The Concessions to Trump: Harris and Biden Congratulate the President-Elect, Promising a Peaceful Transition to the Man They Called a Fascist

Full of well wishes, Vice President Harris and President Biden are promising a smooth transfer of power to President Trump. It’s the right thing to do, of course. Yet what a dizzying reversal after tarring Trump as a “threat to democracy” and a Nazi. Those attacks have reduced to tears many Democrats who believed them, calling for a future free of such fearmongering. “I spoke with President-elect Trump,” Ms. Harris said in her concession speech Wednesday, “and congratulated him on his victory.” By using the title her opponent had earned, and smiling, she signaled a 180-degree turn from the campaign. She added that she’d told Trump that “we” — she and Mr. Biden — “will help him and his team with their transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.” A voter waking up from a three-year coma to catch Ms. Harris’s speech would be left thinking that her campaign had been the most amiable affair in American history, one that put the people and national interest first. Yet those of us who lived through it know different — and many have the emotional memory to prove it. For years, Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden, along with their surrogates in public and the press, painted pictures of a dystopian America under Trump. He would end democracy, they alleged. Yet this is the same man who, in the space of 24 hours, they now congratulate and treat like an ordinary candidate. Ms. Harris might have taken the same high road as her concession two weeks ago. At a town hall, she was asked if she thought Trump was a fascist. She chose to reply, “I do.” In remarks on October 23 from the vice-presidential residence at Washington D.C., she touted allegations by Trump’s disgruntled former chief of staff, General John Kelly, whom she quoted as writing that Trump “certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist.” It was “deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler,” Ms. Harris said of General Kelly’s claim that Trump pined for “generals like Hitler.” Although others present say Trump made no such statement, Ms. Harris called it “further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is.” Trump, Ms. Harris warned, would “use the military as his personal militia to carry out his personal and political vendettas.'” Imagine that days later, she congratulates this same individual and promises to help him take the reins of power. Nor was that remark a one-off. Politico reported in December that the Biden-Harris campaign had made comparing Mr. Trump to Adolf Hitler “routine.” A graphic that Biden-Harris HQ — now KamalaHQ — posted on X in December bears the title “Trump Parrots Hitler.” Viewed 1.4 million times, it pictures both men under the ominous phrase “this is not a coincidence.” As I wrote for the Sun in January, the post includes “quotes cobbled together from single words or short phrases” out of context. This tactic, I said, set up President Biden for a Hobson’s Choice if Trump won, as he now has.The options I saw for Mr. Biden were a “humiliating retreat” to “repudiate all the Hitler barbs as … ‘malarky’” or refusing “to surrender the White House to a man he believes would be” an American Nazi. The president, though, found a third way: Ignoring the past. He called Trump to offer congratulations and invited him to the White House. The president-elect accepted. At that meeting, expect Mr. Biden to be amiable and to grin. Expect Trump to respond in kind. Both will feel they’ve done something to unify the nation; Americans will applaud. Forgotten will be the people who swallowed four years of poisonous propaganda that Trump planned to use “Mein Kampf” as a blueprint for governing and steal their right to vote. You can see those taken in by the Nazi allegations across social media, sobbing and screaming over Trump’s victory. Whether one agrees with their politics or not, these are fellow citizens driven to the edge of sanity not just by standard negative campaigning, but the exploitation of World War II’s greatest villain for political gain. Americans deserve campaigns about issues, where instead of being routine, candidates know that invoking Hitler will damage them more than their opponents. Letting Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris move on as if they never exploited the horrors of Nazi Germany may be good for the “healing” Trump called for in his victory speech. It would be better, though, to call them out and denazify our politics, so future campaigns are as amiable as Ms. Harris’s concession speech.

The Concessions to Trump: Harris and Biden Congratulate the President-Elect, Promising a Peaceful Transition to the Man They Called a Fascist

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