President Trump's scramble to postpone the inevitable by desecrating democracy failed for good Monday afternoon.
The General Services Administration formally ascertained that President-elect Joe Biden is the "apparent winner" of the Nov. 3 election, allowing the government's essential role in the peaceful transfer of power to begin after a delay of nearly three weeks. The agency's head, Trump appointee Emily Murphy, told Biden of the decision right after Trump's effort to subvert the vote failed in Michigan.
The state's normally obscure Board of State Canvassers voted 3-0, with one of the two Republicans abstaining, to formalize election results showing Biden carried the state by 154,000 votes. The action was a devastating setback for Trump's already almost-impossible effort to reverse his re-election loss. It left unblemished, as a tangibly comprehensive failure, the the president's campaign to poison the nation's confidence in the election.
More than 30 lawsuits, in six of the states he lost, have not produced a single piece of evidence of election fraud that a judge has been willing to accept — most recently Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani's baseless effort to get the results in Pennsylvania tossed out, which a federal judge dismissed in scathing terms Saturday night.
"This cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state," Judge Matthew Brann, a Republican, wrote. "Our people, laws, and institutions demand more."
If anything, the litigation ironically ends up supporting the exact opposite argument Trump is making: The election was not marred by any serious irregularities.
To be sure, the president's steady stream of Twitter disinformation has persuaded a significant share of the electorate — almost all of them his Republican base — that widespread fraud has made the results not credible. And the GOP leadership in Congress and most state governments has enabled though its collective silence this unprecedented presidential campaign to sully the foundation of the American republic
The margin of Biden's victory is 2.8 percentage points in Michigan. But The Republican National Committee and the state GOP wanted the canvassing board to postpone a lockdown of the result for two weeks to allow for an inquiry into alleged problems in Detroit. (The state Democratic Party concedes there are irregularities in a few precincts, but they involve no more than 450 votes.)
The consensus view of the state's election law was that, since Wayne County (which includes Detroit) and all the other 82 counties have certified their results, the state board had no discretion but to sign off on the totals. If the board had declined to do that right away, the Michigan Supreme Court would presumably have ordered it to do so as soon as it was asked to intervene.
Any suspense was ended when one GOP member, Aaron Van Langevelde, opened the meeting by saying "we've got a duty to do this" and certify the count — but only after hundreds of public comments were heard first.
Any other decision would have marked one of the president's few victories in the three weeks since Election Day — and fomented new talk about a constitutional crisis. But it's still highly likely such an impasse would have been short-lived. A standoff, had it lasted long enough, would theoretically have put the fate of the state's 16 electoral votes in the hands of the GOP-controlled Legislature. Its two top leaders were summoned to the White House on Friday, and later spent the night at the Trump International Hotel, but after meeting the president they said they know of now reason why the outcome in their stature should not be Biden winning.
Even under the extraordinarily unlikely scenario in which Michigan's electoral votes were put in limbo or even handed to Trump, Biden would still have 290, or 20 more than he needs.
And any Trump effort to throw into chaos more states that Biden won narrowly would have few options. Democratic Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar is set to certify the results as soon as Monday afternoon in Pennsylvania: Biden secured its 20 electoral votes by a margin of 81,000 popular votes. Nevada plans to do so Tuesday: Biden won its 6 electoral votes by more than 33,000. Arizona and Wisconsin are on course to certify their results next week.
By law, presidential results certified by Dec. 8 are immune from additional challenges — and many senior Republicans have signaled they are willing to wait until then before declaring the election is over and Biden won.
GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania did so Saturday night, after Trump's lawsuit was dismissed. "To ensure that he is remembered for these outstanding accomplishments, and to help unify our country, President Trump should accept the outcome of the election and facilitate the presidential transition process," he said.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.