NATO allies understand Trump lost. Dictators and Republicans still don't

The leaders of Germany, France, Britain, and Ireland all called President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday, voicing their support (and relief) for the incoming Biden administration. There's nothing particularly unusual about that, though one can imagine the subtext of each conversation was likely a bit more pointed than in similar past calls. German leader Angela Merkel, for example, has reportedly been a repeated target of Donald Trump's misogyny and belittlement in official U.S.-Germany conversations, so she is probably even giddier about the tyrant megalomaniac's loss than the others.

Not engaging in congratulatory phone calls quite yet, as noted by The New York Times: The world's various dictators, each of whom could count on regular praise from Dear Goofenfuhrer that past American leaders never offered. Russia's Vlad Putin is sitting on his hands, as is Brazil's far-right president. Turkish president Erdogan did call Biden, which is probably causing Trump no end of grief after Trump specifically betrayed Kurdish forces in Syria as favor to the would-be strongman.

China is also staying out of it—possibly because China has a great deal to lose and little to gain by pissing off one side or the other. Trump has been an unreliable trading partner, to say the least, but that doesn't mean Chinese leaders will relish the return of American strategic competence.

In short, though, most of the world is moving on. Trump was so horrific a "president" that people in other nations cheered when it was clear Biden had defeated him, and the major theme of the congratulatory calls coming in is that leaders of democracies are quick to understand that won means won, while the leaders of autocratic nations like Russia and China are still waiting to see if Trump can defeat the will of voters and stick around, elections be damned.

The same is true in our own country, of course. Those that value elections as determinative have congratulated Biden as the winner, now that it's clear his margin of victory is far outside what could be overturned by recount. The fascist Republican Party, however, wavers between holding their tongues and condemning the election results as invalid, because they do not recognize the right of voters to vote for someone else and have spent many decades attempting to curb the ability of voters to do such a thing.

You can't exactly fault the dictatorial Putin for thinking Trump might be able to overturn his election loss when Republicans like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are pinning themselves to the same claims. While Putin instinctively understands that the "overturning" would not happen without significant loss of life, however, Republicans are humoring Trump for the sake of humoring Trump. What might happen if Trump sees their support and decides to act even more recklessly and aggressively still is, for the Mitch McConnells of the party, something they will continue to pretend not to see.

Source: Daily Kos