For the second week since the November 3 general election, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have ruled America without noticing each other. At that, the power transit process from the current US President to the media-reported winner Biden is significantly complicated by the White House, which deliberately "pokes sticks into spokes" of the newly elected president's team. Concurrently, Trump began cleaning up untrustworthy security, defense and law enforcement agencies and replacing them with people loyal to him.

Thus, President Trump dismissed Defense Secretary Mark Esper and appointed Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Christopher Miller acting Pentagon chief. FBI head Christopher Wray, CIA Director Gina Haspel, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, who is intrinsically loath to involving the US army in the political squabbles between the Republicans and the Democrats, are reportedly going to be out of the picture as well. This reshuffle gave Trump's opponents reason to talk about his alleged preparations for an exposed military operation against Iran and other US opponents from outside, or attempts to guarantee loyalty of the military if he makes out the case in the Supreme Court, at which point the Democrats will call their supporters to the streets.

In turn, the "sleepy" Biden is also on the lookout, actively preparing for the January 20 inauguration and having already appointed his long-time associate, 59-year-old Ron Klein, as the White House Chief of Staff. In parallel, Biden's team has already begun developing plans for next year's first months. In particular, the new US administration envisages efforts in four key directions: fighting the coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery, racial equality, and climate change.

These facts indicate that the partisan discord in American politics keeps deepening. While the Biden-led Democrats are planning their first steps in power, the Republicans do not despair of taking judicial revenge and recognize the vote in a number of key states as rigged. The legal-sector mastermind of the war is President Trump's personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, the legendary former prosecutor and ex-mayor of New York.

However, one must recognize the lack of unity among the Republicans about Biden's victory in the past election. For instance, the latter has already been congratulated by some prominent party members, particularly Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, with the highest-ranking Republican to send a message of greetings to the Democrats being former US President George W. Bush. Meanwhile, one of the most influential Trump's party fellows in the country, leader of the Republican majority in the Senate Mitch McConnell is still staying quiet. He will likely remain head of Congress' upper chamber under President Biden to defend the party's stance in interacting with him.

But all of this will happen after Donald Trump's abandonment of his post. In the meantime, the head of the White House is not going to leave the Oval Office and is trying to use all the available levers of power. Thus, according to the Washington Post, apart from the legal methods Trump used bureaucratic ones to prevent Biden from coming to power. An illustrative example of this is the performance by head of the General Services Administration (GSA) Emily Murphy. Being not that high in the power hierarchy and tasked with ensuring the US Federal government's functioning, this institution typically recognizes the presidential election winner within a few days after the vote.

This time, however, things went differently. Instructed by the White House not to help the Biden team, Ms. Murphy has so far failed to provide the Democrats with any information necessary for a smooth power transition from the old administration to the new one. Besides, Trump ordered the GSA head to refuse allocating federal funds provided for by the 1963 Presidential Transition Act (almost $10 million) for the transition of power process. But the Biden team, we note, needs to sign contracts with four thousand employees (1,200 of which must be confirmed by the Senate), as well as train them to work in future jobs – all of this needs money and access, both of which are unavailable. And such a situation venomous to American political entrails will prevail until the end of the Trump-initiated election fraud trials.

It should be noted that Donald Trump himself has not yet congratulated Biden on winning the presidential election. This is positioned as a flat violation of the election behavioral philosophy. Trump's refusal to make a call of congratulations to Biden or deliver a speech about admitting his defeat will, by the way, be a first of its kind over the last 124 years (that is, since the tradition of concession speeches has emerged). And this not just refers to a violation of this tradition. According to head of the of Political Science Department at the University of Chicago William Howell, "concession speeches are a kind of affirmation about the legitimacy of elections."

But this has not happened yet, and the confrontation between the Trump and Biden teams may well last until January 20. However, a lot may become clear as early as December 14, when the electoral vote is held.

In the meantime, it turns out that due to the current climate amid the top tiers of power, it's a blue-eyed wonder who will lead the parade in case of a force majeure. Especially considering that the United States is one of the world's leading nuclear powers...