Wednesday, December 16, 2020

CNN: "Trump Has Told Some Advisers He Will Refuse To Leave White House"
("Increasingly Entrenched In His Denial, Devising Ways To Exact Revenge")

Pamela Brown, Kevin Liptak and Jeremy Diamond, CNN, December 16, 2020
The Electoral College's affirmation of President-elect Joe Biden's win this week did not appear enough to shake Trump from his delusions of victory, but it is adding urgency to a push by several of his advisers to gently steer Trump toward reality. . . .

Yet even amid the intractable movement of the transition and the hurried lame-duck activity -- some of which he is participating in himself -- Trump is steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that he lost. 

In his moments of deepest denial, Trump has told some advisers that he will refuse to leave the White House on Inauguration Day, only to be walked down from that ledge. The possibility has alarmed some aides, but few believe Trump will actually follow through.

"He's throwing a f***ing temper tantrum," an adviser said. "He's going to leave. He's just lashing out."

The White House declined to comment for this report.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged Biden as the president-elect for the first time . . . Overnight, Trump lashed out at McConnell. "People are angry!" he tweeted, linking to an article about his allies criticizing the Republican leader for his move. . . .

Efforts to convince Trump to accept his loss have run up against a President who seems to be increasingly entrenched in his denial of Biden's win, egged on by advisers like Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis who are misleading Trump about the extent of voting irregularities and the prospects of a reversal.

While Trump had begun to privately accept the reality that he lost the election late last month, advisers say Trump has now reversed and dug in deeper -- not only spreading misinformation about the election, but ingesting it himself.

"He's been fed so much misinformation that I think he actually thinks this thing was stolen from him," a Trump adviser said of the President.

Despite his interest in pardons, almost all of Trump's energy over the past six weeks has been spent mulling his loss and devising ways to contest it. When he is not phoning Republican lawmakers to assess their willingness to help him overturn the election results, he is busy devising ways to exact revenge on those he believes abandoned him, including the Republican governors of Arizona and Georgia; hosts and executives at Fox News; certain members of Congress; and key members of his Cabinet, including outgoing Attorney General William Barr. . . .

Inside the White House, on the rare occasion that talk turns to Inauguration Day or life post-January 20, Trump all but shuts down. He has made clear to staff in recent days that he has no desire to discuss whether or not he'll attend Biden's swearing-in and has largely shut down any conversations about leaving office . . . 

Six weeks after Election Day, Trump has spent more than half of his days with no public appearances, showing little interest in the daily work of being president. In all, there have been 20 days with no public events at all listed on Trump's schedule in the weeks since Election Day, and zero intelligence briefings. He's held 13 public appearances open to the press, conducted a single on-camera interview, and taken questions from reporters on only two occasions. By contrast, he has spent nine days on his golf course.
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