(Note: This article is categorized as an Op-Ed. As such, all opinions are that of staff writer Kelsey Byrd’s, and do not reflect the ideas or thoughts of Memorial High School nor the MHS Journalism staff team as a whole.)

“I concede NOTHING!” No, those aren’t the words of a pouty five-year old upon being instructed to shake the winning team’s hand after a fair game. Or perhaps it is, but it also happens to be one of the latest tweets from President Donald Trump as his rage fest continues nearly fourteen days after Biden was announced to be the next president-elect. Surprising absolutely no one, Trump has taken to his loss about as well as to be expected from a man who has proven to have the temperament of a midnight-fed gremlin, the maturity of a particularly pouty toddler and the graciousness of a one-legged frog. However while any temper tantrums or GOP backing is unlikely to sway the incredibly decisive results, this blatant disregard for democracy does have the potential to wreak immense havoc on the integrity of American politics.

The fuming Trump machine kicked into gears as early as November 4, when a reliably impatient President held a press conference to declare a resoundingly premature victory. “We are getting ready to win this election,” The Don said despite several key states not having been called at that point. “Frankly we did win this election. We did win this election.” The lies continued with Trump’s baseless and ambiguous claims about a speculative “they” who were conspiring against him. “And a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people [Trump voters]  and we won’t stand for it. We will not stand for it,” Trump vowed. Characteristic of a defiant sore loser, Trump promised to tattle on the scheming and unidentified sneaks who dared obey the will of the American people, seething “This is a major fraud in our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”

The Biden-Harris ticket, while carrying out with all of their transitional plans, has underlined the potentially grave consequences of this shambled transition of power. For while the Trump team continues its pathetic unwillingness to share data with the upcoming administration, including critical information regarding COVID which is growing exponentially, Biden didn’t hesitate to blast the current incumbent. “If we have to wait until Jan. 20 to start that planning, it puts us behind,” future President Biden explained, “More people may die if we don’t coordinate.” This sentiment was echoed from experts around the nation, including the American Medical Association (AMA), American Hospital Association (AHA), and American Nurses Association (ANA), all of which joined in writing a joint letter to Trump. “As providers of care for all Americans, we see the suffering that is occurring in our communities due to Covid-19…It is from this frontline human perspective that we urge you to share critical data and information as soon as possible.” For his part, Trump has yet to respond to these criticisms, or the climbing COVID deaths in recent weeks. After all, it might interrupt his very busy schedule of obsessively retweeting right-wing media outlets and spamming the website with his trademark, incoherent late-night rambles. 

Not only does Trump’s downright refusal to acknowledge Biden and Harris as the future leaders of our country hurt COVID numbers, it also has deeply troubling implications for future elections. For while Trump screeched fraud without any evidence, as long as the GOP displays hesitancy to dismiss these baseless accusations, turmoil in this already divided country will only grow. And while some Republicans have come out to give their congratulations to Biden-Harris (former Governor of Ohio John Kasich and Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse among them) the silence of other senators in the party, including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, speaks volumes. It tells the group of restless Trump supporters that they should continue to fight for an unproven cause, that any results they don’t like can and should be contested. 

These last couple of months of a Trump presidency are reflective of Trump’s whole term- spiteful, full of lies and seemingly endless. The best that people can do is remind themselves that the truth is checkable, all it takes is a visit to FactCheck to see what is real and what’s not. In the case of Trump though, it seems to be that the arrow has been stuck on false for the past three years.