WASHINGTON – With 13 days left in office, President Donald Trump finally came back to reality on Thursday amid mounting talks about trying to force him out early, recognizing that he will leave peacefully after Congress asserts his defeat. .
Trump presented a video of the White House condemning the violence perpetrated in his name the day before on Capitol Hill. Then, for the first time on camera, he admitted that his presidency would soon end – although he refused to mention President-elect Joe Biden’s name or explicitly declare that he had lost.
“A new administration will open on January 20,” said Trump in the video. “My focus now is on ensuring a smooth, orderly and continuous transition of power. This moment requires healing and reconciliation. “
The address, which seemed designed to avoid rumors of an early forced eviction, came at the end of a day when the cornered president was out of sight at the White House. Silenced on some of his favorite lines of communication on the Internet, he watched the resignation of several key advisers, including two cabinet secretaries.
And while officials were examining the consequences of the siege of the pro-Trump mob on the United States Capitol, there was a growing discussion about impeachment for the second time or the invocation of the 25th Amendment to expel him from the Oval Office.
The invasion of the Capitol building, a powerful symbol of the nation’s democracy, shook Republicans and Democrats. They struggled to find the best way to contain the impulses of a president who is considered too dangerous to control his own social media accounts, but who remains the commander-in-chief of the world’s largest armed forces.
“I’m not worried about the next election, I’m worried about going through the next 14 days,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of Trump’s most loyal allies. He condemned the president’s role in Wednesday’s riots and said: “If something else happens, all options will be on the table.”
The President of the House of Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, declared that “the President of the United States has incited an armed insurrection against America”. She called him “a very dangerous person who must not remain in office. This is urgent, an emergency of the highest magnitude. “
No option to remove Trump seemed likely, with little time remaining in his mandate to draft the Cabinet members needed to invoke the amendment or to organize the hearings and trial with mandate for an impeachment. But the fact that dramatic options were even the subject of discussion in Washington’s corridors of power served as a warning to Trump.
Fear of what a desperate president might do in his final days has spread to the nation’s capital and beyond, including speculation that Trump might incite more violence, make hasty appointments, issue ill-conceived pardons – including for himself and his family – or even trigger a destabilizing international incident.
The president’s video on Thursday – which was released after he returned to Twitter after his account was restored – was a complete reversal of what he released just 24 hours earlier, in which he said to the violent crowd: “We love you. You are very special. ”His refusal to condemn the violence sparked a storm of criticism and, in the new video, he finally denounced the“ illegality and chaos ”of the protesters.
As for his feelings on leaving office, he told the nation that “serving as its president was the honor of my life”, while implying a return to the public arena. He told supporters that “our incredible journey has just begun”.
Just a day earlier, Trump unleashed destructive forces on Capitol Hill with his baseless allegations of electoral fraud at a rally that led his supporters to interrupt Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory. After the invasion of the Capitol and the eventual certification of Biden’s victory by members of Congress, Trump issued a statement that acknowledged that he would accept a peaceful transfer of power on January 20.
The statement was posted by an advisor and did not originate from the president’s own Twitter account, which has 88 million followers and for four years was used as a political weapon that dictates policies and sows division and conspiracy.
Trump was unable to tweet because, for the first time, the social media platform suspended his account, declaring that the president had violated his service rules by inciting violence. Facebook adopted a broader ban, saying that Trump’s account would be offline until after Biden’s inauguration.
Deprived of this vital social media force, Trump remained silent and housed in the executive mansion until Thursday night. But around him, the legalists were headed for the exits, his exits – which would happen in two weeks, anyway – protested the way the president dealt with the mutiny.
Transport Secretary Elaine Chao became the first Cabinet member to step down. Chao, married to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, one of the legislators arrested on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, said in a message to the team that the attack “deeply troubled me in a way that I just can’t let go of.”
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos followed. In his resignation letter on Thursday, DeVos blamed Trump for igniting tensions in the violent attack on the country’s seat of democracy. “There is no doubt about the impact that your rhetoric has had on the situation, and it is the tipping point for me,” she wrote.
Others who resigned after the turmoil: Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger; Ryan Tully, senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council; and First Lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, former White House press secretary.
Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former chief of staff who became a special envoy to Northern Ireland, told CNBC that he called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “to warn him that I was stepping down. … I can not do it. I can not stay. “
Mulvaney said others who work for Trump decided to stay in office in an effort to provide some form of protection for the president during his final days in office.
“Those who chose to stay, and I talked to some of them, are choosing to stay because they are concerned that the president might put someone worse,” said Mulvaney.
Mulvaney’s predecessor as chief of staff, retired US Marine Corps general John Kelly, told CNN that “I think the Cabinet should meet and discuss” about Section 4 of the 25th Amendment – allowing for removal forced from Trump by his own cabinet.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer joined Pelosi in declaring that Trump “should not be in office for another day” and urged Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to act. But Chao’s departure may halt incipient efforts to invoke the amendment.
Team-level discussions on the issue took place in various departments and even parts of the White House, according to two people informed about the negotiations. But no Cabinet member has publicly expressed support for the movement – which would make Pence the interim president – although several are considered sympathetic to the idea, believing that Trump is very volatile in his days of declining office.
In the West Wing, aides in shock were packing up, acting on a delayed directive to start leaving their posts before Biden’s team arrived. The slowdown so far has been due to Trump’s obstinate focus on his defeat since election day, at the expense of his other job responsibilities.
Most blatantly, this included fighting the furious coronavirus that is killing a record number of Americans every day.
Few aides had any idea of the president’s plans, with some wondering if Trump would remain out of sight until he left the White House. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany read a brief statement in which she declared that the siege of the Capitol was “terrible, reprehensible and antithetical to the American way of life”.
But his words had little weight. Trump has long made it clear that only he speaks for his presidency.
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Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed reporting from Washington.