The Washington Post on Sunday claimed President Donald Trump has “bucked tradition” by continuing to act as president even though the media declared Democratic nominee Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election.
If Trump’s legal action fails to stop the election from being called for Biden, then the former vice president will assume office on January 20, 2021. Until then, Trump is still the president, just as President Barack Obama was still the president after the 2016 election until January 20, 2017. But in a Post article on Sunday, three reporters bemoaned the fact that Trump is still acting as the president.
“Over the final six weeks of Trump’s presidency, the administration has no plans to wind down its efforts to remake federal policies and even the government bureaucracy itself, aides said, despite the pending handoff to the incoming Democratic administration. The whirlwind of activities has bucked tradition of past presidents who have deferred on major policy actions during the lame-duck period, and in some cases, the moves could make it procedurally or politically challenging for Biden to fulfill campaign pledges to unwind the Trump team’s actions,” the Post wrote.
But as journalist Byron York pointed out, the Post’s claim that Trump “bucked tradition” is false, as Obama also pursued major policy actions in the final weeks of his presidency.
Something about this WP report just didn’t ring true. Did lame-duck Obama, in his final days, defer to the incoming Trump administration? No, he didn’t. Left is WP today; right is NYT 12/31/16: https://t.co/rLDfGfifcI and https://t.co/M3DK6ZFuJu pic.twitter.com/rdSGldtsQi
— Byron York (@ByronYork) December 7, 2020
On December 31, 2016, The New York Times reported that while Obama publicly said he would ensure a smooth transition of power, behind the scenes he “intended to set up as many policy and ideological roadblocks as possible before Mr. Trump takes his oath of office on Jan. 20.”
“With less than three weeks before the Obama White House is history, making way for a new administration with radically different priorities, the president is using every power at his disposal to cement his legacy and establish his priorities as the law of the land,” the Times reported. “He has banned oil drilling off the Atlantic coast, established new environmental monuments, protected funding for Planned Parenthood clinics, ordered the transfer of detainees from Guantánamo Bay, criticized Israeli settlements and punished Russia for interfering in the recent elections through cyberattacks.”
Even though many of those policies could be undone, the Times explained, but every one would require Trump “to overcome one more legislative or procedural hurdle as he seeks to change direction in Washington.”
The situation is reminiscent of one reported last week by The Daily Wire. The Post announced that it was asking three questions to every Republican in Congress: “Who won the presidential election?” “Do you support or oppose Donald Trump’s continuing efforts to claim victory?” and “If Joe Biden wins a majority in the electoral college, will you accept him as the legitimately elected president of the United States?”
As The Daily Wire reported, the Post didn’t ask similar questions in 2016 when Democrats and Hillary Clinton questioned the reality of Trump’s election win. To this day, Clinton complains that the election was stolen from her.