Emily Murphy Needs to Do Her Damn Job, Just Like Georgia Republican Brad Raffensperger Has

Emily Murphy, head of the General Services Administration. (photo: Bill Clark/Getty)

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

20 November 20

readersupportednews.org

The means handing over the keys to the president-elect, whose margin of victory looks more decisive by the day.

here is no better illustration of how deeply perverse is the Republican denial of the reality of the 2020 presidential election than this inexcusable whitewashing from CNN of the performance of Emily Murphy. As the boss of the General Services Administration, Murphy is single-handedly gumming up the transition, as well as the efforts by the gathering Biden administration to hit the ground running on any issue, most notably the pandemic.

Sources who spoke to CNN could not say whether Murphy has been in touch with the White House on the issue. "She absolutely feels like she’s in a hard place. She’s afraid on multiple levels. It’s a terrible situation," one friend and former colleague of Murphy’s told CNN. "Emily is a consummate professional, a deeply moral person, but also a very scrupulous attorney who is in a very difficult position with an unclear law and precedence that is behind her stance..."

Democrats are furious with Murphy for playing into Trump’s false fantasies that the election was stolen from him. At the same time, Republicans are pressuring her to stand firm and not sign the ascertainment. Previous colleagues of Murphy told CNN that despite being a political appointee, she was not an avid Trump supporter or loyalist. "She’s going to be really thoughtful about both the letter of the law, any guidelines, explicit guidance, any precedence, as well as the overall intent. She comes out of contracts, where that is the whole nature of the work," the friend and former colleague said.

What the hell? On the one hand, we have Murphy's clear duty, which is to hand over the keys to the president-elect so he can get on with the business of the nation, a duty that is as important this year as it ever has been. On the other hand, we have...what? Mean tweets? A presidential tantrum? The sad, pathetic thrall in which a vulgar talking yam still holds alleged public servants in the national legislature? Do your job, as Bill Belichick once said. If Murphy needs inspiration, she can call Brad Raffensperger down in Georgia, who's taking unspeakable heat because he insists on Doing His Job. Then, there's this.

Former Republican Missouri Sen. Jim Talent told CNN he has known Murphy 25 years and that she worked for him when he chaired the House Small Business Committee during the Clinton administration. Talent praised Murphy's integrity, blaming the law for putting the onus on the GSA. "Something is wrong with the system where the responsibility for declaring the winner of a Presidential election seems to devolve upon the General Services Administration -- it's the Government's landlord. They buy furniture," Talent said. "I understand people's frustration, but the problem is an electoral system that cannot come to a finality. It's not Emily or the GSA."

The electoral system has achieved finality. Joe Biden is the president-elect because he won by a margin that looks more decisive by the day. Soon, he will assume the presidency of a country in which citizens are dying by the carload. I don't know what Talent is talking about here, or what Murphy thinks she's doing, but public service seems pretty far from the reality of it.

Emily is at one end of the Protecting Trump Spectrum.  At the other end is a familiar face, famous for his hand-in-his-pants scene in the latest Borat movie.  But you can always count on Rudy to one-up himself, shown here with hair dye running down his face during a press conference at Republican Headquarters in which he explained the worldwide election conspiracy against the Donald's "legitimate win" over over Joe Biden.