Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters feel irritated and betrayed by Thursday’s video in which the president tries to distance himself from a pro-Trump riot in Congress, despite the president’s advisers assuring him that he has not alienated many of his fans .
Shortly after his video at the White House – in which a script by President Trump acknowledged that a transition to a “new” administration was underway, but failed to admit that he really lost to his 2020 Democratic opponent – posted online, Trump started to have second thoughts. Throughout the night, the extrovert and increasingly authoritarian leader of the free world questioned close advisers and White House officials about whether he did the right thing or not and whether the reception from the public, the media and his supporters was “good” , according to two people with direct knowledge of Thursday’s conversations. He asked if his supporters were disappointed.
And, with the country still recovering from the turmoil and deaths of the week, the president is also looking for other ways to look “good”, setting aside recent casualties. According to two people with knowledge of the situation, Trump and some close to him are now discussing the possibility of him doing several media interviews as early as next week to try to highlight his legacy, including an interview that they hope to focus on Middle Eastern business. he and his son-in-law, senior advisor Jared Kushner, helped with the strike. Even though some senior officials want him to shut up as much as possible, Trump, the sources say, is excited and looking forward to having interviews in the next few days – because he says he wants to show the most of his “incredible accomplishments” before ending his term .
Some who spoke to him tried to comfort him and assure him that his video was being well received and that he did what he needed to do and that the Democratic lawmakers who were asking for his removal from office were just trying to kick him when he was on the floor. On Friday, Trump received more assurances about his Thursday video, and is, at least on Friday afternoon, “well” with him, someone else with knowledge of the matter insisted. The president, of course, is known to abruptly change his mind about these things.
It was not said that the reaction of his diehard fans had already started online. Some called on Trump to continue the fight, others said they felt betrayed.
But despite efforts by confidants to protect him, early Friday, it seemed that he had begun to notice some of the consequences.
“The 75 million great American patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE for a long time to come. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form !!! ”Trump posted on Twitter early Friday morning, in his first written tweet since he was temporarily blocked from his account for openly inciting the deadly riot in Washington, DC
He followed that post with another reading, “To all those who asked, I will not be taking office on January 20th”, which implies that a Biden tenure would actually take place.
But many of Trump’s staunch supporters were disturbed to see Trump calling for a lawsuit against the rowdy “hideous” actions of rioters, just a day after he asked them to go to Capitol Hill in a speech outside the White House.
On the pro-Trump forum “The Donald,” some Trump supporters saw the video as proof that Trump has abandoned them to the predations of a Democratic Party that will soon control the White House and the two houses of Congress. A segment of 4,000 comments reacting to Trump’s speech appeared to have been deleted on Friday.
“I am very angry with that Ashli Babbit [sic] he died for it and received this speech in return and so should you, ”wrote a poster, referring to the troublemaker who was shot by the Capitol Police on Wednesday. “Calling what we did hideous is … shit.”
Many of Trump’s supporters in the world of QAnon conspiracy theory alienated his friends and family in pursuit of the idea that Trump was a kind of messianic figure who would literally kill his enemies and create a kind of MAGA utopia. As a result, they took quasi-concession speech very seriously.
“So this is it? Is it over?” a QAnon fan tweeted former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. “The towel has just been thrown and in hell with the rest of us? How can we pick up the broken pieces and fix our families and friendships? “
White nationalist Nick Fuentes accessed Twitter to apologize for people who broke into the Capitol. But after Thursday’s video, Fuentes accused Trump of abandoning his supporters.
“People were willing to die for this man and he just threw them under the bus,” complained Fuentes on Twitter.
Fuentes later decided that Trump may not have gotten rid of his supporters after all, postulating that the video may have been a fake “deepfake” video created by artificial intelligence to create a fake Trump.
Fuentes was not the only Trump supporter to enter conspiracy theories. Many promoted the idea that Trump was forced to make the video against his will, or that the video itself was a high-tech fabrication. DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero, QAnon’s promoter and ex-congressional candidate, whose request for Trump to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci was once retweeted by the president, posted his confusion over the video on the conservative social media site Parler.
“Was he hacked?” Tesoriero wrote.
As the most devout of Trump’s dead ends has made clear, nothing will shake his belief that the imaginary electoral theft has occurred.
“God chose Donald Trump for eight years, not four,” said MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a personal friend of the president and a big funder of several pro-Trump efforts to annul the election, previously to The Daily Beast. “Even if Biden is opened, there is no prescription [on stealing an election]. Yes, I will continue to investigate this, [even if he’s sworn in], and I will not stop trying to take this to the American people. “