The US may possibly have the longest transition period between presidential administrations in the world between the election and the swearing in of the new president. Presidential elections are held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which means that it falls between November 2nd and 8th, while the inauguration is held on January 20th of the following year, which gives a transition period of about two and a half months. That should be plenty to ensure a smooth transition and in general that is what happens.

The Trump-Biden transition was chaotic to say the least. This was mainly due to Trump spending much of that time denying that he had lost and fruitlessly plotting ways to stay in office, which meant that the normal pace of packing and storing had to be compressed into a frantic few days before the 20th. The revelations of the search warrant executed by the FBI on Mar-a-Lago shows how messy the transition was from the Trump to the Biden presidency.
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Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, has condemned the attacks on the FBI for their execution of a search warrant on Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago, further signaling that at least some members of the Republican party want to distance themselves from Trump’s hysterical reaction that triggered anger among his supporters who threatened violence against the fbi and the department of justice.

“I … want to remind my fellow Republicans we can hold the attorney general accountable for the decision that he made without attacking the rank-and-file law enforcement personnel at the FBI,” Pence said on Wednesday at New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College.

“The Republican party is the party of law and order. Our party stands with the men and women who serve on the thin blue line at the federal, state and local level. And these attacks on the FBI must stop,” he said.

But what was even more interesting was that he seemed to be inviting the January 6th committee to ask him to testify before the panel.

“If there was an invitation to participate, I would consider it…I would have to reflect on the unique role that I was serving as vice-president… “It would be unprecedented in history for the vice-president to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill. But, as I said, I don’t want to prejudge ever any formal invitation rendered to us.”

Trump has been lashing out furiously at the committee and all those who have testified, since those hearings have really damaged him. He must be apoplectic that even his once-loyal lapdog seems to offering to cooperate with it.

In the wide-ranging interview that he gave to George Sylvester Viereck that was published in 1929 in the Saturday Evening Post, Albert Einstein was asked his views about nationalism. In response to the question, “Do you look upon yourself as a German or as a Jew”, he replied, “It is quite possible to be both. I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”

He thought that Americans were less nationalistic than the nations of Europe, saying:

“Americans undoubtedly owe much to the the melting pot it is possible that this mixture of races makes their nationalism less objectionable than the nationalism of Europe nationalism in the United States does not assume such disagreeable forms as in Europe this may be due partly to the fact that your country is so immense that you do not think in terms of metal borders it may be due to the fact that you do not suffer from the heritage of hatred.”

If he were alive today, I think that he would be saddened by what America has become, a nation in which Christian nationalism seems to be gaining ground and in which xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiment are promoted and at least tacitly supported by a significant segment of one of the main political parties.