Edition · November 24, 2020
Trump’s November 24, 2020 Hangover
Certification reality, pardon gossip, and one more day of pretending the election hadn’t already been lost in the states that matter.
On November 24, 2020, the Trump operation kept colliding with the basic facts of the 2020 election and the normal machinery of government. States kept certifying Biden’s wins, while Trump-world floated another pardon that would reward one of the most notorious figures from the Russia era. It was a day of legal reality checks, political denial, and the kind of self-own that only looks clever if you never read the court docket.
Closing take
The broad theme was simple: the election was slipping out of Trump’s hands in public, in court, and in the states, and the response was more denial, more grievance, and more loyalty-first politics. That mix kept generating new headlines, but not new leverage. By the end of the day, Trump-world looked less like a comeback machine and more like a closing argument to itself.
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Transition delay
Confidence 5/5
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5
Serious fuckup
After weeks of obstruction and delay, the General Services Administration finally cleared the way for Joe Biden’s team to begin the formal transition process on November 23, with the consequences landing hard on November 24. That delay had already drawn criticism because it blocked access to pandemic planning, intelligence briefings, and basic federal coordination while COVID cases surged. The episode made Trump’s refusal to concede look less like defiance and more like a self-inflicted national-security mess.
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Certification blow
Confidence 5/5
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5
Serious fuckup
Pennsylvania officially certified its 2020 election results on November 24, making Joe Biden’s victory in the state official and pushing Donald Trump’s post-election litigation even deeper into fantasy land. For Trump, this was the sort of calendar-day humiliation that mattered because Pennsylvania was one of the places his team had spent weeks trying to keep in play. Once the state finalized the count, the legal and political case for overturning the result got even thinner, and the public record got a lot thicker.
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Certification reality
Confidence 5/5
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5
Serious fuckup
Minnesota, Nevada, and Pennsylvania all certified their 2020 election results on November 24, reinforcing Biden’s victory while Trump’s legal and political push continued to stall. The day underscored how little the campaign’s fraud claims were changing the actual map of the election.
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Loyalty pardon
Confidence 4/5
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5
Serious fuckup
Reporting on November 24 said Trump had told confidants he planned to pardon Michael Flynn, signaling that the incoming post-election presidency was already turning into a loyalty test. The move would hand a lifeline to a man who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts tied to the Russia investigation.
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Legal clock
Confidence 3/5
★★★☆☆Fuckup rating 3/5
Major mess
By November 24, the Trump campaign’s Wisconsin litigation and recount strategy was still alive, but the public and procedural momentum was moving against it. The broader issue was not just whether Trump could file more paper, but whether any of it could change the certified reality that kept advancing in state after state.
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Turkey theater
Confidence 5/5
★☆☆☆☆Fuckup rating 1/5
Minor self-own
The White House marked November 24 with the annual turkey pardon, a ritual that looked pretty ridiculous against the backdrop of a collapsing election fight and a delayed transition. This was not the biggest scandal of the day, but it was a reminder of how Trump used pageantry to try to flatten out bad news into content. The gap between the ceremonial fluff and the actual governance failure around him was the point.
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