An all-star cast of national security officials from Republican and Democratic administrations on Monday pulled out what they hope will be the "Trump card" that compels the incumbent president to concede the election and permit his successor to start receiving intelligence briefings and build his team of experts.
Their ace-in-the-hole argument: Remember Sept. 11.
But the pleas from the likes of two former secretaries of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano and Michael Chertoff, continued to fall on deaf ears. On the 10th day since election results made it clear he had lost, President Trump was back on Twitter claiming "I won the Election."
Amid his flurry of six tweets pressing various conspiracy theories, Trump's lawyers appeared to abandon their only legal argument involving enough votes to potentially upend the outcome in one of the states decisive in his defeat. In this case, Pennsylvania.
So far, Trump has not allowed President-elect Joe Biden to begin receiving the daily intelligence briefings that are a key part of keeping track of threats to the United States. And the presidential appointee in charge of the General Services Administration, Emily Murphy, has refused to sign the document that would free up money and office space for the Biden transition team.
At a news conference sponsored by a coalition of democracy reform groups, Napolitano, a Democrat, and Chertoff, a Republican, each cited the final report by the 9/11 Commission, which said the disputed 2000 presidential election between Al Gore and George W. Bush caused a delay in Bush nominating and winning Senate confirmation for top national security positions. And that in turn led to a "disruption of national security policymaking" that contributed to the government's inability to prevent the al-Qaida attacks.
Former GOP Gov. Tom Kean of New Jersey, who was chairman of the 9/11 Commission, noted that the report recommended a smooth transition between administrations. He called it "criminal" that Biden was not able to receive the daily intelligence briefing.
The officials were convened by a pair of coalitions assembled to push for an orderly end to the election, the National Task Force on Election Crises and Citizens for a Strong Democracy, along with the democracy reform group, Issue One. (It owns, but is journalistically walled off from, The Fulcrum.)
But the panelists conceded that there was not much that could be done, beyond encouraging public pressure, to force the transition process ahead.
Hope for progress toward a belated but orderly transfer of power emerged like a tiny sapling in a fire-ravaged forest on Sunday, when Trump seemed to offer the cutest possible concession and then took it back.
Without using Biden's name, Trump said that "He won" as part of a tweet making more baseless claims about a "rigged" election. But when his comments were widely interpreted as his first public acknowledgment of the election's real result, Trump quickly reversed course.
By Monday, Trump was back to claiming victory on Twitter and continuing to claim fraud. One sample: "The Radical Left Democrats, working with their partner, the Fake News Media, are trying to STEAL this Election. We won't let them!"
Many of his tweets included Twitter-imposed disclaimers noting that his statements were in dispute.
On the legal front, his campaign on Sunday dropped a major part of a federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Pennsylvania. His attorneys filed a revised lawsuit removing charges that election officials violated the campaign's rights by limiting the ability of its observers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to watch the votes being counted. Their hope was to get 682,479 tabulated votes tossed out as a result.
What remains of the lawsuit, even if true, is not going to cause the result of the Pennsylvania race to change, Democratic officials said. But Trump campaign officials said their argument could still result in several hundred thousand votes being disallowed. Biden carried its 20 electoral votes by 56,000 votes.
The Trump team already has piled up a string of additional losses in its attempts to use the courts to reverse the election outcome or at least sow doubt about the process.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.