T's and 's to our Florida friends
President Trump will leave Washington this week politically wounded, silenced on social media and essentially unwelcome in his lifelong hometown of New York.
By migrating instead to Palm Beach, Fla., Trump plans to inhabit an alternative reality of adoration and affirmation. The defeated president will take up residence at his gilded Mar-a-Lago Club, where dues-paying members applaud him whenever he eats meals or mingles on the deck. He is sure to take in the same celebratory fervor whenever he plays golf at one of the two Trump-branded courses nearby.
In Florida — one of only two top battleground states Trump won in November — Trump will be living in a veritable MAGA oasis, to use the acronym for his “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan. South Florida has fast become a hub of right-wing power brokers and media characters, and some of Trump’s adult children are making plans to move to the area.
Trump is impeached, again | Impeachment This Week
A week after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, the House passed one article of impeachment against the president for inciting an insurrection. (The Washington Post)
Even as Trump broods privately over his second impeachment this past week and the election he continues to falsely insist he won, his aides are at work to establish a Trump fiefdom in the Sunshine State aimed at maintaining his influence over Republican politics, according to allies and advisers, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions.
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Some of Trump’s associates are buzzing about a possible presidential library and museum — likely located, yes, in Florida — and about the birth of a family dynasty, should his children, Donald Jr. or Ivanka, someday run for political office. Florida is seen as a better launchpad for the Trumps than New York, given the outgoing president’s popularity in the former. Some in Trump’s orbit are talking up the idea of Ivanka possibly running for Senate in 2022, when the term of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will be up.
Trump has become something of a pariah in the nation’s capital of Washington and its financial center of New York in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol that he incited, but Florida offers him a place to try to rehabilitate himself.
Newsmax chief executive Christopher Ruddy, a longtime Trump friend and Mar-a-Lago member, predicted that the president would remain a powerful force in politics and the media regardless of his current woes.
“We don’t know what legal issues are going to arise, but discounting those, I think he’s going to remain a global force,” Ruddy said. “I think he’s going to like being post-president more than he liked being president, because you have a lot of the perks without as many of the restrictions.”
Then-President-elect Donald Trump makes a statement to the media at Mar-a-Lago on Dec. 28, 2016. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Trump may have imagined a mischief-making, mega-rally farewell — complete with a tease about reclaiming the White House in 2024 — to draw attention from President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration and to remind fellow Republicans that he still rules the roost.
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But there will be no such grand departure in the wake of the Capitol insurrection.
Trump instead is winding down his presidency largely out of public view, though he still intends to take some actions in his four days remaining as president. There remain sharp disputes among the president and his advisers about a final round of pardons he may issue, including for members of the Trump family, according to people familiar with the discussions. The president continues to talk about wanting to pardon himself, they said.
The White House is a fortress guarded by armed military ahead of Wednesday’s inauguration and now practically deserted. “It looks like a war zone around here,” one official said.
Trump is isolated and angry at aides for failing to defend him as he is impeached again
Aides spent last week boxing up their offices and desks — White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’s wife, Debbie, was spotted packing a taxidermy bird into an SUV. Aides posed for goodbye photos; snared oversized framed snapshots of Trump’s presidency from West Wing walls; and scavenged for challenge coins and other mementos.
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Staffers stood on West Executive Drive for a big send-off Thursday for Larry Kudlow, the National Economic Council director and one of the most well-liked figures in the West Wing.
Four years of roaring commotion are ending in a whimper. An aggrieved Trump has told aides he is uninterested in doing ceremonial events, a senior administration official said.
Other than flying last Tuesday to Texas to autograph a piece of the soaring steel border wall his administration constructed, Trump has demurred on suggestions from advisers to spend his final days touting his achievements and attempting to burnish his legacy.
Marine One carrying President Trump departs from the South Lawn at the White House on Tuesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Rather, Trump has been consumed with anger over his impeachment Wednesday by the House for inciting the Capitol riot, advisers said. He is also upset by the silence from many of his most vigorous defenders, and is nursing feelings of betrayal from Republican congressional leaders, they said.
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As aides visited with him to say goodbye and take farewell pictures, Trump complained bitterly about Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and other Republicans who voted to impeach him. “They’ll have primaries, all of them,” one aide recalled Trump saying Thursday.
Homing in on Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), who voted for impeachment, the president referred to himself in the third person and remarked, “You can’t vote against Trump in South Carolina,” according to the aide, who like some others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations.
Some aides have tried to explain to Trump that these and many other members of Congress are angry about the attack and scared for their lives, but the president has often returned to his popularity among Republican voters in their districts and has shown no remorse for his role in the riot, two officials said.
The president as pariah: Trump faces a torrent of retribution over his role in Capitol siege
Aides said Trump has occasionally brought up the Georgia Senate races unprompted with them, arguing that he is not to blame for the two Republicans, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, losing their seats in the Jan. 5 runoff elections — and that the candidates, particularly Loeffler, were bad.
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Michael D’Antonio, a Trump biographer, said the president’s state of victimhood fits the narrative he has concocted for his entire life.
“This is the end that he would have scripted for himself, actually,” D’Antonio said. “He has always imagined himself as an embattled person. He’s talked about life itself being a constant struggle for survival and how he’s surrounded by enemies . . . that the world conspires against him and that he is a lonely hero who is underappreciated and besieged.”
My Pillow founder Mike Lindell is seen outside the door of the West Wing at the White House on Friday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
My Pillow executive Mike Lindell’s notes as he enters the West Wing on Friday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
One of Trump’s final Oval Office visitors was Mike Lindell, the My Pillow founder and television pitchman, who showed up Friday afternoon brandishing notes that he said were from a lawyer, whom he would not identify, advising to institute “martial law” and install Trump loyalist Kash Patel in CIA leadership.
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Lindell, a vociferous supporter of the president, spent the afternoon at the White House but said in an interview that he left unsatisfied. “I had to make an appointment like everyone else,” he said. “People were lined up to see him.”
Lindell claimed ignorance about the contents of the memo, which was partially captured by a Washington Post photographer as Lindell waited to enter the White House.
“I didn’t know what was in it,” he said. “I didn’t know who some of the people even were.” He explained that the unnamed lawyer asked him, “If you get a meeting, can you drop this off?”
Lindell said he presented his information to the president for about five minutes before Trump referred him to the White House Counsel’s Office. He also argued that China and Russia hacked the election, bringing a false article from the American Report, a conspiracy-theory right-wing website, as his evidence.
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President Trump will leave Washington this week politically wounded, silenced on social media and essentially unwelcome in his lifelong hometown of New York.
By migrating instead to Palm Beach, Fla., Trump plans to inhabit an alternative reality of adoration and affirmation. The defeated president will take up residence at his gilded Mar-a-Lago Club, where dues-paying members applaud him whenever he eats meals or mingles on the deck. He is sure to take in the same celebratory fervor whenever he plays golf at one of the two Trump-branded courses nearby.
In Florida — one of only two top battleground states Trump won in November — Trump will be living in a veritable MAGA oasis, to use the acronym for his “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan. South Florida has fast become a hub of right-wing power brokers and media characters, and some of Trump’s adult children are making plans to move to the area.
Trump is impeached, again | Impeachment This Week
A week after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, the House passed one article of impeachment against the president for inciting an insurrection. (The Washington Post)
Even as Trump broods privately over his second impeachment this past week and the election he continues to falsely insist he won, his aides are at work to establish a Trump fiefdom in the Sunshine State aimed at maintaining his influence over Republican politics, according to allies and advisers, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions.
AD
Some of Trump’s associates are buzzing about a possible presidential library and museum — likely located, yes, in Florida — and about the birth of a family dynasty, should his children, Donald Jr. or Ivanka, someday run for political office. Florida is seen as a better launchpad for the Trumps than New York, given the outgoing president’s popularity in the former. Some in Trump’s orbit are talking up the idea of Ivanka possibly running for Senate in 2022, when the term of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will be up.
Trump has become something of a pariah in the nation’s capital of Washington and its financial center of New York in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol that he incited, but Florida offers him a place to try to rehabilitate himself.
Newsmax chief executive Christopher Ruddy, a longtime Trump friend and Mar-a-Lago member, predicted that the president would remain a powerful force in politics and the media regardless of his current woes.
“We don’t know what legal issues are going to arise, but discounting those, I think he’s going to remain a global force,” Ruddy said. “I think he’s going to like being post-president more than he liked being president, because you have a lot of the perks without as many of the restrictions.”
Then-President-elect Donald Trump makes a statement to the media at Mar-a-Lago on Dec. 28, 2016. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Trump may have imagined a mischief-making, mega-rally farewell — complete with a tease about reclaiming the White House in 2024 — to draw attention from President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration and to remind fellow Republicans that he still rules the roost.
AD
But there will be no such grand departure in the wake of the Capitol insurrection.
Trump instead is winding down his presidency largely out of public view, though he still intends to take some actions in his four days remaining as president. There remain sharp disputes among the president and his advisers about a final round of pardons he may issue, including for members of the Trump family, according to people familiar with the discussions. The president continues to talk about wanting to pardon himself, they said.
The White House is a fortress guarded by armed military ahead of Wednesday’s inauguration and now practically deserted. “It looks like a war zone around here,” one official said.
Trump is isolated and angry at aides for failing to defend him as he is impeached again
Aides spent last week boxing up their offices and desks — White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’s wife, Debbie, was spotted packing a taxidermy bird into an SUV. Aides posed for goodbye photos; snared oversized framed snapshots of Trump’s presidency from West Wing walls; and scavenged for challenge coins and other mementos.
AD
Staffers stood on West Executive Drive for a big send-off Thursday for Larry Kudlow, the National Economic Council director and one of the most well-liked figures in the West Wing.
Four years of roaring commotion are ending in a whimper. An aggrieved Trump has told aides he is uninterested in doing ceremonial events, a senior administration official said.
Other than flying last Tuesday to Texas to autograph a piece of the soaring steel border wall his administration constructed, Trump has demurred on suggestions from advisers to spend his final days touting his achievements and attempting to burnish his legacy.
Marine One carrying President Trump departs from the South Lawn at the White House on Tuesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Rather, Trump has been consumed with anger over his impeachment Wednesday by the House for inciting the Capitol riot, advisers said. He is also upset by the silence from many of his most vigorous defenders, and is nursing feelings of betrayal from Republican congressional leaders, they said.
AD
As aides visited with him to say goodbye and take farewell pictures, Trump complained bitterly about Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and other Republicans who voted to impeach him. “They’ll have primaries, all of them,” one aide recalled Trump saying Thursday.
Homing in on Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), who voted for impeachment, the president referred to himself in the third person and remarked, “You can’t vote against Trump in South Carolina,” according to the aide, who like some others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations.
Some aides have tried to explain to Trump that these and many other members of Congress are angry about the attack and scared for their lives, but the president has often returned to his popularity among Republican voters in their districts and has shown no remorse for his role in the riot, two officials said.
The president as pariah: Trump faces a torrent of retribution over his role in Capitol siege
Aides said Trump has occasionally brought up the Georgia Senate races unprompted with them, arguing that he is not to blame for the two Republicans, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, losing their seats in the Jan. 5 runoff elections — and that the candidates, particularly Loeffler, were bad.
AD
Michael D’Antonio, a Trump biographer, said the president’s state of victimhood fits the narrative he has concocted for his entire life.
“This is the end that he would have scripted for himself, actually,” D’Antonio said. “He has always imagined himself as an embattled person. He’s talked about life itself being a constant struggle for survival and how he’s surrounded by enemies . . . that the world conspires against him and that he is a lonely hero who is underappreciated and besieged.”
My Pillow founder Mike Lindell is seen outside the door of the West Wing at the White House on Friday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
My Pillow executive Mike Lindell’s notes as he enters the West Wing on Friday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
One of Trump’s final Oval Office visitors was Mike Lindell, the My Pillow founder and television pitchman, who showed up Friday afternoon brandishing notes that he said were from a lawyer, whom he would not identify, advising to institute “martial law” and install Trump loyalist Kash Patel in CIA leadership.
AD
Lindell, a vociferous supporter of the president, spent the afternoon at the White House but said in an interview that he left unsatisfied. “I had to make an appointment like everyone else,” he said. “People were lined up to see him.”
Lindell claimed ignorance about the contents of the memo, which was partially captured by a Washington Post photographer as Lindell waited to enter the White House.
“I didn’t know what was in it,” he said. “I didn’t know who some of the people even were.” He explained that the unnamed lawyer asked him, “If you get a meeting, can you drop this off?”
Lindell said he presented his information to the president for about five minutes before Trump referred him to the White House Counsel’s Office. He also argued that China and Russia hacked the election, bringing a false article from the American Report, a conspiracy-theory right-wing website, as his evidence.
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