The ending of Trump’s presidency echoes the beginning
— with a lie
The Debrief: An occasional series offering a
reporter’s insights
By
November 15, 2020 at 4:40 p.m. CST
The
Trump administration is ending as it began: with a lie about crowd size.
On
Saturday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted two
overhead photos of President Trump supporters who had gathered for a pro-Trump
march in Washington, writing, “AMAZING! More than one MILLION marchers for
President @realDonaldTrump descend on the swamp in
support.”
McEnany
was off by many orders of magnitude — the crowd of thousands was a notable show
of force, perhaps, but a far cry from the million marchers she claimed.
Her
hyperbolic assertion was reminiscent of another baseless claim made by another
Trump press secretary nearly four years ago. Sean Spicer stepped behind the
briefing room lectern on his first full day on the job and, at the president’s
urging, told falsehoods about the size of
Trump’s inauguration crowds.
McEnany
did not respond to requests for comment about how she arrived at the incorrect
1 million figure. Trump himself tweeted Sunday that
“tens of thousands” had demonstrated.
The
symmetry does not end with the exaggerations about crowd size. Trump’s one-term
presidency is poised to come full circle in myriad ways, from a consistent lack
of strategic vision to his enduring efforts to delegitimize his political
rivals, whoever they might be.
Trump
began his political career with the mendacious claim of birtherism — the racist
lie that former president Barack Obama was not born in the United States — as
part of an effort to delegitimize his predecessor. And he is ending his
political career amid false allegations that President-elect Joe Biden won the
election only because it was somehow rigged or stolen — part of an effort to
delegitimize his successor.
A view of the crowd at the U.S. Capitol ahead of the
inauguration of President Trump on Jan. 20, 2017. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington
Post)
In
2016, despite his electoral college victory,
Trump entered office baselessly claiming the election had been rigged and even
set up a presidential commission, co-chaired by Vice President Pence, to
examine the voter fraud he claimed had cost him the popular vote. The
commission was ultimately disbanded amid accusations of false claims and
after finding no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Now,
Trump is still claiming widespread voter fraud despite no evidence and has
refused to concede to Biden or begin the formal transition process. The delay
not only threatens to undermine public trust in democratic institutions,
but could also have grave national
security ramifications.
On
Sunday, Trump tweeted that Biden “won because the Election was
Rigged” and called mail-in voting “a sick joke,” before
backtracking less than two hours later on even that faint nod at a concession.
“RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN!” Trump
wrote, in a duo of tweets. “He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS
MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We
have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!”
“The
common thread is, these are all attacks on objective reality and facts, whether
you’re talking about rigging the election or crowd sizes of the nature of the
public challenges in front of us,” said Tim O’Brien, a senior columnist for
Bloomberg Opinion and a Trump biographer who is critical of the president. “It
is a core operating principle of Trumpism. If you constantly attack objective reality,
you are left as the only trustworthy source of information, which is one of his
goals for his relationship with his supporters — that they should believe no
one else but him.”
Many in
Trump’s orbit say he ran for the White House wanting to see whether he could
win the presidency — but not actually prepared for the hard work of governing.
Now, as he exits, he has largely abdicated many of his governing
responsibilities.
Since
the election was called for Biden, Trump has spent the past two weekends
golfing at his private course in Virginia. And he has all but given up trying to manage the
coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 245,000 Americans
and sickened millions more on his watch. Despite being on track to lose more
than a quarter-million Americans before he leaves the White House, the
president has not attended a coronavirus task force meeting in many months.
Scaramucci
said Trump’s lack of vision on handling the pandemic is consistent with his
overall lack of interest in governing. “There’s been no formulation or
strategy, whether it’s the coronavirus, the
economy, our national security interests, who we are as Americans — there’s
been nothing,” he said. “So now he’s leaving with no formulation or strategy.”
Scaramucci
added that sometimes, amid the chaos of the Trump White House, some allies give
the president the benefit of the doubt that he has a master plan, when no such
grand ambition exists.
“His
die-hard supporters will tell you he’s playing four-dimensional chess,”
Scaramucci said, “but all of us really know he’s eating the chess pieces; he’s
munching on the chess pieces.”
Tommy
Vietor, a former National Security Council spokesman for Obama and co-host of
“Pod Save America,” said Trump leaving office amid a swirl of falsehoods is in
line with his entire foray into politics.
“Trump’s
entire political career is built on the racist birther lie, so it’s no surprise
that he’s leaving office as a disgraced liar,” Vietor said. “The question is
whether the media can turn its gaze away from him, and if the MAGA industrial
complex will smell the stench of ‘loser’ wafting off of Trump and look for new
leaders.”
Trump
is not the first leader whose beginnings seem to mimic their conclusions,
albeit in much different ways.
In “A
Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House,” historian and biographer
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. chronicled Kennedy’s presidency, beginning with his
frigid Inauguration Day during a blizzard and culminating with a scene in late
December, a month after his death, when on a similarly “fiercely cold” day, the
flame from his grave in Arlington National Cemetery was carried at nightfall to
the Lincoln Memorial as thousands stood vigil.
“It all
ended, as it began, in the cold,” Schlesinger wrote.
O’Brien
said that although Trump’s single term hardly evokes the beauty of
Schlesinger’s prose about Kennedy’s truncated administration, there are some
similarities.
“How do
you accurately try to bookend the arc of a president’s administration?” O’Brien
asked. “And in the modern presidency, this is not one that lends itself to
poetry, romance, high-mindedness and social purpose.
“You
basically bookend it with a car crash and a stock car race, and lies and
darkness,” he said.