. Brahms (classical guitar arrangement by Emre Sabuncuoğlu)
Mozart - Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550 [complete]
RE: Linh Tinh - LeThanhPhong - 2020-11-15
Trump và Những Hành Vi Phản Quốc.
Is it treason? As Trump denies election results, legal scholar unpacks his attempt to stay in office
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/trump-election-results-treason-coup-biden-20201112.html?_gl=1*f7ajc*_ga*UTRURXFsRWtWTmxaR1pKVkpRQTV0NUltdVE2aXlfR2JHTmY5aVlOa29JVUFyQmNTUDNBQ2JqbkR4aU9XTnVadg..
Posted: November 12, 2020 - 11:43 AM
Michael Gerhardt, For the Inquirer
No American president has ever used the powers of his office to deny the results of an election he lost — until now. For nearly four years, President Donald Trump has wallowed in a sea of alternative facts. He began his presidency with (false) boasts that he had the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, and he is spending his last weeks wreaking damage throughout the government. Yet again, we learn Trump is not just a bully but the Constitution’s worst nightmare.
The evidence of Trump’s destructiveness is staring us in the face: He trashed the integrity of our electoral system before and after the election, and he calls this election “rigged” because he lost. He says he’s won an “easy” victory if the only votes that count are the votes counted as of the time when he was ahead of President-elect Joe Biden, though no law says any such thing. Trump has “terminated” the Defense Department secretary and heads of three other agencies and replaced them with loyalists determined to keep him in power.
» READ MORE: How Georgia’s women of color beat voter suppression and saved democracy | Will Bunch
Reportedly, Trump is considering pardons for himself and others, and is planning to remove the head of the FBI if not also the CIA. Besides impeding the peaceful transition of power, he is deliberately weakening national security to thwart Biden’s transition. If Trump can’t have his presidency, he does not want anyone else to have it either.
So do Trump’s actions amount to treason?
This is certainly lawlessness, a cavalier rejection of the rule of law. Some call what Trump is doing in refusing to recognize his defeat nothing less than treason. Under our Constitution, treason “shall consist” of “levying War against the” United States, “or in adhering to their Enemies.”
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There is no war, at least not yet. Trump’s proven himself to be the enemy of democracy, but it is highly unlikely that a federal indictment for treason will be forthcoming. Trump’s attorney general oversees all federal prosecutions, and an impeachment in the House, on that or any other basis, would go nowhere.
Preserving rule of law
If the courts and Congress won’t process treason charges and Trump ignores Biden’s widening lead in contested states as the tabulations are reaching their end, what other alternatives are there to ensure the preservation of our constitutional system of government?
If nothing else, the rule of law should stop Trump. He became president because he had done what federal law required him to do — tally 270 votes in the Electoral College. Biden seems to be on the same path to the presidency, some speculating he might reach the exact same number of electoral votes — 306 — that Trump won in 2016. With an Electoral College outcome declared in his favor, Biden may turn to the courts himself to secure the funding his transition requires, access to intelligence, and background checks for his cabinet and other appointments requiring Senate confirmation.
READ MORE: Trump’s campaign is challenging mail and provisional ballots at record rates in Philly and its suburbs
But lawsuits can take time, and Biden has little to spare. Nonetheless, Biden might try to secure a judicial ruling requiring Trump to recognize Biden as president-elect. Then what if Trump does not agree to abide by that decision, and what if Trump has help in bringing about the alternate reality — his winning — that he churlishly insists is fact?
Even worse for the country, Trump’s enablers within the administration, Congress, and the Republican Party march in lockstep to help him, even though their refusal to recognize the election’s outcome violates the law, defies reality, or both. Attorney General William Barr directed his Justice Department to investigate “substantial” allegations of voter fraud (almost all coming from Trump). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scolded Democrats for lecturing him on the importance of the president’s conceding to facilitate a peaceful transfer of power, and for trying to “steal” the election. Yet Trump and McConnell accept the results favoring Republicans' retention of control of the Senate in the same election, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promises a “smooth transition” — for Trump to his second term.
» READ MORE: Do Trump’s legal challenges have any chance of changing Pa.’s election results? A look at the suits he hopes can do it.
Pompeo and Trump’s press secretary are just two of many officials using official resources to help Trump’s never-ending campaign. Trump’s appointee heading the General Services Administration has refused to sign the paperwork authorizing the release of funding for the Biden transition and access to government intelligence. Against all precedent and the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, Trump wants to sabotage Biden’s national security team so it cannot be prepared on day one to take over. Meanwhile, Trump has moved loyalists into career civil service jobs, so they can become the deep state undermining Biden.
Trump has also authorized a series of lawsuits designed to delay certification of election results in several states Trump lost, and the voting in the Electoral College scheduled in December. But election officials across the country have found no voter fraud, including Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
He has done the same as president, flouting restrictions on self-dealing in government, ignoring laws barring the White House from being used for campaign activities, authorizing or permitting destruction of government documents even though federal law prohibits it, and raising money for legal defenses that he can plunder for personal purposes, too.
![[Image: JJSRDLGVBRCYVJD5SAKPUDJIAU.jpg]](https://www.inquirer.com/resizer/UdIiLG701huwk0KIxHYSj2rgNII=/1400x0/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/JJSRDLGVBRCYVJD5SAKPUDJIAU.jpg)
Why Biden will ultimately prevail
But there is good news for the preservation of law: The fact that Trump’s lawsuits are being tossed out across the country because his lawyers have no evidence to back claims of “illegal” votes bodes well for Biden to get a favorable ruling. What if Trump ignores it? With hopes of delaying the Electoral College vote in mind, Trump’s press secretary (not a campaign official) boasted that Trump’s filing contesting the outcome in Michigan had more than 200 pages of affidavits from witnesses swearing there was some kind of mischief requiring that Trump be declared the winner there. But election results usually only shift a few hundred votes at most. In Michigan he needs more than 100,000 votes to change the result, and in Pennsylvania over 40,000.
Trump’s court losses thus far portend that his challenges will fail, in all likelihood in time for the Electoral College vote in mid-December. If Biden wins there, he will have all the legitimacy the Constitution requires for him to become the 46th president of the United States.
READ MORE: Georgia launches statewide hand recount of presidential race
Those of us who live in the real world know that Trump’s days are numbered: He cannot get around the constitutional directive that a president’s term ends at noon on Jan. 20.
That is the law, even if Trump burns everything else down. Trump, who once used lawsuits to avoid paying bills, is now stuck with having to accept the outcomes of his own lawsuits, which will all likely come to naught.
Legal and political accountability await Trump, when the next duly elected president and his team take over Jan. 20, rebuild what Trump destroyed, investigate campaign infractions and Trump enablers' legal breaches, and restore confidence that the president and those who serve him are not above the law.
Michael Gerhardt is Burton Craige distinguished professor of jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina, served as special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee for the nominations of five of the nine Supreme Court justices, and is the author of several books, including the forthcoming “Lincoln’s Mentors: The Education of a Leader.”
Biden finally responds to Pompeo’s vow that Trump will serve second term
REPUBLICAN official destroys ALL of Trump’s fraud claims ON FOX NEWS
RE: Linh Tinh - LeThanhPhong - 2020-11-16
Biden’s IRS could finally give Trump’s tax returns to Democrats
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/16/biden-irs-trump-tax-returns-436494
Judges appear increasingly frustrated with Trump's legal claims about 2020 election - ABC News
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/judges-increasingly-frustrated-trumps-legal-claims-2020-election/story?id=74211479
--ooOoo--
Lợi dụng cơ hội đếm lại phiếu, Senator Lindsey Graham gián tiếp đề nghị với Ngoại Trưởng thuộc tiểu bang Georgia hãy vứt bỏ phiếu bầu.
Georgia secretary of state says Lindsey Graham implied he should try to throw away ballots
By Caroline Kelly, Manu Raju, Amara Walker and Sarah Fortinsky, CNN
Updated 11:04 PM EST, Mon November 16, 2020
(CNN)Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stood firm Monday on his account that Sen. Lindsey Graham had hinted that he should try to discard some ballots in Georgia, where a recount is underway after the state went for President-elect Joe Biden in the presidential election.
"He asked if the ballots could be matched back to the voters," Raffensperger told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" Monday evening. "And then he, I got the sense it implied that then you could throw those out for any, if you look at the counties with the highest frequent error of signatures. So that's the impression that I got."
He later added, "It was just an implication of, 'Look hard and see how many ballots you could throw out.' "
Raffensperger's comments come after he told The Washington Post on Monday that Graham had cast doubt on Georgia's signature-matching law in a conversation on Friday, and had also floated the possibility that biased poll workers could have counted ballots with inconsistent signatures.
Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also inquired if Raffensperger could discard all mail-in ballots from counties that had shown higher rates of unmatched signatures, the Republican secretary of state told the Post on Monday.
There has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and fraudulently altering a federal election vote tally is a federal crime.
Graham denied Raffensperger's claim on Monday, telling CNN that he had said he wanted to understand the process for verifying the signatures on mail-in ballots. He said President Donald Trump did not urge him to make the call.
Asked if he was trying to pressure the secretary of state to toss legal ballots, Graham said, "That's ridiculous."
"What I'm trying to find out was how do you verify signatures on mail-in ballots in these states that are the center of attention? So like when you mail in a ballot, you got to have some way to verify that the signature on the envelope actually matches the person who requested the ballot," Graham said. "It seems to me that Georgia has some protections that maybe other states don't have, where you go into the portal to get your ballot. But I thought it was a good conversation. I'm surprised to hear him verify it that way."
Graham added: "So they expanded mail-in voting, and how you verify the signatures to me is the big issue. If you're going to have mail-in voting, you've got to verify that the person who signed the envelope is also the person who requested the ballot."
Raffensperger told Blitzer that Georgia's election systems already require signature matches when voters request mail ballots and when completed ballots are returned to election systems. He also said the online absentee portal has a photo ID.
"We feel confident the election officials did their job," he said.
On Friday, CNN projected that Biden will win Georgia and its 16 electoral votes. Unofficial results put Biden ahead of Trump by about 14,000 votes, or about 0.3 percentage point. But due to the tight margin, state officials decided to use the preplanned audit process to recount every ballot in the presidential race.
At least six small counties in Georgia have finished their presidential recounts without finding any discrepancies. A seventh county, Floyd, reported that 2,600 uncounted ballots had been found during their recount -- the ballots hadn't been scanned when the county tallied its early vote. An investigation is underway but human error has been deemed responsible.
Experts say it would be nearly impossible for Trump to overcome his 14,000-vote deficit in a recount.
The audit process is expected to conclude in the coming days, and Raffensperger reiterated Monday that he plans to certify the official results by Friday, as required by state law.
"We want to make sure this vote is very accurate. We understand the national importance of this, and we're in the process of doing it," he told Blitzer on Monday. "The counters will be done by the 18th and we will certify this by the 20th."
The Republican spent part of his Sunday fact-checking Trump and pushing back against false claims of fraud in the presidential election and the hand recount ongoing in the state.
Raffensperger, among other things, defended the integrity of absentee ballots, signature verification, and the vote counting machines. He posted images of Trump's tweets that falsely claimed that mail-in voting "will lead to the most corrupt election in USA history" and result in "fraudulent ballots." Raffensperger responded that his team "secured and strengthened absentee ballots for the first time since 2005" by outlawing absentee ballot harvesting and also addressed the "disinformation about signature match," writing that "GBI trained elections officials match your signature twice before any vote is cast."
He also posted links to news articles debunking Trump's tweets, including one alleging the Dominion voting software used in Georgia for the presidential election "deleted" and "switched" millions of votes. He also wrote, "Dominion voting system. America owned. America. 'Merica. Not Venezuela," in a reference to conspiracy theories spread by Trump's lawyer, Rudy Guiliani.
Underscoring the contentious atmosphere between Raffensperger and fellow Republicans, he went after US Rep. Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican, in one post writing, "Failed candidate Doug Collins is a liar — but what's new?" Collins is leading the recount team for Trump in Georgia and has criticized Raffensperger's handling of the election.
CNN's Amara Walker and Jason Morris contributed to this report.
RE: Linh Tinh - LeThanhPhong - 2020-11-17
Trump aims to undermine Biden's legitimacy even as legal challenges fizzle
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/16/politics/trump-election-challenge-biden-legitimacy/index.html
By Pamela Brown, Kevin Liptak and Katelyn Polantz, CNN
Updated 10:42 PM EST, Mon November 16, 2020
(CNN)When President Donald Trump learned at the end of last week that his lawyers were dropping their lawsuit seeking a review of ballots in Arizona, the news caught him by surprise.
Summoning members of his team to the Oval Office, where he has been spending afternoons and evenings lately when not in the adjoining dining room watching television, Trump demanded to know why it appeared he was giving up a battle he fully intends to continue waging.
Even as his legal pathway to challenging Joe Biden's electoral victory becomes thinner by the day -- and as some of his senior-most aides begin signaling publicly that Biden will take office in January -- Trump has shown little indication he plans to back off his false claim that he won the election.
Instead of an actual attempt to locate more votes or even to reverse the election results, Trump's legal efforts appear designed instead to seed conspiracy theories among his conservative supporters, raise additional money, preserve power over the Republican Party and cast a pall of illegitimacy over Biden's tenure -- the same shadow Trump has long complained darkened his own time in office.
Whether any of those outcomes is his express goal remains unclear.
Many around him believe a dejected President is simply making an elaborate attempt at processing his trauma rather than executing a master plan. Asked last week how long his efforts might last, Trump suggested "two weeks, three weeks" -- though few believe he will ever acknowledge outright that he lost the election to Biden.
Within the President's circle, two camps had already begun emerging prior to Thursday's meeting in the Oval Office, which included Vice President Mike Pence.
Senior aides, including at the White House and on his campaign, had aligned with Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter Ivanka in warning the President that his legal efforts amounted to a long shot that was exceedingly unlikely to change the outcome of the election.
But Trump was also hearing from his longtime lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump that the fight should continue and they could still win. They have argued the President owes it to his supporters -- including the thousands who marched in Washington this weekend -- to at least maintain the appearance that he is still in the fight. And they have floated ever-more-conspiratorial theories that could extend the fight.
The split came to a head during the Oval Office huddle, a session people briefed on the matter described as contentious even by Trump administration standards. At one point, Giuliani -- who was patched in on speaker phone -- called the Trump campaign lawyers liars for telling the President his odds of changing the outcome of the election were slim.
On the call, Justin Clark, the President's deputy campaign manager, fired back. "F***ing asshole," Clark labeled the former New York City mayor, whose involvement in Trump's post-election legal efforts has caused anger and exasperation among other advisers.
Clark declined to comment to CNN.
By the end of the week, Trump had made clear whose side he was taking. Giuliani is now spearheading "the legal effort to defend OUR RIGHT to FREE and FAIR ELECTIONS," Trump declared on Twitter.
Throughout the weekend, the President issued tweet after tweet using lies to question the election results, and quickly reversed what had seemed like an inadvertent nod to Biden's victory.
"I concede NOTHING!" he blared on Sunday.
Real-world consequences
Trump's refusal to concede has had widespread consequences, from his successor's inability to access federal money to the spread of new conspiracy theories among his hard-core supporters.
But the extension of his reelection fight has also provided new cause for his campaign and the Republican National Committee to bombard supporters with requests for funds, and has laid bare the strength of Trump's grip on Republican lawmakers, most of whom continue refusing to acknowledge his loss.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was silent Monday walking onto the Senate floor when questioned by CNN if he agreed with Trump's false claim, made earlier on Twitter, that he "won the election."
While staffers inside the White House describe existing in a state of purgatory -- caught between a boss who refuses to admit defeat and the stark reality they'll be out of work in a matter of months -- Trump himself has only seen his post-presidency prospects become clearer, including the potential for launching a new media venture or the immediate announcement of a 2024 bid, both of which he's discussed in private over the past week.
Some Republicans view the President's attempts at contesting the election as a way for him to continue stoking his supporters and holding sway over a fiercely loyal and reliable bloc of voters, whether he decides to run for president again in four years or not. By maintaining the falsehood the election was stolen from him, Trump is able to continue wielding power over the party that a losing candidate -- or at least a candidate who admitted losing -- could not.
Crowds that gathered in Washington and other cities this weekend to protest the election results only seemed to lend fuel to the President's desire to keep fighting -- or at least to maintain the image that he wasn't defeated. After passing through the crowd in his motorcade on the way to his golf club in Virginia, Trump phoned his social media adviser Dan Scavino to marvel at the sight.
Dan Eberhart, an Arizona-based energy executive and a Republican donor, said he's been invited to the Trump campaign's daily surrogate calls, during which campaign officials seek to explain the recount and legal strategy and "keep hope alive." But he listens in only every other day or so.
Trump's reluctance to concede, Eberhart said, was becoming tiresome. "I'm kind of over it," he said. "I view the Trump world as a melting ice cube at the moment."
No sign of backing down
At the start of last week, White House officials and presidential allies believed the President was simply demonstrating his fighting spirit as he steadfastly refused to concede and ordered up legal challenges in several states. Many assumed -- perhaps naively -- that Trump would eventually allow a transition to occur, once a recount in Georgia concluded and other states certified their results.
Now people close to the President have expressed concern that he is buying into Giuliani's false claims that his legal efforts can change the election's outcome. He has shown no signs of backing down, even as those around him continue indicating that the end is near. Those allies have expressed worry that a sizable faction of the country thinks the election was stolen from Trump and that Biden isn't receiving national security briefings.
Giuliani did not respond to multiple attempts by CNN to reach him on Monday.
"If he had any character, I would say it's perfectly in character. It displeases him when reality doesn't conform to the image that he has of it," said John Bolton, the President's former national security adviser, on ABC. "I do not expect him to go graciously. I do expect him to go. But I think pretty soon we'll get the stab in the back theories. We'll get the dark conspiracy theories continued. And he will make life as difficult as he can for the incoming Biden administration."
Bolton departed the White House on bad terms with Trump. But even his successor on Monday seemed to acknowledge the likelihood that Trump would no longer be President come January 20.
"If there is a new administration, they deserve some time to come in and implement their policies," national security adviser Robert O'Brien said in a discussion at the Soufan Center's Global Security Forum that aired on Monday. "If the Biden-Harris ticket is determined to be the winner -- and obviously things look that way now -- we'll have a very professional transition from the National Security Council."
Trump has pinned his strategy around thin legal long shots in Michigan and Pennsylvania, but his campaign is already taking its last gasps in court in those cases, having failed repeatedly and seen its legal avenues shut off. In many of the places where Trump is contesting results, there aren't enough contestable votes to make a dent in the results as states near the deadlines for certification.
At least two small counties in Georgia finished their presidential recounts without finding any discrepancies. The audit process is expected to finish in the coming days, and Georgia's secretary of state says he plans to certify the official results by Friday, as required by state law.
A recount in Wisconsin, which the Trump campaign has said it will request, would cost them nearly $8 million, the state said on Monday, since the party requesting the recount must pay for it.
The Trump campaign is still mounting some appeals, but those are also unlikely to succeed, especially as the battleground states' deadlines to certify their election results approach in the coming weeks. The Electoral College is set to meet in mid-December, formalizing Biden's win.
A hearing is scheduled in a federal court in Pennsylvania on Tuesday about whether the Trump campaign's case there should be dismissed. That case initially was the boldest attempt by Trump to throw out or block the certification of votes in Pennsylvania, but Trump campaign lawyers cut back the case substantially over the weekend, after an appeals court shut down their ability to try to claim some election administration unfair under the Constitution. The case now focuses on the alleged unfairness of how counties in Pennsylvania handled absentee voting.
That has left Trump to try to push a baseless claim about election software produced by the firm Dominion, a conspiracy theory US government officials and Dominion have directly refuted but which Trump remains fixated upon, according to people familiar with the matter.
Several court cases from Trump allies that alleged voter fraud have also fallen apart, with four cases from voters in Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania dropped on Monday. The lawsuits had promised "expert reports" that might reveal fraud related to absentee ballots, but James Bopp Jr., a well-known conservative lawyer working on the suits on behalf of the voters, told CNN his team couldn't make the reports because they didn't have access to confidential lists of voters.
Nursing old grievances
Legal efforts aside, the President's refusal to concede stems in part from his perceived grievance that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama undermined his own presidency by saying Russia interfered in the 2016 election and could have impacted the outcome, people around him say.
Trump continues to hold a grudge against those he claims undercut his election by pointing to Russian interference efforts, and has suggested it is fair game to not recognize Biden as the President-elect, even though Clinton conceded on election night in 2016 and the Trump transition was able to begin immediately.
Trump is also continuing to process the emotional scars of losing to a candidate he repeatedly said during the campaign was an unworthy opponent whose win would amount to humiliation.
"The most important thing we need to keep in mind is that Donald is in a unique position for him," said Mary Trump, the President's niece who wrote a damning account of his family life. "He's never in his life been in a situation that he can't get out of either through using somebody else's money, using connections, using power. And not only is he in a unique position, he's in a position of being a loser, which in my family, certainly, as far as my grandfather was concerned, was the worst possible thing you could be."
CNN's Fredreka Schouten contributed to this report.
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