To the end, Trump’s presidency is all about him
“Despite the Left’s attempts to undermine this Election, I willNEVERstop fighting forYOU,” President Donald Trumpassuredme in a fundraising email.
I don’t take campaign fundraising emails seriously (nevermind literally). They’re all pretty stupid. But this onewas obviously different, for the simple reason that the election is over.
Indeed, this note— one ofmany sent by theTrumpcampaign recently— was a plea formoney to pay for the legal effort to reverse an electionTrumplost by the same margin of electoral votes he once claimed amounted to a “massive landslide.”
If you read the letter’s fine print, you’ll discover that “fighting for you” actuallymeans “fighting forme.” Most of the money fromsmall donors will go not to the legal effort but rather to pay down campaign debt.
In a sense, I’m grateful thatTrumpis doubling downon everything wrong about his presidency in its final chapter. Yes, this is embarrassing for the country. Yes, Trump’s radioactive conspiracy theory of a stolen election will have a long, poisonous half-life. ButTrump is removing any doubt that his narcissistic presidencywas always entirely about him.
The country is in the midst of a health and economic crisis, butTrump’s primary focus is licking his ownwounds, not tackling the country’s. He has largely abandoned formal intelligence briefings and hasn’t metwith the coronavirus task force in months. With the exception of aVeteransDay visit to ArlingtonNational Cemetery and a Friday-night statement on the pandemic, he’s conducted his post-election presidency doing precisely what he’s always done— subordinating the office to his ownwants and petty grievances.
Trumppunctuates his brooding and sulkingwith pathetic tweets brimming with conspiratorial or otherwise deranged hogwash, including the repeated claim “I won the election.” He continues to insist, as he has throughout his presidency, that proof for his lies is just around the corner. OnSunday, he promised a newlawsuit showing the “unconstitutionality” of the 2020 election.
“Nixon’s real tragedy is that he never had the stature to be a tragic hero,” Gary Wills wrote in “NixonAgonistes.”“He is the stuff of sad (almost heartbreaking) comedy.”
I think that’s a little unfair toNixon, but it’s dead on withTrump.
Itwould take a heart of stone not to laugh asTrumpfinally turns on the real Judas in his eyes: FoxNews (where I’m a contributor). The network, Trump tweeted, “forgot what made them successful, what got themthere. They forgot the Golden Goose. The biggest difference between the 2016 Election, and 2020, was @FoxNews!”
NevermindthatFoxwasNo. 1 inevery time slot more than a decade before Trumpdescended that escalator in 2015. Nevermind that for four years, Trump began his day with his PresidentialDaily Brief—“Fox and Friends”— and ended it with the prime-time gang. And never mind thatTrumpand the opinion side of the network remain in a deeply codependent relationship.
Trumpdidn’t get the unwavering, full-throated praise he needed, so now he’s thinking about creating a competing network, onewithout all the obvious antiTrumpbias!
Most presidents, if they’re remembered at all, get summarized with a single sentence. Whatever that sentence might have been before the election, Trump managed to rewrite it after the election: “Hewas a one-term presidentwhowas the first inAmerican history to refuse to concede or recognize the election results.”
George H.W. Bush, the last incumbent president to lose a reelection bid, left office (after graciously conceding) in fairly bad odor on the right. After eight years of Bill Clinton, however, nostalgia forBushwas so strong, his son parlayed his patronymic name into awinning presidential bid.
IfTrumphad followed a similar course, he (or perhaps his sybaritic scion, Donald Jr.) might have cashed in on similar nostalgia after four years of aBiden presidency almost certain to be seen as disastrous by those on the right. Instead, he has proven that those of uswho said “character is destiny” were right all along.
LetTrump continue to insist he didn’t really lose. It’s impossible to stop him, after all. Let thosewho believe him— or pretend to— continue tomarch and tweet and rant, including themany highly compensatedmedia personalities who’ve gotten rich off theTrumptrain.
But for the rest of us, the one thingwe won’t ever feel about theTrump presidency is nostalgia— not least because he won’t really be gone. Even after he leaves the WhiteHouse, he’ll be fighting for himself— and making surewe hear him— for the rest of his days.