IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE CAPITOL CHAOS
Anger builds as resignations of his staff grow
Trump concedes to Biden, condemns D.C. attack
Wednesday night was a lonely one for Donald Trump.
Cut off from Twitter and Facebook — the social media platforms the president has used to communicate with supporters — and increasingly politically isolated, Trump was left alone.
He had started the day in a combative mood. Whether he truly believed Mike Pence, his vice president, could help decertify the vote in Congress is unclear, but he appeared buoyed by the prospect. An exhilarated Trump urged the thousands who had gathered in Washington, D.C., for a “Save America” rally to march to the Capitol. He told them: “Let's go together.”
He did not join them, however. Instead, he returned to the White House to watch the carnage play out in real time on a giant TV in the West Wing.
Trump was extremely agitated, moving from the Oval Office to the nearby private dining room, initially energized, but increasingly angry and closed off, a source told Reuters.
A person close to the president told The Daily Telegraph it was almost impossible to get through to the president for the rest of the day: “He didn't want to speak to anyone, and when he did, none of what he said made much sense.”
Trump was furious with Pence, who had told him he just could not do what his boss was asking. The president, a senior adviser told the New York Times, “lost it.”
Trump has lashed out repeatedly at Pence, publicly and privately, and has been seething at Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, for stating that Pence would perform his constitutional duty, sources told Reuters.
Trump berated Pence to his face this week, one source said.
Pence, a former Indiana governor and former Republican lawmaker who harbours presidential ambitions, has been loyal to Trump throughout the president's four years in office.
The vice president's office declined to comment, but a Pence adviser said “everyone around him is very proud of him” for how he performed his constitutional duty and that he had told Trump ahead of time what he planned to do.
“Mike Pence does not surprise the president. He was honest about what he was going to do,” the adviser told Reuters.
As the mob outside the Capitol began breaking through the police barriers, Trump's aides urged him to send in the National Guard, as he had done for Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer.
Trump resisted for some time, sources say. Staff then worked on convincing him to put out a video address, telling his supporters to go home — the only thing they believed would end what had become a siege.
According to Vanity Fair, Pat Cipollone, a White House counsel, spent the afternoon urging officials not to speak to Trump or offer any words of support for his “coup attempt,” to limit the chances of prosecution for treason under the Sedition Act.
The list of staff resignations grew by the hour, compounding Trump's isolation.
First came Stephanie Grisham, the First Lady's chief of staff, followed shortly by: Matt Pottinger, deputy national security adviser; Rickie Niceta, social secretary; Sarah Matthews, deputy press secretary; and finally Mick Mulvaney, the special envoy to Northern Ireland. “I can't do it, I can't stay,” wrote Mulvaney, the president's former chief of staff.
Fuelled by a deepening paranoia, Trump began ordering out “disloyal” White House staff, including Short, Pence's chief of staff.
Trump would have been most disappointed by his own appointees, with whom he was still considered to be close. Alyssa Farah, until recently a White House spokeswoman, tweeted “Dear MAGA — I am one of you ... But I need you to hear me: the Election was NOT stolen. We lost.”
Farah was joined in condemnation by Kellyanne Conway, longtime Trump adviser, and Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who had been on the election debate prep team.
The group of Trump loyalists has shrunk to include digital director Dan Scavino, personal aide John McEntee, trade adviser Peter Navarro, speech writer Stephen Miller and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, one source said.
“It's sad. These are the people around him and egging him on,” said the Reuters source, who also asked not to be identified.
It was Scavino who, after Congress certified Biden's victory late Wednesday night, tweeted out a statement from Trump early on Thursday to say the president would go along with an orderly transition of power to Biden.
Trump himself was suspended from Twitter at the time.
In the statement, Trump clung to the notion that the Nov. 3 election was rigged against him but acknowledged he would be leaving the White House on Biden's Inauguration Day.
“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on Jan. 20,” he said.
On Thursday morning, Trump called into a Republican National Committee breakfast in Florida and apologized for his absence. He was reportedly put on speakerphone and received rapturous applause.
Some White House officials, stunned by Trump's downward spiral in recent days, were debating whether to resign in protest or to stay for the last two weeks to ensure a proper transition to the Biden team, one aide said.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the wife of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, on Thursday became the first Trump cabinet minister to quit since the Capitol siege.
Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg said Trump's temperament reflected his aversion to losing.
“This is him at the end, when he loses something. This is the way it is, the end,” Nunberg said.