"Our goal is to start so many fires that it will be difficult for the Biden administration to put them all out."
This confidence, the CNN channel had collected in mid-November from the mouth of a close friend of Donald Trump after the confirmation of the defeat of the Republican billionaire.
A month and a half later, the goal seems almost reached.
Donald Trump is still crying out for conspiracy and massive ballot fraud.
And for the first time, Joe Biden was publicly outraged Monday at the attempts to “obstruct” his predecessor in the transition phase.
"My team needs a clear picture of our position of strength in the world and of our operations to deter our enemies," lamented the president-elect, denouncing an "irresponsible" attitude, in particular on national security issues.
"It's unheard of in recent history," confirms the Parisian Simon Grivet, historian of the United States at the University of Lille.
In general, the political struggle quickly gives way to intense collaboration between the administrations.
Currently, Trump is playing a weird jump ball.
He has certainly authorized the transition and released funding, but besides that, the withholding of information seems massive ”.
Maximum fear in the Pentagon
In many sectors, exchanges are fluid, concedes Joe Biden.
Negotiations around the budget even turned Monday in favor of the Democratic camp with Congress, which allows the new head of state not to inherit on January 20 an "economic grenade".
But on the very sensitive files of defense and diplomacy, it seems to stuck seriously.
And this, while the gigantic cyberattack that has recently occurred has cast heavy suspicions on the computer security of large American companies and state services.
For the past ten days, Joe Biden's teams have accused those of Trump of delaying the discussions to take place at the Pentagon.
These meetings were postponed after the vacation by mutual agreement, defended the acting Secretary of State for Defense, Chris Miller.
Appointed after the surprise dismissal on November 9 of Mark Esper, this loyalist official ensures that the Pentagon has conducted 164 interviews with more than 400 officials and provided more than 5,000 pages of documents to the transition.
The major fear of the Democrats and part of the Republicans, however, remains that of yet another upsurge of President Trump.
“He has the idea of dramatically withdrawing his troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
It seems much less clear today.
But we can always expect a bang on January 15, ”considers Simon Grivet.
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CNN has listed a number of potentially earth-shattering decisions.
Among them, "the hasty authorization of a massive arms sale that could alter the balance of power in the Middle East", "the planning of a last-minute crackdown on China", or even "the idea of a last-minute military attack on Iran ”- a project also mentioned in the New York Times.
The “myth” of keyboards vandalized in 2000-2001
Such measures would be far more devastating than the more unusual memories of the Clinton / George W. Bush transition in the winter of 2000/2001.
Damage was then observed in a hundred rooms of the White House - which has more than a thousand.
Telephone lines torn off, stickers bearing the effigy of Bush dressed up as a chimpanzee, hoaxes on answering machines ... The "W" key (handy for "W. Bush") had even been removed from a number of computer keyboards .
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If the example has come up a lot in recent days, its magnitude must nevertheless be put into perspective.
"This story is more of a myth than anything else", tempers Simon Grivet.
These material considerations turn out to be futile in view of the construction site that a transition represents.
As Le Monde reminds us, the express transition organized that year due to the stormy election of the son Bush had weakened the country in the face of the attacks of September 11, 2001, according to the Commission on the attacks.
In 2016, troublemaker and political novice Donald Trump neglected this aspect, according to many observers.
"The first year was almost over, and they still had not recovered because we can not recover from the loss of all this work," said this summer in a podcast spotted by Politico Chris Christie, the head of the transition from then quickly returned.
"As you can see, in the early days in the White House under Trump there were either a lot of empty seats or seats filled with a lot of former Obama advisers."
A spirit of sabotage also on January 20?
What remains to be seen today is the communication strategy.
"Donald Trump's team does not say it openly, but it is also seeking revenge for the investigation into Russian influence which was opened just after his election," said Simon Grivet.
For his part, in speaking, Joe Biden questions the patriotism of Donald Trump which would endanger the nation with his attitude.
This aspect should not be neglected ”.
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The image war is anything but over.
The behavior of Donald Trump on January 6, when Congress will definitively validate the vote of the Grand Voters, is the subject of much speculation.
Not to mention the fateful date of January 20.
It is not impossible, that day, to find him far from Washington waving, in the middle of a meeting, the specter of a candidacy in 2024.
