President
Donald Trump flexed the power of his office Tuesday to tarnish America's free and fair election, sacking the official who declared the vote the most secure in US history, even as more of his false claims of massive fraud were exposed as baseless in court. The revenge firing, the President's latest assault against the infrastructure of US democracy, comes as he refuses to accept his defeat and to begin the process of transitioning power to President-elect Joe Biden -- an impasse that is especially dangerous amid a worsening pandemic.
Trump wrote that he terminated Chris Krebs, a senior Department of Homeland Security official, for contradicting his own baseless allegations of irregularities. The President, his campaign and political allies have made multiple efforts, which started well before the election, to falsely argue that he was cheated out of a second term. His effort appears motivated by a desire to explain away his clear defeat by the former vice president but is also part of a pattern of behavior designed to discredit Biden's presidency and to enshrine national divides that he consciously widened as a tool of power.
