"It's Over"

[brooklynite]

The Atlantic

On a day like this, you’d expect the West Wing to be teeming with people. Normally you’d see aides crowding the hallways, or reporters in a single-file line outside Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s doorway. The West Wing halls accessible to the press have a desultory vibe, more like a temp agency than the beating heart of the free world. As I wandered, a handful of aides worked at their desks and talked quietly among themselves. Not one wore a mask, befitting the COVID-19 denialism that has turned the complex into a breeding ground of infection.

They’re caretakers for a White House that is shutting down. And for the most part, the people who work in the building know it. None of the advisers and aides I’ve spoken with over the past couple of weeks is under any illusion that Trump will serve a second term. They realize it’s over, though one aide, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk more freely, told me that they’ve gotten no guidance from senior officials on what will happen come noon on January 20, when Trump’s term constitutionally ends.

“I don’t know of anybody in the building who thinks there will be anything but a Biden inauguration on January 20, and quite frankly, I think that includes Trump on most days,” one former official told me. Trump hasn’t admitted as much. Yet, in rare moments of clarity, he seems to acknowledge the obvious. At his Georgia rally last night, he slipped into the past tense when talking about his dealings with North Korea, offering what sounded like a valedictory. “I got along very well with Kim Jong Un,” he said of the country’s leader.

“He knows he lost,” Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, told me. “He may buy the conspiracy theories that he reads on Twitter, but at the end of the day, he knows he lost. He realizes that for the next 10 years of his life, he’ll have to answer for this, and he wants to be able to say it was stolen. It’s all about him and his pride right now.”

One person close to the White House has said that privately, Trump talks about his postpresidential plans as opposed to any kind of second-term agenda. Another friend, Chris Ruddy, the CEO of the conservative news outlet Newsmax, told me that Trump may discover that life outside the White House is in some respects a happier existence than inside. “I think he’s going to like being a former president,” Ruddy said. “You have a lot of influence.”

[volstork]

1. "I think he's going to like being a former president," Ruddy said. "You have a lot of influence."

[niyad]

2. Hey, ruddy, I hope that he finds life after his disgraceful, thieving, murderous, traitorous tenure

very confining. Even if not in prison, I hope his days are consumed with litigation, lawsuits, investigations. I hope that in every minute of every day and night of his useless, misbegotten life, he feels and hears the anguish of all who have suffered and died because of his actions and inactions, all over the world. I hope he finds that he is welcome nowhere, not even russia.

In short, may he receive everything he deserves.

[tanyev]

3. He would like being a former president.

Just flinging tweet bombs and golfing all the time with none of the expectations that you are actually responsible for things. He'll love it--until the criminal indictments start catching up to him.