Donald Trump is unpredictable. He likes to keep people guessing. That’s the kindest thing that we could say about him these days.
But we are not guessing as to how unstable he is; we here at AP have been reporting on that for many years.
Cutting to the chase, Trump has shot his wad.
That is to say, somewhere in his head he realizes that he’ll be leaving the White House the day before Joe Biden takes the oath. He’s already said so, because the last thing he’d ever consider doing would be to participate in the quadrennial ritual of welcoming the newly-elected President to show the world that he adheres to the well-enshrined tradition of demonstrating, in every possible public way, a peaceful transfer of power.
But for Trump that would be impossible.
All this is, as usual, very capably articulated by Politico’s Anita Kumar and Daniel Lippman, at https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/11/isolated-self-absorbed-donald-trump-impeachment-defense-457983, where they show how frighteningly isolated Trump is these days.
Three of his Cabinet Secretaries have quit, including Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf — how interesting, since the Secretary of Homeland Security is responsible for ensuring the safety of the Inauguration.
So, as always, we asked associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones, a Democratic operative planted deep in the White House by DNC Chair Tom Perez on January 20, 2017, who, if anyone, has anything to do with our totally nonfunctioning Commander-in-Chief.
“SR, that’s easy,” Jones began, “Rudy’s still there — you know, ‘My Rudy,’ as Trump likes to say. And Rudy’s still telling him he won the election.”
“First Daughter Ivanka and Son-in-Law-in-Chief Jared are still there, but they’re all packed up and ready to go, and they’re both wondering if they have any friends left in Manhattan or anyplace else.”
“Meadows is still there, and that’s about it, really. He’s trying to figure out if he wants to be Trump’s caddy at Mar-a-Lago.”