Former President Donald Trump was audible, if not visible, all day Monday, and the effect is to keep him at the forefront of the Republican Party conversation.
His unwillingness, or inability, to let himself down is exactly what many Trump observers expected, but a clear separation from the behavior of other former presidents.
“The president’s club code is to step out of the way and let the new commander-in-chief have a year or two,” CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said.
But Trump is so narcissistic that he “can’t accept being out of the spotlight for a day,” Brinkley concluded.
Lately, Trump has been doing what is natural to him: dictating tweet-like statements, calling for conservative gatherings, and generally causing trouble. “I like it more than Twitter,” he told Newsmax. “In fact, they did us a favor. That’s better.”
Trump has shown no courtesy to President Joe Biden since he left the White House. On the contrary, he has repeatedly insisted on the Biden administration.
On Monday evening, on the phone with one of his biggest sycophants, Greg Kelly of Newsmax, Kelly speculated about Biden’s mental faculties, prompting Trump to say “there’s something” going on with Biden. Trump then questioned “whether or not he understands what he signs” when bills cross his desk.
Trump is the first U.S. president to lose re-election in nearly thirty years. The last president who failed to win a second term, George HW Bush, “made it clear that he hoped to retire from public life,” according to Bush’s biography of historian Tim Naftali.
Naftali said Bush told his successor, Bill Clinton, in November 1992 that “when he leaves here, he will have no problem with me.”
The outgoing president added: “I will do nothing to complicate your work and I just want you to know.”
Since then, it has gradually increased its visibility, with emails to members of the media of “45 Office” so far in March, twice as much as in February. His “Save America PAC” has also become quite active in recent weeks, with numerous endorsements, criticism of “RINO” and blatant statements to the media.
Trump seemed aware of his media focus during a podcast recording with Lisa Boothe, which was released Monday morning. Trump was Boothe’s inaugural guest, which means the podcast doesn’t yet have a large profile or a large number of followers. Trump said in a statement that he has been doing “exceptional work” on Fox, so he may have wanted to give a boost to his new podcast.
In the conversation, Trump said “people have seen some silence” from him, “but in reality, if we look at what has happened over the last period of time, we send out communiqués. They are being picked up much better. than any tweet “.
Trump told Boothe that he now believes official statements to the public are “much more elegant than a tweet, and I think it picks up better. You’re seeing it.”
“Collected” was the key phrase. The need for pickup, that is, the attention of the American media, is at the heart of Trump’s post-presidential actions.
Instead of flying to a vacation destination and writing a memoir, try to stay relevant and on the media radar. And he continues to push the incendiary claims that led to the January 6 uprising, about winning the 2020 election and Biden stole from him, despite the included petitions of his own party to stop lying.
“The only thing about Trump is that he wants to do a lot of racket and get attention after he leaves the White House,” Brinkley said. “And it comes from his psychological belief that he remains the true president.”
In the podcast with Boothe, Trump falsely said that “we won, and they took them.”
“He’s desperate,” Brinkley said, “to let people know“ I didn’t throw in the towel, I didn’t go anywhere, keep covering me ”.
Brinkley likened Trump to “an active political hand grenade, ready to exploit the American political system as best it can. And it begins by threatening Republicans who have crossed it. It is determined to ensure that it remains Trump’s party.”
He has at his disposal several television channels that seem willing to help.
Last week Trump called Fox for a live interview with Maria Bartiromo. The next day, his comments on Bartiromo were in strong rotation on other right-wing networks and outlets.
In some cases, networks are looking for it clearly. On Monday, when he called Harris Faulkner’s afternoon show on Fox, Faulkner asked him why he felt the need to issue a statement attacking National Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: “Why did he feel he needed this issue?”
“Well,” Trump said, “you called me, I didn’t call you, in all fairness.”
For Kelly, he defended the possibility of a new social platform, saying that “something will happen with social media if I want it to happen.”
At the end of the interview, Kelly looked stunned. “Very great,” he said, “the president of the United States,” forgetting to call Trump the former president.