FOCUS: Trump Tells Advisers He May Not Vacate the White House |
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=37378"><span class="small">Peter Weber, The Week</span></a> |
Thursday, 17 December 2020 11:54 |
Weber writes: "Discussions of Trump's post-presidency future tend to go nowhere because Trump 'all but shuts down.'"
Trump Tells Advisers He May Not Vacate the White House17 December 20
Even the Electoral College formalizing Biden's win "did not appear enough to shake Trump from his delusions of victory," CNN says, "but it is adding urgency to a push by several of his advisers to gently steer Trump toward reality." Discussions of Trump's post-presidency future tend to go nowhere because Trump "all but shuts down," CNN reports. "In his moments of deepest denial, Trump has told some advisers that he will refuse to leave the White House on Inauguration Day, only to be walked down from that ledge. The possibility has alarmed some aides, but few believe Trump will actually follow through." "To be perfectly clear about this, Trump 100 percent will leave the White House on Inauguration Day, if not well before," Jonathan Chait writes at New York. "Even the scholars who expressed the deepest fears of Trump's intentions to undermine the system did not put credence in the possibility he could defy the outcome by simply refusing to leave. Squatting is not one of the tools in his authoritarian tool kit." But the fact that Trump thinks that's even a viable option suggests he's "engaged in more than a scheme to grift his supporters," Chait says. He's "drinking his own poisoned Kool-Aid." If Trump does have to be forcibly removed from the White House, you can credit Bill Maher with the prediction. |