An end...

A fitting end to the Trump presidency

By YAMICHE ALCINDOR

We all knew President DONALD TRUMP’s term would end badly. It had to. There were just too many lies. Too many conspiracy theories. Too many times where journalists searched their syllabuses for new ways to say “unprecedented” and where Americans across the country sat aghast learning just how low we could go in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world.

As I said during PBS NewsHour’s special coverage Wednesday, “The false information has consequences. The conspiracy theories have consequences.”

In the aftermath of what can only accurately be described as an armed insurrection in our capital city, we are still sinking even lower with each hour, past our nation’s basement floor and into the very foundation of our democracy. Burned into our collective souls are the brutal images of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing and now the Jan. 6 Siege at the Capitol.

A quick pause. I’m Yamiche Alcindor, the White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour.

For years now, I have covered the Trump administration up close and watched him create a house of mirrors for fervent followers to replicate at their dinner tables, at their city council meetings and in their own city capitals. I talked to sources who enabled his lies and who saw in Trump a vehicle for all their political dreams to come true.

I’m also someone you may recognize as the woman Trump has called threatening and nasty. I’ve experienced firsthand what it feels like when the ire of the president targets you, and some of that rage that exploded in the Capitol has at times made its way into my inbox courtesy of the president’s anger at my questions. I’m honored to guest write today’s Playbook during this historic week. You can follow me on Twitter at @Yamiche or on Instagram at @yamichepbs.

Oh, and please watch “Washington Week” on PBS at 8 p.m. tonight. I’m guest hosting it and there is a lot to discuss.

Now, processing all of this week’s news has been tough, even for a news junkie like me. Two days after seeing the physical manifestations of Trump’s yearslong disinformation campaign, I am frankly still shaken, still feeling goosebumps run up my arms each time I see photos of the mob, fueled by our president, freely having their way with the headquarters of the United States Congress.

I keep thinking about my Haitian ancestors, who like many immigrants came to this country fleeing a dictator in the 1970s and seeking political stability. I keep thinking about the immigrants I interviewed for a NewsHour story who fled political instability to come to the United States. They stressed that democracy is fragile. Francois Pierre-Louis, who immigrated from Haiti after his uncles were murdered by a dictator there, told me something that now seems like a premonition. He said last month, Trump “has all these people out there mobilizing for him, and these people are armed, they’re threatening people, sooner or later, they can go out there and start violence.”

And I keep thinking about a president who loves attention, who welcomes all press, even bad press. Yesterday, my husband (hi Nate!) and I drove around for a while trying to get physical copies of newspapers. But after visiting a dozen or so places, we learned the papers had long sold out.

That is when it dawned on me just how fitting of an end this is for Trump, who kicked off what now feels like one big never-ending news cycle the moment the reality television personality descended from the escalators of Trump Towers in 2015. He fought, lied and argued his way into the Oval Office with grievance politics, racist rhetoric and an effective ability to convince millions of people that he was the embodiment of their pains and their frustrations about a changing America.

But what are we left with now? How will the country go forward? How will President-elect JOE BIDEN heal the soul of a nation that just watched American democracy bend and almost break? And what more could happen as we are only eight days into 2021?

Trump hinted at his preferred answer at the end of his Thursday address, saying, “Our incredible journey is only just beginning.”

But, haven’t we already seen and experienced enough?

So where are we now, 12 days before the end of Trump’s term and two days after the nation watched armed, entitled Americans storm our revered building?

Another death was confirmed late Thursday night: United States Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died after he was injured while clashing with protesters Wednesday. Four other deaths were previously reported, including Ashli Babbitt, who was shot while inside the Capitol.

The pressure on Trump to resign is growing. The New York Times also reports that Trump has suggested to aides he wants to pardon himself in the final days of his presidency. Meanwhile, he continues to lose access to social media platforms.

House Democrats are threatening to go forward with articles of impeachment if Trump isn’t removed. That could continue to the civics lessons for Americans have been going through these past few years. We have already done deep dives into whether a president can be indicted, how impeachment works. We are experts in the multiple steps of the Electoral College process. And, now we even know how objections work when Congress is counting the electoral votes at the very end.

Soon, we may learn how Congress can impeach a president even after he has left office if they want to make sure he is banned from ever holding federal office again. Here’s a deep dive on the plausibility from The Washington Post.

The White House is continuing to refuse to take questions, with nothing scheduled on Trump’s agenda today. In a press conference that lasted less than two minutes, White House press secretary KAYLEIGH MCENANY came to the podium of the briefing room, condemned the violence on behalf of “White House workers” and said the violence was the “opposite” of the administration. Then, she sprinted out of the room as reporters yelled questions, mimicking the scene of the first White House press briefing, when former press secretary SEAN SPICER falsely claimed that Trump’s inauguration crowd sizes were bigger than those of former President BARACK OBAMA.

Trump did release a two-and-a-half-minute video doing what he has never done: admitting his time in office was coming to an end. “A new administration will be inaugurated on Jan. 20. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation,” he said. Though, it’s impossible to imagine the 2020 election and 2021 transition ever being described as “smooth, orderly and seamless” no matter what happens next.

The New York Times reports, “Mr. Trump initially resisted taping the video, agreeing to do it only after aides pressed him and he appeared to suddenly realize he could face legal risk for prodding the mob, coming shortly after the chief federal prosecutor for Washington left open the possibility of investigating the president for illegally inciting the attack by telling supporters to march on the Capitol and show strength.”

The Washington Post reports this scene from Wednesday: “Cloistered in the White House, Trump raged uncontrollably about perceived acts of betrayal. He tuned out advisers who pleaded with him to act responsibly. He was uninterested in trying to repair what he had wrought. And he continued to insist he had won the election, even as his own vice president certified the fact that he had not.” Scary.

All this comes as the top three officials charged with securing the Capitol and the House and Senate chambers resigned under pressure.

Meanwhile, resignations from the Trump administration keep growing, including these high-ranking officials: Education Secretary BETSY DEVOS, Transportation Secretary ELAINE CHAO and MATTHEW POTTINGER, the deputy national security adviser.

But critics of these last-minute defections say it’s too little too late.

There were a number of collective eye rolls when former White House chief of staff MICK MULVANEY, who resigned from his post as special envoy to Northern Ireland, said of Trump Thursday on CNBC: “Clearly [Trump] is not the same as he was 8 months ago.” Former NFL wide receiver DONTÉ STALLWORTH tweeted the group was akin to quitting a game with five seconds on the clock.

Meanwhile, there is a widening rift within the Republican Party, with some defending Trump, per The New York Times: “They downplayed the violence as acts of desperation by people who felt lied to by the news media and ignored by their elected representatives. They deflected with false equivalencies about the Democratic Party’s embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement.” (Nevermind that Trump an hour before the violence broke out pledged to keep up the “fight” and explicitly told supporters at his Wednesday rally that they would be marching to the Capitol.)

On the other side: The Washington Post reports that one Republican operative at the RNC meeting in Florida told the paper, “People are freaking fed up. Repeatedly, what I kept hearing over and over again was that the president is responsible for the loss in Georgia and the president is responsible for what happened yesterday.”

A source close to Trump sounded somewhat gleeful as he defended the president to me and talked about the road ahead, saying his supporters represented “voters who are absolutely overwhelmingly a nationalist America first movement, fully on board with the president’s agenda.” Meanwhile, the president’s former personal attorney MICHAEL COHEN told me it is “without question” that “Trump will continue to act and behave abysmally, like a petulant child.”

Some — including former first lady MICHELLE OBAMA — are pointing out what they see as the hypocrisy of a mostly white mob being allowed to stroll out of the Capitol when Black people peacefully protesting police violence have been tear gassed and arrested by the hundreds in cities like Ferguson, Mo., after the death of Michael Brown and Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd.

The L.A. Times reports, Michelle Obama “highlighted the double standard of policing seen at the Capitol compared to how police officers responded at largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests. In some cases, officers who had not been provoked by Black Lives Matter protesters nevertheless beat them with batons and shields and fired rubber bullets at close range. At times, officers faced looting and vandalism. … As the rioters stormed the capitol Wednesday, the NAACP offered a simple message on Twitter: ‘They have killed us for less.’”