President Donald Trump has spent his last weeks in office just like previous years: setting fire to the relationships that reinforced his rise to power.
In recent days, the president has floated primaries against first-rate Republicans, expelled administration officials who were basic allies, threatened major bills drafted in conjunction with his team, and activated officials who they will not help him cling to power. Within the White House, the response to all of this has been alarming, along with the waiver that this is the modus operandi of the 45th President of the United States. Trump’s deep self-interest is no secret. But never has this trait been so visible in such a consistent backdrop, with the attack of its legal team and administration on such blatantly undemocratic democratic processes.
“The president spent much of the Christmas weekend [at Mar-a-Lago] talking about other Republicans not doing what they wanted and acting like failures and defeatists, “said a person present at his private Florida club who was about to receive his complaints. Even behind closed doors, the source he said he “couldn’t find much to be happy about this Christmas.”
“You don’t want to go out like that with him. It’s not like you’re in a bunker at the end of World War II. You are in Crazy Town.”
– Sam Nunberg, former Trump political adviser
But Trump’s actions also raise questions about his future. And they have illuminated – once again – the fundamental paradox behind their political rise: how can someone burn so many bridges and finally not be alone?
“He’s no longer the tycoon’s tycoon as he was in New York, and now he’s part of … that exclusive Jimmy Carter, George HW Bush [one term president] club, ”said Sam Nunberg, a Trump supporter and former political adviser.“ He has gone from handling it in a way that would have helped him maintain that power base that now had to go through conspiracy theories and ceding the wallet to two cheeky idiots of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell … You don’t want to go out like that with him. It’s not like you’re in a bunker at the end of World War II. You’re in Crazy Town. “
Trump has always modeled himself as a bit of an iconoclast. Its rawness stood out even in New York City in the 1980s. His love for attention made him awake among his contemporaries. He first considered running for president as an independent. And even when he got the Republican Party nomination, it was under the framework of a hostile takeover.
A surprise of his time in office is that he remained so firmly on a traditional Republican agenda. But Trump was never really part of the party, at least not in any way recognizable to someone like his second in command Mike Pence. Nor was he a traditional politician. He showed no loyalty to his aides or his legislators, nor to his cabinet members. He fired people on Twitter, mocked his Republican Party detractors, ran away from his apostates and punished the leadership when they were not complacent.
And yet, even by these standards, the last few days have seemed shocking to them for their destruction. Trump has attacked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for admitting that Joe Biden is president-elect; is threatened with primary senator John Thune (RS.D.) for not going along with efforts to block election certification; fired Attorney General Bill Barr for not doing enough to tip the election with departmental resources; has turned to his White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, for not supporting authoritarian initiatives such as the confiscation of voting machines; and reduced an agreement to give the annexation of Western Sahara to Morocco partly in retaliation against Senator James Inhofe (an opponent of the annexation), who would not use a major defense bill to persecute the giants of the social media like Trump. He has attacked Republican leadership in Georgia just as the state is preparing for by-elections that could determine control of the U.S. Senate.
More recently, he took a flashlight to a COVID relief bill negotiated by his own secretary of the treasury and threatened not to sign a government funding bill for provisions that largely coincided with the requests he made. make your own budget office. And for those who have complained that his behavior has been erratic and deeply problematic, he has extended two giant middle fingers.
“I don’t care,” Trump said in private in recent days about conservative criticism of his opposition to funding bills, according to two people familiar with the matter. Instead, Trump has accused his GOP pursuers of not doing enough he, said the sources. One person who spoke to Trump gently told the president that his passage through relief legislation could make life difficult for his Republican allies in DC and Georgia, only for Trump to respond by saying (as this source paraphrased): “Well, this it is life “. The president then quickly set about getting excited about how these elected Republicans should focus more on the 2020 election “fraud” and nullify Joe Biden’s clear victory, and complained that they weren’t fighting hard enough. aggressively nor did they maintain a united front on it, the source explained. .
That Trump would stop considering his party and use the best aides in a time of coercion surely would not have been a surprise to those who were on the verge of change. Few, if any, relations with Trump end in a better place than where they began.
Take Nunberg. When he joined the Trump campaign, it was even though, in his words, Trump had “swept my father’s signature with money.” But years can pass, and Nunberg said he saw something historic in what Trump was doing. So he got on board. And, for a while, it worked. Until he did. He was fired after racist posts on Facebook were unearthed on his page. He claimed they were not his at the time, but later apologized for the posts in an interview with MSNBC.
The Trump campaign quickly distanced itself from Nunberg and Trump sued his former aide for $ 10 million in 2016, claiming he had violated a confidentiality agreement by speaking to the press. The two settled the lawsuit later that year.
Looking back now, Nunberg believes Trump “ruined my career.” And it won’t be the only one either, he predicts. “Hope Hicks,” he said, “should have stayed on Fox [Corps]”Corey Lewandowski, predicted about Trump’s only 2016 campaign manager and his enemy,” will be a low rent in New Hampshire again in no time. “
Others have even less certain futures. Senior administration officials, such as John McEntee and Dan Scavino, have operated in Trump’s White House with great influence, the former being the president’s purge leader, the latter one of Trump’s most trusted advisers and the director. of origin from much of the United States. home social networks and messaging MAGA. Both are avatars of the Republican operator who at the moment is so tied to the outgoing president that it’s hard to imagine his public life without him as a vehicle. Trump’s 2020 campaign director Brad Parscale suffered notable public infamy after he was removed from his post and when police were called to his home. Other aides have been forced to endure the legal drama — and the massive laws they have entailed — political isolation and uncertain returns to the private sector. Some have been pardoned in recent days. But these pardons carry an infamy.
Nunberg, for his part, could not explain why people were attracted to Trump knowing the damage he would cause them. Some, he suspected, want the proximity of power. Others believe they can shape it. Many see how they make money. But much of it was a mystery.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Nunberg said. “I was the one who was worst abused by anyone.”