While Melania Trump packs up her White House life, Donald rages on
As his wife prepares for Florida move, Trump spends final days stewing in ghostly White House, ahead of vote that will make his loss official.
Donald Trump is spending his final days in the White House stewing over defeat and raging about the “stolen” election. Aides are tiptoeing around, fearful of his moods, in the ghostly and deserted West Wing. Tomorrow (Monday), all 538 members of the US electoral college are due to cast their ballots in accordance with the certified results of their states. Joe Biden will then surpass the 270 votes necessary for his inauguration on January 20.
It should be game over, but Trump is not playing by the rules. “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!” he tweeted yesterday (Saturday). Electors in Michigan are getting a police escort to the state’s Capitol to vote in the teeth of expected protests from “Stop the steal” groups.
WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020
Advisers who indulged the president in his phantom victory have become trapped by his false claims. Trump feels vindicated by a chorus of support from loyal fans and Republican officials, amplified by friendly media organisations such as One America News network (OAN) and Newsmax.
Shortly after the election, it was said that Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, were going to persuade the boss to concede, once he’d had time to adjust to his loss. After a few half-hearted tries, those efforts have been abandoned.
“Nobody wants to come out and say there was no fraud, because there probably was some,” said a former senior White House official close to Trump. “It’s impossible for it not to exist in a country of 300 million people but they expect it will have affected dozens of votes, not tens of thousands.”
Not one Trump Adviser thought the appeal to the Supreme Court brought by the Texas Attorney-General to nullify millions of votes in four states backing Biden would succeed, despite the president’s endorsement. “No Wisdom, No Courage!” Trump fumed after his own appointees, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett, dismissed the case.
The Supreme Court really let us down. No Wisdom, No Courage!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020
The sullen atmosphere in the White House reflects the tension between reality and bluster. Trump has been alternately depressed and energised, devoting the bulk of his time to rage-tweeting and phoning Republican officials to berate them for disloyalty, or to wheedle them into joining his fight. Yesterday (Saturday), he renewed his attacks on “Rino” (Republican in name only) governors in Arizona and Georgia for upholding their states’ results, tweeting: “Never forget. Vote them out of office!”
Who is a worse governor, @BrianKempGA of Georgia or @dougducey of Arizona??? These are two RINO Republicans who fought against me and the Republican Party harder than any Democrat. They allowed states that I won easily to be stolen. Never forget, vote them out of office!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020
His diary, meanwhile, has been unusually empty in the midst of a surge in COVID-19, with a record of more than 3,000 deaths in one day last week. Although Trump held a summit last week to tout the success of the vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna declined to attend.
Bob Woodward, the chronicler of presidents, announced last week that he would be co-authoring a book with a colleague at The Washington Post on Trump’s last days in office, complementing two earlier volumes, Rage and Fear. In the latter, John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, reportedly told colleagues: “It’s pointless trying to convince [Trump] of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We are in Crazytown.”
Since then, the dial has been turned up further, though it has some way to go to match earlier White House scenes. In 1976, Woodward teamed up with Carl Bernstein to write The Final Days on Richard Nixon’s downfall.
They revealed that Nixon asked Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, to pray with him in the Lincoln sitting room. They reported that the disgraced president pounded the carpet with his fists, sobbing: “What have I done?”
Woodward also reported that Nixon and his wife, Pat, had not shared a bedroom since 1962, when they nearly divorced. According to CNN, Melania Trump is already packing up the White House, tagging items for the family properties in New York and Mar-a-Lago in Florida. “She just wants to go home,” said a source.
Michael Wolff, the best-selling author of Fire and Fury and Siege, is also thought to be writing a third volume on the Trump years. He previously revealed the first lady barely lived at the White House. “Melania has never wanted to be connected to this. They’re in different places as often as possible,” he said.
The couple will be spending Christmas at Mar-a-Lago, soon to lose its cachet as the winter White House. Aides have told CNN they do not know whether Trump will return to Washington to eke out his last few weeks in office. His daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Kushner, were reported to have purchased a multimillion-dollar undeveloped beachfront property near Miami last week.
With 38 days to go until the end of his term, Trump is plotting revenge on the president-elect. According to Wolff, “he has upped the attention game so high that he will do anything to maintain that same level going forward. Donald Trump doesn’t have to be president to be Donald Trump. He is going to fill every stadium in every state of the nation.”
Trump will have hated the Time magazine cover of Biden and Kamala Harris sharing its “person of the year” accolade, having won it himself in 2016. He is incredulous that he lost to Barack Obama’s vice-president after trying to erase every trace of his predecessor’s legacy.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are TIME's 2020 Person of the Year #TIMEPOY https://t.co/o97QNlSBrl pic.twitter.com/KuoBoebBN4
— TIME (@TIME) December 11, 2020
Biden is stocking his future cabinet with retreads from that era and OFJ – old friends of Joe – while his son Hunter’s tax affairs are being investigated by Trump’s Department of Justice.
The Attorney-General, William Barr, may soon be fired after Trump tweeted that he was a “big disappointment” yesterday (Saturday). “Why didn’t Bill Barr reveal the truth, before the Election, about Hunter Biden. Joe was lying on the debate stage that nothing was wrong.”
Why didn’t Bill Barr reveal the truth to the public, before the Election, about Hunter Biden. Joe was lying on the debate stage that nothing was wrong, or going on - Press confirmed. Big disadvantage for Republicans at the polls!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020
Christmas parties for loyalists are still being held at the White House, including one on the night the Supreme Court rejected the Texas lawsuit. Lawyer Jenna Ellis, part of Trump’s “elite strike force”, which has failed to make any headway, is thought to have caught COVID-19 at an earlier one. The place is eerily quiet the rest of the time as staff keep their distance and apply for new jobs.
The Oval Office was briefly crowded last week when Trump awarded the presidential medal of freedom to the Olympic wrestling gold medallist and coach Dan Gable, who brought along his 13 boisterous grandchildren.
Gable was the three times all-American wrestling champion. “Well, you know, in politics I won two, so I’m 2-0, and that’s pretty good too,” said Trump, still in a world of his own.
He upset a bigger celebrity, Kim Kardashian, on Thursday when he declined her appeal to halt the execution of Brandon Bernard, 40, for his role in a double murder in 1999, when he was just 18 years old. “He was such a reformed person. So hopeful and positive until the end,” the reality TV star tweeted after Bernard’s death. “More importantly he is sorry, so sorry for the hurt and pain he has caused others.”
🕊🕊🕊
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) December 11, 2020
🕊🕊🕊
I’m so messed up right now.
They killed Brandon.
He was such a reformed person. So hopeful and positive until the end. More importantly he is sorry, so sorry for the hurt and pain he has caused others.
It was the ninth federal execution since July, when Trump ended a 17-year moratorium on carrying them out. If another four, planned before his term ends next month, go ahead he will have overseen the most executions by a US president in more than a century.
At the same time, according to Jonathan Swan, the well-informed correspondent for Axios, Trump is discussing handing out pardons to friends and passing acquaintances like “Christmas gifts”. He told one Adviser he was going to pardon “every person who ever talked to me”, although it was not clear if he was being serious.
His former Adviser, Steve Bannon, who has been charged with defrauding donors to the “build a wall” project on the southern US border, has been enthusiastically promoting conspiracy theories about election fraud. “He is clearly out there advocating for a pardon as abjectly as possible,” said Wolff.
The Times
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