In His Final Month in Office, Trump Works Overtime to Drag the GOP Down With Him [View all]

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In His Final Month in Office, Trump Works Overtime to Drag the GOP Down With Him
KISS OF DEATH
The president has turned on a huge number of Republicans who aided his rise to power. And that’s just in the past week.
Sam Stein, Politics Editor
Asawin Suebsaeng, White House Reporter
Updated Dec. 27, 2020 1:57AM ET / Published Dec. 26, 2020 9:46PM ET


President Donald Trump has spent his final weeks in office much as he has the preceding years: setting fire to the relationships that buttressed his rise to power.

Over the past few days, the president has floated primaries against top-ranking Republicans, pushed out administration officials who were bedrock allies, threatened major bills crafted in conjunction with his team, and turned on officials who won’t help him cling to power. Inside the White House, the response to it all has been growing alarm, coupled with resignation that this is the 45th U.S. president’s modus operandi. Trump’s profound self-interest is no secret. But never has that trait been so visible against a backdrop this consequential, with his legal team and administration’s attack on democratic processes so blatantly anti-democratic.

“The president spent much of the Christmas weekend [at Mar-a-Lago] talking about other Republicans who weren’t doing what he wanted and acting like failures and defeatists,” said one person present at his private Florida club who was on the receiving end of his grievances. Even behind closed doors, the source said, “he was not finding much to be happy about this Christmas.”

But Trump’s actions raise questions about his future as well. And they have illuminated—once more—the fundamental paradox behind his political rise: How can someone burn so many bridges and not eventually find himself alone?

“He is no longer the celebrity mogul magnate as he was in New York, and now he is part of… that exclusive Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush [one term president] club,” said Sam Nunberg, a Trump supporter and former political adviser. “He has gone from handling this in a manner that would have helped him keep this power base that he had to now going through conspiracy theories and giving over the portfolio to two bumbling morons in Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell… You don’t want to go out like this with him. It’s not like you’re in a bunker at the end of WWII. You’re in Crazy Town.”

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