Trump’s Final Days of Rage and Denial

“Each additionally appear to be residing in alternate realities surrounded solely by those that verify these realities,” she mentioned. “However whereas one brooder will climate a gradual and lengthy decline, the opposite is more and more going through a fast decline and scrambling to do what he can to avoid wasting his household and loyalists — and naturally himself.”

College students of the American presidency, alternatively, might consider no current parallel. “As we transfer towards Inauguration Day, I’ve thought virtually day by day of a comment attributed to Henry Adams: ‘I anticipated the worst, and it was worse than I anticipated,’” mentioned Patricia O’Toole, a biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in addition to Adams.

In contrast to any of his trendy predecessors, Mr. Trump has not known as his victorious opponent, a lot much less invited him to the White Home for the standard postelection go to. Mr. Trump has indicated that he could not attend Mr. Biden’s inauguration, which might make him the primary sitting president since 1869 to refuse to take part in crucial ritual of the peaceable switch of energy.

He has been enabled by Republican leaders unwilling to face as much as him, even when many privately want he would go away sooner quite than later. After being known as “profiles in cowardice” by an ally of the president, 75 Republican state legislators from Pennsylvania on Friday disavowed their own election and known as on Congress to reject the state’s electors for Mr. Biden. Solely 25 of 249 Republican members of Congress surveyed by The Washington Post publicly acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory.

“He actually has paid consideration to the bottom,” mentioned Christopher Ruddy, a pal of the president’s and chief govt of Newsmax, part of the conservative news media megaphone that has supported and amplified Mr. Trump’s allegations. “They acquired him elected and in his thoughts acquired him elected the second time. They usually’re strongly in favor of this recount effort and so they need him to proceed this. In his thoughts, he’s not simply doing this for himself he’s doing it for his supporters and for the nation. He’s on a mission and he’s not going to be simply swayed.”

Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed is a hearth hose of denial. “NO WAY WE LOST THIS ELECTION,” he wrote at one level in current days. “We won Michigan by a lot!” he wrote at one other of a state he misplaced by greater than 154,000 votes. He reposted a message in search of to delegitimize Mr. Biden: “If he’s inaugurated beneath these circumstances, he cannot be considered ‘president’ however as a substitute known as the #presidentialoccupant.”

And he has turned on his personal get together, offended that Republican leaders have refused to simply accept his baseless claims and overturn the desire of the voters. He referred to Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, as soon as a favourite ally, as “the hapless Governor of Georgia.” and the “‘Republican’ Governor of Georgia” utilizing his citation marks mockingly, and pressed Mr. Kemp on Saturday to convene a special session of the state legislature in a bid to overturn the outcomes there. Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, one other Republican stalwart, has joined the goal listing. Mr. Trump tweeted that he and Mr. Kemp “combat more durable in opposition to us than do the Radical Left Dems.”