Donald Trump defiant in face of presidential election loss, so what next?
After a weekend of celebrations and political passion, the question for the coming week is whether President Donald Trump will concede. Can he possibly sustain the position that he can win a legal battle and overturn the election outcome?
The chances of Trump winning in court, with no credible evidence of significant fraud nearly a week after Election Day, is minuscule.Whatever Trump’s ultra-loyalists might claim, the election is over. Joe Biden is the president-elect. No litigation is going to change that reality.
The President has kept largely out of sight despite a flurry of defiant tweets, though he was glimpsed on Sunday evening, appearing optimistic on his way back from the golf course.Melania Trump is rumoured to have suggested to her husband that he quits with dignity.
Her desire to leave the hostile environment of Washington, and the pressures of the White House, is well known.Although she did appear to be supporting her husband with a cryptic tweet about the election.
The President has a diminishing number of allies.
It’s true that some figures, like Senator Mitch McConnell, have kept silent.
But other top Republican names have now broken ranks, most notably George W Bush, the only living former Republican President. He has congratulated Joe Biden and accepted that the Democrats have indeed won the election.
The likelihood of an intervention by Melania, or by Republicans in the Senate and the House, is growing by the hour.Meanwhile, Joe Biden's strategy is to move forward rapidly, ignoring the President's refusal to concede, focusing instead on pursuing a governing agenda with his running mate Senator Kamala Harris.
Her historic role as the first female and black candidate to be elected Vice President is a powerful symbol of hope and renewal for many Americans.
Behind the barricades and fences at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the President is cutting an increasingly lonely figure.As liberal Americans continue to celebrate, and even call for his arrest and a reckoning, the pressure will mount for Donald Trump to accept defeat.
By mid-week, the pressure may be impossible to resist.
But even then there will be 70 days left before he has to vacate the residence and hand the White House keys to the man he has derided as sleepy, corrupt, and the "weakest candidate in American political history".