Mike Pence Is Officially House Hunting As Everyone But Trump Acknowledges Joe Biden’s Victory

Mod: Donald Trump might still believe he is the president on January 21st, but if so he'll likely be the only member of his administration showing up that day.

Mike Pence Is Officially House Hunting As Everyone But Trump Acknowledges Biden’s Victory (PoliticusUSAlink): In another sign that just about everybody recognizes that Joe Biden will be in the Oval Office starting Jan. 20, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence is officially house hunting.

As The Washington Post reported on Saturday, “Vice President Pence has begun looking for a new home in the Washington suburbs, and he’s planning a valedictory foreign trip to begin the day Congress counts the electoral college votes.”

Aside from Pence, the report notes that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is floating the idea of “opening a consulting firm with other White House aides and allies,” while Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow says he already has TV gigs lined up.

Cabinet secretaries are giving final media interviews and gifts to staff. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently granted an interview to the American Enterprise Institute, where she offered advice to her successor. “There’s one simple guiding principle I’d urge not just the next education secretary to embrace, but any educator and education leader: Put students first,” she said.

There is no serious planning for a second term, and four officials say the West Wing is far more dormant than it once was, with aides spending their days on job interviews or working from home. The outer Oval Office, once a constant hubbub of traffic angling to see the president, no longer thrums with the same energy.

Mod: At least the Moscow branch of the Trump Administration will still be hard at work.

Keep up the good work, Putin tells spy agency staff(Reuterslink): Russian President Vladimir Putin said the foreign intelligence service was exceptionally important for protecting the country, in comments made soon after it was accused by some of being behind a major hack on U.S. government departments.

Speaking at an event commemorating 100 years since the founding of the SVR foreign intelligence service, Putin said the agency and other security services were a crucial guarantee of Russia's "sovereign, democratic, independent development."

Some international cyber researchers have suggested that Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service may have been behind an unprecedented attack on U.S. government computer systems first reported by Reuters last week. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that Russia was responsible for the attack.  

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