The Land of the Free | PR Ireland

 

The Land of the Free

As America counts its election, the whole world looks on. It was a rollercoaster of an election night, which turned into a rollercoaster of an election week. Tuesday, the day of the election, matters looked like the former Vice President Joe Biden was cruising towards an easy victory, with strong leads in all of the key states.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, matters began to quickly unravel when it became clear that President Trump had performed much better than expected. In moments like this, you reflect on the peaceful transition of power with the existing executive team packing up and planning to move out. It is customary that the outgoing President leaves a handwritten note on the desk for the incoming President and their administration, wishing them well.

Matters quickly became tense in Washington, as razor wire was erected around the perimeter fence of the White House, barricading the mansion away from potential civil unrest.

Hours later, in a truly Presidential manner, Joe Biden and his wife Dr Jill Biden took to the stage and asked us all to ‘’keep the faith.’’

Within seconds of their address the President, Donald Trump, tweeted some inaccuracies which the Twitter Safety Police was quick to jump on and point out his comments were factually untrue and incorrect.

This clearly enraged the President to host a 2.30am news briefing in the White House. At this point, it was Wednesday morning. Instead of going to bed and reflecting on the day’s occurrences, the President once again chose to unleash a string of untruths, but the killer line was to ‘stop counting.’

What the president actually said was;

‘’This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election, frankly we did win this election. We did win this election. So our goal now is to ensure the integrity for the good of this nation, this is a very big moment. This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in the proper manner.’’

‘’So we will be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list. OK? It’s a very sad, it’s a very sad moment. To me, this is a very sad moment, and we will win this, and as far as I’m concerned, we already have won it.’’

To hear a US President openly try to undermine the election was deeply chilling, and more akin to something a tinpot dictator would say.

Seasoned observers view this as an attempt to stop the democratic process in its tracks and create mistrust of the democratic system and deeply divide the great American country and its people.

In drafting this blog, in our hearts and minds, we hope Joe Biden is set to become the 46^th President of the United States, taking with him the strong belief in positioning a new America on the world stage, replacing hope with fear and fact with fiction.

We set out with the journey with Joe Biden in 2016 when, as Vice President, he visited Ireland to retrace his family roots. Our firm was appointed by Louth County Council to manage his visit to the county, and we reflect on a special time.

During this unique occasion to spend time with the Vice President in the remarkable setting of the Cooley Peninsula, he expressed great interest in our work as we were running the Ireland For Hillary Campaign. We had the chance to spend private time with him, and one of us asked would he consider running for the greatest job on Planet Earth. As he smiled, blushed and walked away, he said if he decided to take on the top job, he would consider coming back in the springtime, akin to the magic moments Ireland and America spent together with John F. Kennedy back in the 1960s.

With high hopes and heavy hearts, we hope his dream becomes a reality and he walks the narrow streets of Carlingford soon.

Having made the connection, we decided to take the lead and develop the ‘Irish For Biden’ campaign a number of months ago, encouraging Irish people to contact their friends and relatives in the US and encourage them to get out and vote for Joe.

This has become a tremendous success, united families from across the 50 states with Ireland.