NEW YORK – President Donald Trump’s firm control over Republicans in Washington is starting to crumble, leaving him more politically isolated than at any other time in his turbulent administration.
After angering a crowd that later staged a violent siege on the U.S. Capitol, Trump appears to have lost some of his strongest allies, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. Two cabinet members and at least half a dozen aides resigned. A handful of Republicans in Congress are openly considering whether to join a new impeachment drive.
A Republican senator who had separated from Trump in the past asked him to step down and questioned whether she would remain in the party.
“I want him to leave,” Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski told The Anchorage Daily News. “He’s already done enough damage.”
The uprising in the wake of a blatant electoral defeat in Georgia achieved what other low points in the Trump presidency failed to do: force Republicans to fundamentally reevaluate their relationship with a leader who has long abandoned tradition and decorum. The result could reshape the party, threatening the influence that Trump craves by creating a divide between those in Washington and activists in areas of the country where the president is especially popular.
“At this point, I’m not going to defend you anymore,” said Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary to George W. Bush and Republican Party strategist who voted for Trump. “I am not going to defend you for messing with the pan that incited the mob. He is alone. “
When the week started, Trump was arguably the most dominant political force in Republican politics and a kingmaker in 2024, if not the Republican Party’s next presidential candidate. On Friday, there was a growing sense that he was stained forever – and he may be forced to step down before his term expires in 12 days.
In the absence of resignation, requests for a second impeachment on Capitol Hill were higher on Friday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Congress will proceed with impeachment procedures unless Trump leaves office “imminently and voluntarily.”
President-elect Joe Biden is not yet putting his weight on the effort, suggesting that there is not enough time between now and his January 20 inauguration to seek impeachment or any other constitutional remedy.
“I am focused now, on us taking control as president and vice president, on the 20th, and getting our agenda underway as quickly as possible,” Biden told reporters.
Trump still has supporters, especially among the many ordinary Republican voters and conservative activists in addition to Washington.
On Thursday morning, there was a lot of applause and shouts of “We love you!” when Trump called a Republican National Committee breakfast in Florida.
“The vast majority of the committee is in complete denial,” said New Jersey Republican National Committee member Bill Palatucci, who attended the breakfast. “They are willing to condemn the violence, but without any reference to the president’s role in any of this.”
The president insists that he has done nothing wrong. He continues to tell aides, at least in particular, that the election was stolen from him. Republican officials in critical battlefield states, their recently deceased attorney general and a number of judges – including those appointed by Trump – dismissed these claims as without merit.
Trump had to be persuaded to record the video released on Thursday night, in which he finally condemned the troublemakers and acknowledged his defeat in November for the first time, while initially rejecting the prospect of speaking negatively about “my people”.
He eventually agreed to shoot the video after White House lawyer Pat Cipollone warned that he could face legal danger by inciting the riot. Others, including chief of staff Mark Meadows and his daughter Ivanka Trump, urged Trump to send a message that could stifle conversation about his forced removal from office, either through impeachment or constitutional procedures outlined in the 25th Amendment.
And while Trump acknowledged in the video that a new government would take over on January 20, he also said on Friday that he would not attend Biden’s inauguration. That makes Trump the first outgoing president since Andrew Johnson, 152 years ago, to skip the inauguration of his successor.
Trump has no plans to disappear from the political debate as soon as he leaves office, according to advisers who believe he remains very popular with Republican bases.
For the avoidance of doubt, Trump’s false claims about electoral fraud in his November defeat resonated with hundreds of thousands of Republican voters in Georgia’s Senate runoff elections this week. About 7 out of 10 agreed with his false claim that Biden was not the legitimately elected president, according to AP VoteCast, a poll of more than 3,700 voters.
Leading Republican pollster Frank Luntz has had extensive conversations with grassroots voters and Republican officials about Trump’s position since the siege.
“Professionals are fleeing a sinking ship, but their own supporters have not abandoned it and really want it to continue fighting,” said Luntz. “He became the voice of God to tens of millions of people, and they will follow him to the ends of the earth and to the cliff.”
And because of voters’ continued loyalty, elected officials in red areas must also remain loyal to the president who is stepping down, even if his own cabinet does not. In the hours following this week’s riot, 147 Republicans in Congress still voted to reject Biden’s victory, including eight senators.
The party’s dramatic split is reflected in the divergent paths taken at the beginning of the 2024 list of Republican presidential candidates.
Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas accepted Trump’s calls to reject Biden’s victory before and after the mob attack. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton resisted Trump’s wishes by attracting an angry tweet from the president earlier in the week.
These attacks did not carry as much weight at the end of the week as before, due to Trump’s weakened political state. On Thursday, Cotton punished fellow Republicans like Hawley and Cruz, who gave voters a “false hope” that Trump’s defeat in November could be reversed.
Nikki Haley, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, tried to follow the limits by condemning Trump’s actions this week during a closed-door meeting with the Republican National Committee.
She praised some of Trump’s achievements, but predicted that, “Your actions since election day will be judged harshly by history.”
In the meantime, there is no clear path for the Republican Party without Trump. Speaking to reporters on Friday, even Biden raised concerns about the health of the Republican Party.
“We need a Republican Party,” said Biden, noting that he spoke to Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a leading Trump critic. “We need a strong and principled opposition”.
Meanwhile, Trump has been plotting ways to maintain his political influence as soon as he moves from the White House to his Florida property, Mar-a-Lago, later in the month.
Believing that his supporters will stay with him no matter what, he continued to discuss encouraging primary challenges against Republicans who were not sufficiently loyal to him. And he hinted publicly and privately that he is likely to challenge Biden in a 2024 rematch, although losing his powerful Twitter account – which was or using xenophobia to defame a country permanently closed by the company on Friday – could complicate his efforts to govern the Republican Party out of fear.
Doug Deason, a Texas-based donor who served on the Trump campaign’s finance committee, said this week’s events did nothing to shake his confidence in the Republican president.
“He was the best president of my life, including Reagan,” said Deason.