WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump left many clues to try to burn the place as he walked out the door.
The tracks stretched throughout his life to refuse to acknowledge defeat. They encompassed a presidency marked by crude and angry rhetoric, inflated conspiracy theories, and a kind of fellowship with “patriots” drawn from the burgeoning ranks of right-wing extremists. The clues have piled up at the speed of light when Trump lost the election and did not admit it.
The culmination of all that came on Wednesday when Trump supporters, urged by the president to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” against a “stolen” election, demolished and occupied the building in an explosive confrontation that left a Capitol police officer and four others killed.
The crowd there was so excited by Trump’s sending to a rally that his henchmen were broadcast live sweeping the place. They thought Trump had his back.
After all, this was the president who had responded to a right-wing plot to kidnap the Democratic governor of Michigan last year with the comment: “Maybe it was a problem. Maybe it wasn’t like that.”
Throughout the arc of his presidency and his life, by his own words and actions, Trump hated losing and would have none when it happened. He turned bankruptcies into successes, reversals of office into brilliant successes, the stain of dismissal into martyrdom.
Then came the final loss, elections, and desperate machinations that politicians compared to the practices of the “banana republics” or the “Third World,” but which were entirely American in the twilight of the Trump presidency.
Often with a wink and a nod to the last four tears, sometimes more directly, “We love you,” he told the Capitol Hill crowd as he softly suggested to the clashes to go home now. – Trump made the common cause with marginal elements eager to give him affirmation in exchange for his respect.
This caused a fuel mix when the stakes were higher. The elements had been attached to sight, often in missives sent by tweet. (On Friday, Twitter banned Trump’s account, denying him his chosen megaphone, “because of the risk of inciting violence.”
“I wish I could say we couldn’t see it coming,” President-elect Joe Biden said of the Capitol’s melee. “It simply came to our notice then. We could see it coming. “
Mary Trump saw that it came from her unique point of view as a clinical psychologist and Trump’s niece.
“It’s a very old emotion he’s never been able to process since he was a kid: terrified of the consequences of losing his position, terrified of being responsible for his actions for the first time in his life.” he told PBS a week after the election.
“He’s in the losing position, which in my family was definitely the worst it could be,” he said. “So he feels trapped, he finds himself desperate … more and more enraged.”
Post-election problems were predictable, because Trump said it would happen if he lost.
Months before the vote, he claimed the system was fixed and plans to vote by mail were fraudulent, attacking the process relentlessly which may have affected his chances by discouraging his supporters from voting by mail. He refused to assure the country in advance that he would respect the outcome, which he should not ask most presidents to do.
Before the election, there was no evidence that they were tainted and there was no evidence after the massive fraud or gross error that he and his team alleged in a series of lawsuits that judges, whether appointed by Republicans, Democrats or Trump himself, systematically fired, often as nonsense. The Supreme Court, with three judges put by Trump, left him out.
That didn’t stop him.
“I hate defeat,” he said in a 2011 video. “I can’t stand defeat.”
But the aftermath of the election ultimately left him with no alternative but his standing soldiers, who also couldn’t seem to lose him.
Trump’s history of advancing false and sometimes racist conspiracies rooted in right-wing extremism is long.
He praised supporters of QAnon, a complicated pro-Trump conspiracy theory, saying he didn’t know much about the movement “other than that I understand I like it a lot” and “it’s gaining popularity.”
QAnon focuses on an alleged anonymous, high-ranking government official known as the “Q” who shares information about a “deep state” against Trump. The FBI has warned that conspiracy theory-driven extremists, such as QAnon, are national terrorist threats.
In 2017, Trump said there was “blame on both sides” for deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, the site of a clash between white supremacist groups and those protesting them. He said there were “good people” on both sides.
And during a debate with Biden, Trump would not criticize neo-fascists Proud Boys. Instead, Trump said the group should “stay behind and stand by.” The comment caused a firestorm and a day later he tried to back it up.
Trump did not condemn the actions of an Illinois teenager accused of fatally shooting two people and injuring a third during summer protests on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kyle Rittenhouse pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In October, he chose not to denounce the people who plotted the kidnapping of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. “When our leaders meet, encourage or fraternize with national terrorists, they legitimize their actions and are complicit,” he said. “When they feed and contribute to hate speech, they are complicit.”
For Mary Trump, the way she defeated her uncle helped lay the groundwork for the toxicity she said prior to November.
Republicans in the Senate and House races outnumbered it, expanding their minority in the House and retaining a Senate majority until Georgia’s two elections this month tipped the Senate’s balance sheet to Democrats.
His defeat was on November 3, not the match. “So he doesn’t have anyone else to blame either,” his niece said. “So I think he’s probably in a position where no one can help him emotionally and psychologically, which will make the rest of us worse.”
It got worse.
Oren Segal, vice president of the Center Against Extremism of the Anti-Defamation League, on Wednesday called the attack a “logical conclusion of extremism and uncontrolled hatred” during Trump’s presidency.
“If it surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention,” said Amy Spitalnick of Integrity First, a civil rights group that was involved in 2017 Charlottesville violence lawsuits.
Thursday night, Trump stabbed a unifying message, after months of provocation, and said in a video “this moment calls for healing and reconciliation.”
But on Friday he again took care of “his great American patriots” and demanded that they be treated fairly, and said he would not go to Biden’s inauguration.
He acknowledged that his presidency was coming to an end, but could not acknowledge defeat.
For all the insulting nicknames he has branded his political enemies: sleepy, brittle, crying, corrupt, crazy, small, dead brain, crazy, pencil neck, low IQ, watermelon head, mannequin, wacky, sick puppy, low energy: none intended to bite more than “loser”. It seems that nothing stung more than when the loser was him.