WASHINGTON – With 13 days to go before the end of his term, President Donald Trump finally bowed to reality Thursday amid growing talks to try to force him out soon, acknowledging he will leave peacefully after Congress affirms his defeat.
Trump directed a video from the White House condemning the violence that took place on his behalf a day earlier at the Capitol. Then, for the first time in the chamber, he admitted that his presidency would end soon, although he declined to mention President-elect Joe Biden by name or explicitly stated that he had lost.
“A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20,” Trump said in the video. “My focus now is on ensuring a smooth, orderly and smooth transition of power. This moment requires healing and reconciliation. “
The address, which seemed designed to avoid the discussion of an early forced eviction, came at the end of a day when the cornered president was left out of sight at the White House. Silenced in some of his favorite lines of communication over the Internet, he saw the resignations of several top councilors, including two cabinet secretaries.
And while officials swept away the aftermath of the pro-Trump mafia siege of the U.S. Capitol, there was a growing discussion about the indictment for the second time or the invocation of the 25th Amendment to expel him from office. Oval.
The invasion of the Capitol building, a powerful symbol of the nation’s democracy, shocked Republicans and Democrats alike. They struggled with the best way to contain the impulses of a president who is considered too dangerous to control his own social media accounts, but who remains the commander-in-chief of the world’s largest army.
“I don’t care about the next election, I care about spending the next 14 days,” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of Trump’s strongest allies. He condemned the president’s role in Wednesday’s riots and said, “If anything else happens, all options would be on the table.”
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that “the president of the United States provoked an armed insurrection against America.” She called him “a very dangerous person who should not continue in office. It is urgent, an emergency of the utmost magnitude. “
Neither of Trump’s two removal options seemed likely, as there was little time left for drafting members of the Cabinet to invoke the amendment or arrange for hearings and forced trial for a removal. But the fact that dramatic options were even discussed in Washington’s power corridors served as a warning to Trump.
Fears of what a desperate president could do in his last days spread to the nation’s capital and beyond, including speculation, Trump could incite more violence, make hasty appointments, issue ill-conceived pardons, including for him and his family, or even trigger a destabilizer. international incident.
The president’s video on Thursday, which was posted when he returned to Twitter after restoring his account, was a complete reversal of what he posted just 24 hours earlier, in which he told the violent crowd, “We love you. very special “. His refusal to condemn the violence sparked a storm of criticism and, in the new video, he finally denounced the “illegality and chaos” of the protesters.
As for his feelings in leaving office, he told the nation that “acting as president has been the honor of my entire life” while hinting at returning to the public scene. He told fans that “our amazing journey is just beginning.”
Just a day earlier, Trump unleashed destructive forces on the Capitol with his unfounded claims of election fraud at a rally that motivated supporters to break certification in Congress of Biden’s victory. Following the Capitol assault and the eventual certification of Biden’s arrival by members of Congress, Trump issued a statement acknowledging that he would abide by a peaceful transfer of power on January 20th.
The statement was posted by an aide and did not originate on the president’s own Twitter account, which has 88 million followers and has been wielded for four years as a political weapon dictating politics and sowing division and conspiracy.
Trump couldn’t do it for yourself because, for the first time, the social media platform suspended his account claiming the president had breached his rules of service inciting violence. Facebook adopted a broader ban and said Trump’s account would be offline until after Biden took office.
Deprived of that vital blood of social media, Trump remained silent and embedded in the executive mansion until Thursday evening. But around him, the loyalists headed for the exits, their exits, which would arrive anyway in two weeks, rose to protest the management of the riot by the president.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao became the first cabinet member to resign. Chao, married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the lawmakers trapped at the Capitol on Wednesday, said in a message to staff that the attack “has deeply worried me in a way I just can’t stop. band “.
She was followed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. On Thursday, in his resignation letter, DeVos blamed Trump for igniting tensions in the violent attack on the nation’s headquarters of democracy. “You can’t go wrong with the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it’s the turning point for me,” he wrote.
Others who resigned in the wake of the riot: Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger; Ryan Tully, senior director of European and Russian affairs for the National Security Council; and First Lady Chief of Staff Melania Trump, Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary.
Mick Mulvaney, a former Trump chief of staff who has become a special envoy to Northern Ireland, told CNBC he had called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “to let him know he was resigning. … I can’t do that. I can’t stay. “
Mulvaney said others working for Trump had decided to remain in office in an effort to provide some sort of railing for the president during his last days in office.
“Those who choose to stay, and I’ve talked to some of them, choose to stay because they care about the president putting someone worse off,” Mulvaney said.
Mulvaney’s predecessor in the post of chief of staff, retired U.S. Marine Corps General John Kelly, told CNN that “I think the cabinet should meet and discuss” on section 4 of the 25th amendment, allowing for the forceful removal of Trump by his own cabinet.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer joined Pelosi in declaring that Trump “should not hold office one more day” and urged Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to act. But Chao’s departure may slow down nascent efforts to invoke the amendment.
According to two people reported on the talks, staff-level discussions on the issue took place in various departments and even in some parts of the White House. But no cabinet member has publicly expressed support for the move, which would make Pence the incumbent president, though several were believed to be sympathetic to the notion, believing Trump is too volatile in his diminishing days in office.
In the western wing, the impacted aides gathered, following a delayed directive to begin withdrawing their seats before the Biden team arrived. The slowdown before now was due to Trump concentrating on his defeat from election day at the expense of the rest of his responsibilities.
Most clearly, it included the fight against the furious coronavirus that is killing a record number of Americans every day.
Few aides made sense of the president’s plans, and some wondered if Trump would stay out of sight until he left the White House. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany read a brief statement stating that the siege of the Capitol was “horrible, reprehensible and antithetical in the American way.”
But his words carried little weight. Trump has long made it clear that only he speaks for his presidency.
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Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed the Washington information.