So, Is This Tweet Trump’s Concession?

More than a month has passed since Joe Biden won the U.S. presidential election — which definitely feels more like a decade in pandemic time — and still, President Donald Trump has refused to concede. Trump has, for the most part, continued to maintain his very false and disproven narrative that he actually won the election and that the Democrats tried to steal it by making voting more accessible during a public health crisis. 

But on Friday, something miraculous happened, and as one might expect with matters relating to the current president, the miracle happened on Twitter. Early Friday morning, Trump decided to start his day with some posting, and this time he slipped up a little bit, as he declared, “Now that the Biden Administration will be a scandal plagued mess for years to come, it is much easier for the Supreme Court of the United States to follow the Constitution and do what everybody knows has to be done.” Trump added, “They must show great Courage & Wisdom. Save the USA!!!” (Zoom in on Biden Administration.)

This tweet, which is still absurd, is the closest Trump has come to a concession in the presidential election. His acknowledgement that a “Biden Administration” exists at all is an admission on some level that there will be a new president in the White House very soon. Trump’s tweet also comes off as super petty, calling attention to the announcement this week that the Department of Justice is investigating Biden’s son for alleged criminal violations of tax and money laundering laws. It’s almost as if Trump couldn’t concede without first making sure that Biden has a scandal looming over his administration from day one. 

But Trump’s Friday morning ramblings weren’t the first time he came close to accepting defeat. In his first public remarks to reporters after losing the election, Trump stated that his administration would not authorize another lockdown to deal with a possible COVID surge, but he couldn't say the same for Biden.  “I will not go – this administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully the – whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration will be. I guess time will tell,” he said, which sounded a lot like an acknowledgement of his loss. 

A few days later, the president again tweeted what sounded like a possible concession, writing that Biden “won because the Election was Rigged,” and in a separate tweet, claimed that Biden “only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA.” 

Despite his near-concessions, Trump’s legal team is still filing lawsuits in battleground states that he lost, trying to prove without evidence that some kind of nefarious, Democratic plot took place across the country to steal the election from him. For someone who claims incessantly to have won the election, it sure sounds like Trump is doing a lot of losing.