Those of us who live in Canada have had a ringside seat to a really historic election.
It was a close election with a record number of voters casting their ballots.
Joe Biden has the most electoral votes.
There were a half dozen states where the votes were still being counted but as of my writing, this column Biden seems to have won all of them except North Carolina.
So he has well over the 270 electoral votes he needed to win.
Trump is refusing to concede that he has lost the election.
He is accusing the Democrats of election fraud without providing any evidence that there is fraud.
He has initiated legal challenges in many states and most of the time the judges have thrown out the lawsuits.
There are Republicans that are supporting his legal challenges and others who are saying that it is time for him to concede and congratulate Joe Biden on his win.
Two well known Republicans say it is time for Trump to admit defeat, they are Chris Cristy, former governor of New Jersey and Senator Mitt Romney, presidential candidate in 2012.
He can dig in his heals all he wants but he has no chance of changing the outcome.
Instead of being a statesman, he is acting like a typical sore loser.
That and his continuous disruptions will be his legacy.
Donald Trump was probably the most eccentric president that the USA has ever had to put up with.
It seemed that he was never happy unless he had a controversy going on somewhere.
For example, he was hell-bound that there had to be a wall built to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the USA from Mexico or he insisted on renegotiating the NAFTA trade deal.
In his words, it was the worst trade deal that the US had ever made.
He complained about how much other members of NATO were contributing.
He managed to get countries all over the world upset with him, especially when he implemented tariffs to slow imports and cancelled agreements made by previous administrations.
In typical bully fashion, he especially seemed to enjoy picking on Canada as if Canada was an economic threat to the US.
He was forever hiring and firing officials in his administration.
In 2016 when he was campaigning to become president, his slogan was that he wanted to make America Great Again.
Well, he did get the American economy working on all cylinders again.
The Obama administration had millions of people on food stamps.
The Trump administration somehow managed rather quickly to get these people back to work.
I think the real problem with Trump’s management style is that he was ego-driven and his real priority was to make “Trump Great” rather than make America Great.
Now he is fighting tooth and nail to remain as the president of the USA. He just cannot accept the fact that he lost the election fair and square.
I am convinced he has no one to blame but himself. He does not seem capable of accepting reality.
He has continually downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic instead of showing some leadership to control it.
In his mind, by acknowledging that COVID was an issue and dealing with it he would be damaging the economy.
Well, the economy got damaged anyway.
He is vindictive and seems to have psychopathic tendencies by demonstrating no empathy or compassion for the millions of infected people and hundreds of deaths in his country.
A Joe Biden administration will be much more predictable for Canada to work with but unless the Canadian and some provincial governments can convince him to change his mind on cancelling the XL Pipeline, he will do severe damage to our economy.
He will also cost his economy thousands of jobs.
Progressive governments do not have a record of developing a strong economy for their country.
by Herman Schwenk
