By Nikhila Natarajan
New York, Nov 8 (IANS): "We have a quarter million dead Americans because of the incompetence of this fool," is how a Republican who turned against Donald Trump and led a powerful dark-satire digital campaign against the incumbent president reacted to Joe Biden's victory over Trump in the US 2020 election.
As celebrations break out across America in the middle of a pandemic, there's another party in town: For every Donald Trump tweet and statement, there's an equal and opposite one coming thick and fast on a historic day.
The most biting smackdowns are based on Trump's claims that the election was "rigged" and that he will fight the results.
Today, the conservative operatives who launched The Lincoln Project because they thought Democrats lacked the killer instinct to take out Trump tore into the last four years of Trumpism.
As Biden and Harris supporters burst into the streets and celebrated with singing and dancing, Steve Schmidt, the co-founder of The Lincoln Project reacted to Trump's loss, on news television. Schmidt's remarks are, in effect, a curation of what we're hearing on the streets of the United States, among those who are not disputing the results. Here are Schmidt's remarks, verbatim:
"When you look at all these people...look, democracy is fuelled by faith and belief in the legitimacy of the system. And Donald Trump has done everything he could possibly do to pollute faith and belief in the American system. It's like we are breaking through the devil here, the American people have fired the most corrupt, the most indecent, the most incompetent president in American history. The most lethal president in American history has been removed from power. The great miracle of this country is the uninterrupted peaceful transition of power that has gone on.
"Since 1797, you think about the first president to be defeated in office - John Adams in a very close election, he left the White House, Donald Trump will leave the White House, Joe Biden will swear the 35 word oath at noon on January 20, and American democracy will be renewed. The hinge of history will swing out and a new chapter of the American story will begin. The possibilities for our future are great. Our dreams are as big as our country. And we're going to have a good man and a decent man who has met his moment, who has fulfilled his destiny.
"Someone we've known for a long time but we see differently today. We see the American leader that we need in a time of catastrophe and crisis for the country. There are hard days ahead. This will be a terribly deadly winner with COVID. We will see two months of chaos and institutional vandalism from Trump. But it's all coming to an end. And the Trump family has earned its ignominy. They have debased the White House, they've done incalculable damage to this country. But the hours of their ability to do damage are coming to a fast end."