After last weeks’ mob violence at the Capitol that he encouraged and the fallout, including talks of the 25th amendment and impeachment, President Trump’s last days in the White House are going about as you would expect.
The few remaining aides around him in the White House are saying that they are spending their last days in the White House either avoiding him or “babystitting” him in hopes he won’t do something stupid or reckless. Some have even described the President as a “violent toddler.”
Trump has seemingly given up on the few presidential duties he performed before the election and spends his days ranting and raving about having the election stolen from him.
In an effort to give the look of control, Trump has insisted his daily schedule say something like “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings.”
According to the Daily Beast report:
“One senior Trump administration official described the activity around the outgoing president as a prolonged act of ‘babysitting’ a ‘violent toddler’ that aides and chief advisers hope to get through in the next week without Trump triggering any more history-making disasters.”
The report continues on the apparent loneliness Trump is trying to navigate in controlling the situation:
“Meanwhile, Trump, whose rhetoric helped incite the Jan. 6 rioting, is increasingly cut off from once-loyal senior officials, some of whom have resigned in recent days. Instead, the president is focused on managing the fallout, both legally and reputationally, from the attack and the deaths that resulted from it.”
In recent days, Trump’s aides have been trying to get him to focus his attention on the supposed anti-Trump bias of big tech companies like Twitter, which banned him from the platform permanently after last week’s violence:
“One of the motivations behind doing this, two of the sources said, was to try to focus his energy on his pet cause of railing against the supposed anti-conservative bias at social media giants…in the hopes that such distractions keep him from causing further, irreversible, or even violent mayhem.”
Further reports from inside the White House are suggesting that President Donald Trump was “delighted” to observe a mob of his followers forcefully attack the Capitol building last Wednesday in an attempt to disrupt Congress’ certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
The attack has left as many as 5 people dead, including a Capitol police officer. Trump has remained largely quiet in the 5 days since the attack.
Despite that silence, it’s not hard to imagine Trump’s reaction to the events. And, Senator Ben Sasse (R. NE) claims that he has heard from some inside the White House of Trump’s elation at the violent mob.
Sasse, speaking with radio host Hugh Hewitt said, “I don’t have any idea what was in his heart about what he wanted to happen once they were in the Capitol, but he wanted there to be chaos. And I’m sure you’ve also had conversations with other senior White House officials, as I have,”
Sasse continued with Hewitt:
“As this was unfolding on television, Donald Trump was walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushing against Capitol Police trying to get into the building.”
Sasse concluded “he was delighted.”
Sasse is one of several lawmakers within Trump’s own Republican party who suggests he might support removing the President from office after he incited the Capitol violence.
Sasse’s account coincides with other reports attributed to White House aides, about how Trump responded to his supporters’ actions, and why he delayed in telling them to “go home.”
But other accounts from inside the White House have suggested that Trump disliked the mob, calling them “low class” and worrying about how the violence reflected on his image and legacy.
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When Hewitt asked Sasse about impeachment, he was relatively straightforward in his response, not completely agreeing to support it, but certainly suggesting he is very open to the idea:
“That’s what I’ve been working on last night and this morning. I want to understand more about why the National Guard wasn’t deployed when there had been clear calls for it, and then why that delay happened. So there are more things that I need to understand before I get to a conclusory judgment about that. But I think that the question of, ‘Was the president derelict in his duty,’ that’s not an open question. He was.”
