The Final Gasp of Donald Trump's Presidency

[brooklynite]

New York Magazine

Donald Trump going out with a limp seems like an oxymoron,” a senior adviser to the president told me. In width and in word, in soaring skyscrapers and Brioni suits and arena rallies and various euphemisms for great (yuge, bigly), the man has been defined by and obsessed with largeness. His presidency is ending small.

Trump is guided by instinct on most days, but the final year of his presidency was marked by something unusual: He wasn’t sure what to believe or what to do anymore. At first he feared Joe Biden, then he thought he was a joke, and then the joke was on him. By the summer, Trump understood that he could lose. Surrounded by yes-men, he yearned, on occasion, for the truth they would not give him. “At one point, he said, ‘Well, how are all the polls wrong?’?” the adviser recalled. And by Election Day, he understood that losing was inevitable. He accepted, even if he had no plans to concede, that his presidency was over.

Nevertheless, in the residence, surrounded by senior advisers and family, he was furious. About everything. He was angry things weren’t going his way. He was angry Fox had called Arizona for Biden. He was angry that Biden had gone out on TV first. Everyone was offering him different ideas about what to say to the nation, to fight or to be measured or to say this or that, contradicting each other as the president grew angrier and angrier, throwing up one hand to silence people as he reviewed notes in the other. He was unhappy with the notes. He was unhappy with everything. And then he went out and ignored everybody who had tried to help.

“As the day wore on, the day wore on him,” the adviser said. White House and campaign staff whispered among themselves. “?‘Wow, he’s so down. He knows he’s losing.’?” But uncertainty crept back by dawn. When he woke, the race still not called, and his mood changed. On a phone call with the adviser, he said, “Why would I lose to Joe Biden? What’s going on?” He launched a demand — “STOP THE COUNT!” — on Twitter, but he didn’t understand that if the vote count were to stop on Wednesday morning, he’d be handing Joe Biden the presidency.

The adviser asked if he was trying to say that votes cast illegally (something that happens rarely, despite Trump’s claims) should not be counted. “He said, ‘Yeah, yeah. That’s what I mean.’?” People knew that by “stop the count,” he didn’t mean to literally stop the count, Trump said. “No,” the adviser told him, “people think you mean stop counting. If they stopped counting, you’d lose because you’re behind.” Oh. The president asked the adviser what to say instead. After consulting with the campaign’s lawyers, they settled on a message that claimed if the count was confined to legal votes only, he’d win, which put through the presidential tweet filter came out like this: “ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!” and “STOP THE FRAUD!”

[Ligyron]

1. What a friggin' moran.

How on earth did the idiot survive this long? Even having the money he inherited doesn’t explain it.

[BComplex]

4. Human trafficking pays pretty well.

As long as it's slimy, he makes a living at it.

[Laelth]

5. He screwed his own family out of their fortunes too.

He screwed banks, contractors, students at his “university,” people who wanted to donate to his charity, and anyone else from whom he could wiggle a nickel.

A lot of people suffered to maintain the illusion of success that this demented failure required.

-Laelth

[jcgoldie]

2. Lol at "the president's friend"

Discussing at length how much Trump hates himself...

[Laelth]

8. He doesn't have any friends. n/t

-Laelth

[jcgoldie]

9. I sort of thought the same...

...thats why that phrase stuck with me. Then I kept reading and he or she didn't seem all that friendly...

[Laelth]

10. Precisely. n/t

-Laelth

[leftieNanner]

3. I cannot imagine what it is like to work in that place (abuse trigger warning)

A woman I know was in an abusive marriage, and she used to tell me what it was like every evening as it came close to the time when her husband would come home. She would be in a borderline state of panic. Sometimes he would be fine. And sometimes he would be a monster. He never hit her, but she lived her whole married life like that - every day, not knowing. Every day hoping that today would be the day he would stop being cruel. She had her weekdays 9-5 in peace. The calm she enjoyed in the morning would wane by dinner time.

This is what it has been like for us in the United States for the last four years. And we are on the outside. Imagine living your work life in that kind of an environment. It's a wonder that there is any one left in the White House at all.

On January 20, 2021, we will throw the abusive asshole out of the house.

My friend got out too. The abusive husband died of a heart attack a few years later.

[TlalocW]

6. All the smug mugging he did over the last four years

The name-calling, the look how great I am but still poor me rallies, etc. All the rage I felt at his behavior is somewhat alleviated by the fact that even if he TRULY believes he was cheated out of a second term, he still considers himself a loser. Cheating is part of the game for him. He could go into an impossible dream business deal where he would get billions of dollars for doing nothing, but if he thought the other side was getting too much out of it as well, he would sabotage it by trying to screw them over because in his mind, they must be doing something that cheats him. Cheating them first makes him a winner. This election, in his mind, he wasn't smart enough to stop the cheating cheaters who cheated him; cheating was his game, and it didn't work out. That makes him a loser even in his own demented world.

TlalocW

[underpants]

7. Saw the reporter on CNN this morning

Looks very interesting