Trump’s last days of fury and denial

WASHINGTON – During the past week, President Donald trump posted or reposted around 145 posts on Twitter attack the election results he lost.

He mentioned that the coronavirus pandemic is now quadruple its worst time, and even that he has only said he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong.

Grumpy and, according to his advisers, sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up for work and don’t take care health and economic crises that mourn the country and largely eliminates from its public agenda meetings that have nothing to do with its desperate attempt to change election results.

He has obsessed by rewarding his friends, getting rid of disloyal people and punishing an ever-growing list of supposed enemies which now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News.

The final days of Trump’s presidency had the stormy elements of a drama closer to history or literature than a modern White House.

His anger and unrealistic refusal to acknowledge his defeat conjures up images of a besieged leader in a remote location defiantly clinging to power instead of exile, or an erratic English monarch imposing his version of reality. to his frightened court.

Also, while he will be leaving his post in 45 days, the past few weeks may only be presage how it will be after you leave.

Trump will almost certainly attempt to shape the national dialogue from his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, and his dogged campaign to delegitimize the election could weaken his successor, the president-elect. Joe biden.

While many Republicans would like to turn the page, it seems he is determined to force them to remain slaves to his need to justify and slander, even after his term ends.

On Saturday night, Trump brought his unreal reality show to Georgia in his first major public appearance since November 3. A rally in favor of two Republican senators for a run-off next month provided him with a high-profile opportunity to voice his grievances and bolster his false claims that, thanks to a massive conspiracy, he has somehow got a second term. so stolen.

“You know we won GeorgiaSo they figured it out, ”he told his supporters in a state that had lost by 12,000 votes, adding that he had actually won other states where, in fact, he had also lost.

“They did trap and they manipulated our presidential elections, but we will win them anyway, ”he said while pressuring the Republican authorities to overturn the results.

“We just need someone who has the courage to do the right thing.”

Sometimes Trump’s outbursts for not accepting his fate seem straight out of a story written by William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of noise and few crazy people.

Is Trump a modern Julius Caesar, betrayed even by some of his closest courtiers? (What about you, Bill Barr?) Or a Richard III who confronts the nobility until he is overthrown by Henry VII? Or King Lear, who is against those who don’t like him or value him enough?

You will then feel that there is no poisonous snake bite that can hurt like the ingratitude of a ungrateful electorate.

“This is typical behavior of Act 5,” said Jeffrey Wilson, a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard University who published the book “Shakespeare and Trump” this year.

“The troops gather, the tyrant takes refuge in his castle, he is more and more anxious, he feels insecure, he begins to boast of his legitimate sovereignty and begins to accuse his opponents of treason.”

Unlike any of his contemporary predecessors, Trump did not call his opponent the winner, let alone invite him to the White House for the traditional post-election visit.

Trump said that maybe not attend during Biden’s inauguration, making him the first sitting president since 1869 to refuse to participate in the most important ritual of peaceful transfer of power.

He has been backed by Republican leaders who are unwilling to confront him, although many privately want him to leave as soon as possible.

After being called an “image of cowardice” by an ally of the president, 75 Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania state ignored their own choice and urged Congress to reject state voters who voted for Biden.

Only 27 of the 249 Republican members of Congress polled by The Washington Post they publicly acknowledged Biden’s victory. On Saturday, Trump called them Republicans in name only (RINOS).

“He really paid attention to the grassroots,” said Christopher Ruddy, a friend of Newsmax CEO, who is part of the conservative news media megaphone that escalated Trump’s accusations.

“They elected him and, in the opinion of the president, they elected him a second time. In addition, they are very supportive of the recount and want it to continue. In his concept, he does it not just for himself, but for his supporters and for the country. He’s on a mission and they won’t make him falter so easily. “

Trump’s Twitter content is a torrent of rejection. “IN NO EVENT HAVE WE LOST THE ELECTION,” he wrote at one point in recent days. “We won Michigan a lot!” He wrote at another point of a state that lost by more than 154,000 votes.

He reposted a post aimed at delegitimizing Biden: “If he takes office under these circumstancesyes, he cannot be called ‘president’, but #ocupantedelapresidencia ”.

Moreover, angry that Republican leaders refused to accept his baseless claims and rejected the will of the voters, he turned against his own party.

On Saturday, shortly before arriving in Georgia, Trump called the governor Brian kemp to pressure him to call a special legislative session to eliminate the results there, and later at the rally, he lashed out at him for snubbing him.

“Your governor could stop this very easily if he knew what he was doing,” Trump said.

He also tweeted that Kemp and the Governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, another staunch Republican, “fight us more fiercely than the radical Left Democrats.”

Yet even though the President desperately demands that someone, anyone, tell him he’s right, no one in authority has done so except his family members, paid lawyers and his partisan soul mates.

The elections were certified and accepted not only by Democrats, but also by senior Republican governors, secretaries of state, election officials, city clerks, judges, and even Trump administration officials.

After his own cybersecurity czar approved the integrity of the election, Trump fired him. Now that the attorney general William barr he said he hadn’t noticed any fraud canceling the election, he could be next.

Trump’s video was so far removed from the facts that Facebook and Twitter added warnings so that users wouldn’t believe what the President of the United States was telling them to be true.

Which explains why Trump’s only topic of interest this past week, aside from the election, was the annual defense budget he had promised to veto because Congress had not removed legal protections for the big guys. technology companies, as he demanded.

Instead, he expressed little interest in the coronavirus now ravaging the country or the resulting economic devastation.

Instead of “turning the corner,” as Trump insisted again last Saturday night, the pandemic has reached a record high of nearly 3,000 deaths per day in the United States, almost the equivalent of another attack by states -United. September 11 every 24 hours.

Trump did not comment on this in his Twitter spiel, nor did he comment on the latest employment reports documenting the economic cost. The only four tweets mentioning the virus were aimed at defending his own handling of the pandemic, which included reposted messages stating that “the president was right.”

Six weeks after his departure, Trump remains as unpredictable and erratic as ever.

He could fire Barr and others, grant a series of pardons to protect himself and his allies, or incite a confrontation abroad. Like King Lear, he could become more enraged and find other targets to unleash his fury.

“If there are these analogies between classical literature and society as it currently functions, we should be concerned in December,” said Wilson, the Shakespearean scholar.

“We are coming to the end of the work and that’s when the disaster still occurs.”

c. 2020 The New York Times Company