Trump loyalists rally as President runs out of legal options

On Saturday thousands of Trump supporters gathered in Washington to express their anger at the Supreme Court and to show their continuing solidarity with their beleaguered and furious President. America’s highest court tossed aside the last viable legal challenge to the presidential election outcome. It was the most far-fetched and audacious legal claim for a generation. If it had succeeded it would have been the legal equivalent of a wrecking ball on American democracy. In effect, Texas and 17 other US states had asked the Supreme Court to overturn the results in the four battleground states that swung the election to Joe Biden.

In one sentence of legal language, the Justices blew apart the election challenge: "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections." Combined with an earlier Court ruling dismissing a complaint by Republicans in Pennsylvania, it represents the end of the legal battle over the 2020 election - and the end of the road for President Trump. The President issued an simple, eleven-word denunciation-by-tweet just before midnight. Remember, this is a Court with a 6-3 conservative majority and a third of the Justices have been appointed by him.

Joe Biden will now be confirmed as President-elect when delegates from the Electoral College meet next week. Trump and his allies have now lost 57 of the 58 court cases they have pursued in challenging the election result. Astonishingly, in an angry response to the latest Supreme Court decision, Texas Republicans appeared to suggest seceding from the US.

That anger and frustration carried over onto the streets of Washington on Saturday where the President’s supporters rallied in Freedom Plaza, a few hundred metres from the White House, before marching on the Supreme Court. Amid the loyalists were several hundred far-right nationalists, including the Proud Boys, several of them flashing white supremacist hand signals. The President flew over them aboard Marine One, a low fly past with its own not-so-subtle message. He has even tweeted he would be part of the rally.

Donald Trump last night took the chance to hail America’s scientific achievement in producing the coronavirus vaccine.  He called it a US medical miracle, and didn’t even mention the role of the German company BioNTech, with its Turkish heritage. 

The US medical regulator has now approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for emergency use in the US, the same vaccine that is now being deployed in the UK.It’s desperately needed as America’s winter surge gathers pace.  3,000 Americans are dying every day from the virus, and there have now been nearly 16 million cases.President Trump declared that the “vaccine will vanquish the virus and return life back to normal,” adding that the “virus may have begun in China but it is ending right here in America.”So America this weekend is witnessing the end of the election drama, and the start of one of the great logistical challenges in modern US history - vaccinating tens of millions of vulnerable and elderly Americans in a race against time as the holidays approach and the toll soars.