WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump has left many clues that he would try to set the place on fire on the way out.
The clues spread about a life where we refuse to admit defeat. They spanned a presidency characterized by raw, angry rhetoric, inflated conspiracy theories, and a kind of community of “patriots” from the raging ranks of right-wing extremists. The clues piled up at light speed when Trump lost the election and refused to 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, swamped and occupied the building in an explosive showdown that left a Capitol Police officer and four left behind. others dead.
The crowd went so emboldened by Trump’s broadcast to a rally that his partisans live-streamed themselves and destroyed the site. Trump, they thought, was behind them.
After all, this was the president who last year responded to a right-wing plot to kidnap the Democratic Governor of Michigan, saying, “Maybe it was a problem. Maybe it wasn’t. “
Across the arc of his presidency and his life, through his own words and deeds, Trump hated losing and didn’t want to admit it when it happened. He turned bankruptcies into successes, setbacks in office into splendid achievements, the taint of deposition into martyrdom.
Then came the ultimate loss, the election and the desperate machinations that politicians likened to the practices of “banana republics” or the “Third World,” but which were all America in the twilight of Trump’s presidency.
Often with a wink and a nod over the last four tears, sometimes more direct – ‘We love you,’ he told the Capitol Hill crowd, suggesting deep down into the clashes that they are now going home – Trump provided a common cause with fringe elements eager to confirm him in return for his respect.
That created a flammable mix when the stakes were highest. The elements came together in plain sight, often in messages delivered by tweet. (On Friday, Twitter banned Trump’s account, denying him his megaphone of choice, “because of the risk of further incitement to violence.”)
“I wish we could say we couldn’t see it coming,” President-elect Joe Biden said of the Capitol melee. ‘But that is not true. We could see it coming. “
Mary Trump saw it from her unique vantage point as a clinical psychologist and Trump niece.
“It’s just a very old emotion that he has never been able to process from when he was a small child – terrified of the consequences of a losing position, terrified of being held accountable for his actions for the first time in his life,” she said against PBS a week after the election.
“He’s in the position of being a loser, which in my family was definitely … the worst you could be,” she said. “So he feels trapped, he feels desperate … getting furious.”
The post-election problems were predictable because Trump almost said it would happen if he lost.
Months before the vote was taken, he claimed the system had been rigged and plans for mail-in voting were fraudulent, attacking the process so relentlessly that he would have damaged his chances by discouraging his supporters from posting by mail. to vote. He emphatically refused to assure the country in advance that he would respect the outcome, something most presidents don’t have to do.
There was no evidence before the election that it would be tainted, nor was there any evidence after the massive fraud or gross error he and his team alleges in numerous lawsuits that judges, whether appointed by Republicans, Democrats or Trump himself, systematically were often fired. as nonsense. The Supreme Court, with three justices placed by Trump, brushed him off.
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 no setback, other than his foot soldiers, who couldn’t bear his loss either.
Trump’s history of promoting false and sometimes racist conspiracies rooted in right-wing extremism is long.
He praised the supporters of QAnon, a complicated pro-Trump conspiracy theory, saying he didn’t know much about the movement “except I understand they like me very much” and “it’s gaining popularity.”
QAnon revolves around an allegedly anonymous senior government official known as “Q”, who shares information about an anti-Trump “deep state.” The FBI has warned that conspiracy-driven extremists, such as QAnon, are domestic terrorist threats.
In 2017, Trump said there was “blame on both sides” for deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, the site of a standoff between white supremacist groups and those protesting against them. He said there were “nice people” on both sides.
And during a debate with Biden, Trump would not criticize the neo-fascist Proud Boys. Instead, Trump said the group should “take a step back.” The comment sparked a firestorm and a day later he tried to walk it back.
Trump did not condemn the actions of an Illinois teenager accused of shooting two people and injuring a third during summer protests in the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kyle Rittenhouse pleaded not guilty to charges.
In October, he chose people who would not denounce the kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. “When our leaders meet, encourage or fraternize domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions and are complicit,” she said. “If they incite and contribute to hate speech, they are complicit.”
For Mary Trump, the way her uncle was defeated helped pave the way for the poisoning she said would happen in November.
Republicans in the Senate and House races outperformed him, increasing their minority in the House and retaining their Senate majority until the two elections in Georgia this month tipped the Senate’s balance to the Democrats.
His defeat on November 3 was for him, not for the party. “So he doesn’t blame anyone else,” said his niece. “So I think he’s probably in a position where no one can get him out emotionally and psychologically, which will make things worse for the rest of us.”
Even worse.
Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Extremism, called the attack on Wednesday the “logical conclusion that extremism and hatred go unchecked” during Trump’s presidency.
“If you’re surprised, you haven’t paid attention,” said Amy Spitalnick of Integrity First, a civil rights group dealing with lawsuits over the 2017 Charlottesville violence.
On Thursday night, after months of provocation, Trump attempted a unifying message, saying in a video, “This moment is calling for healing and reconciliation.”
But on Friday he was back in the care of “his great American patriots” demanding that they be treated fairly, saying he would not go to Biden’s inauguration.
He acknowledged that his presidency was coming to an end, but acknowledged – could, never should – his defeat.
For all the insulting nicknames he’s tagged on his political enemies – sleepy, cunning, howling, corrupt, crazy, tiny, brain dead, crazy, pencil neck, low IQ, watermelon head, dummy, deranged, sick puppy, low energy – nothing was intended to stab more than ‘loser’. And nothing, it seems, stung more than when he was the loser.