Trump has conceded, whether he walked it back or not. Now Emily Murphy has to act

On Sunday, President Donald Trump tweeted, “He won because the Election was Rigged,” finally admitting, over a week after the American election had been called for President-elect Joe Biden, that the vote count showed he hadn’t achieved re-election. Trump later backtracked on that tweet after numerous national outlets called attention to it, accurately defining it as the concession that Trump had never given. “He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA,” he tweeted a few hours later. “I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!”

But that second tweet was too little, too late. The president had already set something very important into motion.

Millions of dollars in transition funds have been held up by the General Services Administration (or GSA) by Emily W. Murphy, a Trump appointee who has refused to approve any transfer of funds until the president formally recognizes a conclusion to the election. But on Sunday, Trump did just that: he recognized, quite publicly, that Biden had won the election. Whether Trump believes (however erroneously) that Biden’s win is “rigged” is not actually relevant here. Also irrelevant is Trump’s subsequent attempt to undo his public assertion of Biden’s win. The initial declaration is enough for Murphy: She should release the funds, because it is the American thing to do according to our own laws and Constitution, and because moving forward with a transition will make us all safer. 

Last week, many Republicans stopped short of acknowledging President-elect Biden’s “landslide” (to use the same word that Trump himself used when he won the exact same number of electoral votes in 2016) victory. But many did say that they believe the president-elect should begin receiving intelligence briefings. That list not only included the usual cast of Trump defectors, like Senators Mitt Romney and Susan Collins, but also Trump supporters, like Senators Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham, and John Cornyn.

Their reasoning? “There is nothing wrong with Vice-President Biden getting the briefings to be able to prepare himself and so he can be ready,” said Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, implying that there may be security issues that a president may need to prepare for. Lest we forget, 9/11 occurred within the first eight months of president George W Bush’s tenure as president.

Intelligence briefings, however, are not the only way by which a president prepares for future crises. The GSA transition fund — an estimated $9.9 million dollars — pays for fundamental staffing, office space, and more. The contested 2000 election, which ran well into December, stymied the transition and left the presidency woefully underprepared for the 9/11 attacks. A similar quandary will leave the United States wounded going into the new year, during a time when we are at our most vulnerable, with one million new coronavirus cases recorded during the past week, and no federal intervention on the horizon.

One office and one office alone has the power to stave off future disaster now, and if it is a call from the president that the head of this office — Emily W. Murphy — is waiting for, well, she already has it. Two words, announced via the current president’s favorite platform, were all Murphy needed to hear to execute her full patriotic duty. “He won.” Whatever follows is only noise.

No concession is considered necessary in the United States for us to progress on our merry way toward another presidency. But if Murphy wishes to play partisan politics with American lives — if she wishes to risk further crisis down the road by setting up the executive branch for failure, kneecapping us when we are already at our weakest — her list of excuses has now run out.

The sitting president has accidentally conceded this race to his successor. Bloviating on Twitter, it turns out, may have lasting consequences after all. Emily Murphy, your time is up. Your boss has spoken. In the interest of the continuance of the United States and the safety of the American people, it is time to release the funds.