Donald Trump has been trying everything under the sun to cling to power after being soundly defeated by Joe Biden in both the popular and electoral vote. The Electoral College on Monday began voting to recognize Joe Biden as the President-elect officially. All 538 electors are meeting in their respective states to cast their votes for president based on the election results that were recently certified by all 50 states and Washington, D.C. It is over, but Trump refuses to accept that he was defeated — by a landslide.
This is dangerous and tears away at our democracy. And violence has erupted, but Trump won’t stop his futile attempts at overturning the election results. It’s mentally fucking exhausting, and Americans are already going through several national crises.
Rep. Paul Mitchell, a Michigan Republican, has had it, too. Mitchell appeared on CNN and clearly wasn’t happy with the president’s behavior. He’s not pleased with his party’s unwillingness to accept Biden as the President-elect, either. Mitchell voted for Trump, but he’s not going to support the president’s attempted coup.
“This party has to stand up for democracy first, for our Constitution first, and not political considerations,” Mitchell told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “The Lead.”
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“Not to protect a candidate. Not simply for raw political power, and that’s what I feel is going on, and I’ve had enough,” he continued.
Mitchell is abandoning the Republican party to become an Independent.
Watch:
Watch GOP Rep. Paul Mitchell, who voted for Trump, announce he is leaving the Republican Party and becoming an Independent:pic.twitter.com/Ym6rvaA71a
— The Recount (@therecount) December 14, 2020
In a letter addressed to Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Mitchell detailed his decision to leave his party despite years of support.
It is “unacceptable for political candidates to treat our election system as though we are a third-world nation and incite distrust of something so basic as the sanctity of our vote,” Mitchell wrote in his letter.
Mitchell went on to note that Republican leaders had been “collectively sit(ting) back and tolerat(ing) unfounded conspiracy theories and ‘stop the steal’ rallies without speaking out for our electoral process,” and the last straw for him appeared to be “the leadership of the Republican Party and our Republican Conference in the House actively participating in at least some of those efforts.”
He said pretty much the same thing on CNN.
“Anybody that gets in politics has to be willing to accept winning and losing with some level of grace or maturity,” he said. “I’ve done both. Losing is brutal, it’s personal, it hurts, but if you’re not willing to accept that, you should not be in political leadership.”
“This country needs it desperately and, unfortunately, we haven’t seen it demonstrated as much as we should,” he added.
It is over. Biden is well over the 270 electoral votes needed to become president-elect, and the electors aren’t finished yet.
Featured image via screen capture
