Trump Floats Improbable Survival Scenarios as He
Ponders His Future
There
is no grand strategy. President Trump is simply trying to survive from one news
cycle to the next.
- Published Nov. 12,
2020Updated Nov. 13, 2020, 12:01 p.m. ET
At a meeting on Wednesday at the White
House, President Trump had something he wanted to discuss with his advisers,
many of whom have told him his chances of succeeding at changing the results of the 2020 election are thin as a reed.
He then proceeded to press them on
whether Republican legislatures could pick pro-Trump electors in a handful of
key states and deliver him the electoral votes he needs to change the math and
give him a second term, according to people briefed on the discussion.
It was not a detailed conversation, or
really a serious one, the people briefed on it said. Nor was it reflective of
any obsessive desire of Mr. Trump’s to remain in the White House.
“He knows it’s over,”
one adviser said. But instead of conceding, they said, he is floating one
improbable scenario after another for staying in office while he contemplates
his uncertain post-presidency future.
There is no grand strategy at play,
according to interviews with a half-dozen advisers and people close to the
president. Mr. Trump is simply trying to survive from one news cycle to the
next, seeing how far he can push his case against his defeat and ensure the
continued support of his Republican base.
By dominating the
story of his exit from the White House, he hopes to keep his millions of
supporters energized and engaged for whatever comes next.
The president has insisted to aides
that he really defeated Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Nov. 3, but it is unclear
whether he actually believes it. And instead of conducting discreet requests
for recounts, Mr. Trump has made a series of spurious claims, seizing on
conspiracies fanned on the internet.
The latest was on
Thursday, when he falsely claimed on Twitter that
Dominion voting machines switched hundreds of thousands of his votes to Mr.
Biden, citing a report he had seen on the fringe network OANN, something even
his supporters called ridiculous and a federal agency overseeing cybersecurity
disavowed in a statement.
Advisers said his efforts were in
keeping with one of his favorite pastimes: creating a controversy and watching
to see how it plays out.
As a next step, Mr. Trump is talking
seriously about announcing that he is planning to run again in 2024, aware that
whether he actually does it or not, it will freeze an already-crowded field of
possible Republican candidates. And, Republicans say, it will keep the wide
support he showed even in defeat and could guarantee a lucrative book deal or
speaking fees.
In the meantime, Mr. Trump has spent
his days toggling between his White House residence and the Oval Office,
watching television coverage about the final weeks of his presidency. His mood
is often bleak, advisers say, though he is not raising his voice in anger,
despite the impression left by his tweets, which are often in capital letters.
But the work of government has been
reduced to something of a sideshow for the president. He has not made any
public appearances except for a visit to Arlington National Cemetery on
Veterans Day since an angry statement a week ago.
And he has not spoken about the
coronavirus pandemic or mentioned it on Twitter despite the staggering growth in positive cases and the number
of West Wing aides and outside advisers who have been diagnosed with the virus
in the past week.
Several advisers have bluntly told Mr.
Trump that the chances of changing the election’s outcome are almost
nonexistent, including in a meeting with him on Saturday at the White House to
which the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, dispatched aides, even as he
has generally backed Mr. Trump’s desire to keep fighting.
While most
Republicans have declined to publicly oppose the president, more have become
vocal that the time has come, amid the growing pandemic, to allow a transition
to take place.
“Look, I’m worried about this virus.
I’m not looking at what the merits of the case are,” said Gov. Mike DeWine,
Republican of Ohio, about Mr. Trump’s lawsuits in an appearance on Thursday on
CNN. “It would appear that Joe Biden is going to be the next president of the
United States.”
Karl Rove, the architect of President
George W. Bush’s presidency and an informal adviser to Mr. Trump, wrote in The Wall Street
Journal on Wednesday that “closing out this election will be a
hard but necessary step toward restoring some unity and political equilibrium.”
He added that after
Mr. Trump’s “days in court are over, the president should do his part to unite
the country by leading a peaceful transition and letting grievances go.”
A peaceful transition is not as much on
Mr. Trump’s mind right now as settling scores both inside and outside the
administration.
White House advisers have sent warnings
to any government employees who might be looking for other jobs, have placed
loyalists in the upper ranks of the Pentagon, and have been open to calls for
intelligence officials to declassify documents related to the investigation
into a possible conspiracy between the Trump campaign in 2016 and Russian
officials.
And the president is
considering firing the C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel, although some
administration officials said he may not go through with it.
The president has nursed a burning
anger at Fox News for calling Arizona for Mr. Biden on election night, and has
entertained suggestions from allies to start some kind of competing
conservative-leaning news network, whether by trying to join forces with an
existing property like OANN or Newsmax, or forming a digital network of his
own, as Axios reported. (The New York Times called Arizona for Mr. Biden late
Thursday.)
In a tweet on Thursday, Mr. Trump continued his attacks on
his once loyal supporters, declaring falsely that Fox News’s “daytime ratings
have completely collapsed.”
“Weekend daytime even WORSE,” he added.
“Very sad to watch this happen, but they forgot what made them successful, what
got them there. They forgot the Golden Goose. The biggest difference between
the 2016 Election, and 2020, was @FoxNews!”
Several Republicans expressed doubt on
Thursday that Mr. Trump would ever be able to put together anything that could
overtake Fox.
And allies acknowledge that he could
not do both a presidential campaign and create a news network at the same time,
and they questioned whether he would keep up his animus toward Fox if it were
to offer him a lucrative contributor deal once he is out of office.
Some advisers had hoped that Mr. Trump
would accept the state of the race by the end of this week, but a looming
recount in Georgia may delay that. The president has told some advisers that if
the race is certified for Mr. Biden, he will announce a 2024 campaign shortly
afterward.
The president’s goal
for now is to delay certification of the election results, a process that has
begun in some states. But his approach to lawsuits aimed at delaying that certification
has been as scattered as his own thinking about the future.
Advisers say there
may be additional lawsuits filed, but it is not entirely clear when. It also is
not clear who is leading the legal efforts.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s
personal lawyer, has been a source of enormous frustration for Trump advisers.
Advisers have tried to tell Mr. Trump that the fraud Mr. Giuliani is offering
hope of proving simply does not exist.
Mr. Trump is getting suggestions from
an array of other lawyers, as well. They include Sidney Powell, the lawyer for
his former national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who was at the
Trump campaign headquarters over the weekend.
Advisers have nudged
the president to stop talking about “fraud” because that has legal implications
that his team has not been able to back up. So Mr. Trump has taken to
pronouncing the election “rigged,” one of his favorite words but one with
dangerous implications in terms of how his own supporters view the election’s
ultimate outcome.
