WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump left many clues that he would try to set the place on fire when he walked out the door.
The clues have spread over a lifetime of refusing to acknowledge defeat. They encompassed a presidency marked by rude and angry rhetoric, exaggerated conspiracy theories and a kind of communion with “patriots” from the teeming ranks of right-wing extremists. The clues accumulated at the speed of light when Trump lost the election and declined to admit.
The culmination of everything that came on Wednesday, when Trump supporters, urged by the president to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” against a “stolen” election, invaded and occupied the building in an explosive confrontation that left one Capitol police officer and four others killed.
The crowd there was so encouraged by Trump’s farewell at a rally that his supporters broadcast it live destroying the place. Trump, they guessed, was on his back.
After all, that was the president who had responded to a right-wing plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor last year with the comment: “Maybe it was a problem. Maybe it wasn’t. “
Over the course of his presidency and his life, by his own words and actions, Trump hated losing and would not admit it when it happened. He transformed bankruptcies into successes, setbacks in office into brilliant achievements, the stain of impeachment into martyrdom.
Then came the final defeat, the election and desperate machinations that politicians compared to the practices of the “banana republics” or the “Third World”, but they were all American in the twilight of Trump’s presidency.
Often, with a wink and a nod at the last four tears, sometimes more directly – “We love you,” he told the Capitol crowd as he gently suggested that they return home now – Trump made common cause with marginal elements eager to give you a statement in return for their respect.
This created a fuel mixture when the stakes were higher. The elements were meeting in plain sight, often in letters sent by tweet. (On Friday, Twitter banned Trump’s account, denying him the megaphone of his choice, “due to the risk of further incitement to violence”.)
“I wish we could say that we can’t see that,” said President-elect Joe Biden of the Capitol confusion. “But that’s not true. We could see it coming. “
Mary Trump saw this coming from her unique point of view as a clinical psychologist and Trump’s niece.
“It’s just a very old emotion that he has never been able to process since he was a child – afraid of the consequences of being in a losing position, afraid of being held responsible for his actions for the first time in his life,” she told PBS a week after the election.
“He’s in a position of a loser, which in my family, for sure … was the worst thing you could be,” she said. “So he’s feeling trapped, he’s feeling desperate … more and more furious.”
The post-election problems were predictable because Trump almost said it would happen if he lost.
Months before the vote, he claimed that the system was rigged and plans to vote by mail were fraudulent, attacking the process so relentlessly that he may have hampered his chances by discouraging his supporters from voting by mail. He expressly refused to assure the country in advance that he would respect the outcome, something that most presidents need not be asked to do.
There was no evidence before the election that he would be contaminated and no evidence after the massive fraud or blunder that he and his team alleged in dozens of lawsuits that judges, nominated by Republicans, Democrats or Trump himself, systematically dismissed, often like nonsense. The Supreme Court, with three judges appointed by Trump, rejected him.
This did not stop him.
“I hate defeats,” he said in a 2011 video. “I can’t stand defeat.”
But the election result finally left him with no setback, except for his foot soldiers, who also could not tolerate defeat.
Trump’s history of developing false and sometimes racist conspiracies rooted in right-wing extremism is a long one.
He praised supporters of QAnon, a complicated pro-Trump conspiracy theory, saying he didn’t know much about the movement “except I understand that they like me very much” and “is gaining popularity”.
QAnon focuses on an alleged anonymous high-ranking government official known as “Q”, who shares information about an anti-Trump “deep state”. The FBI has warned that conspiracy theorists like QAnon are domestic terrorist threats.
In 2017, Trump said there was “blame on both sides” for the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, the site of an impasse between white supremacist groups and those protesting them. He said there were “good people” on both sides.
And during a debate with Biden, Trump would not criticize the neo-fascist Proud Boys. Instead, Trump said the group should “stand back and wait.” The comment triggered a firestorm and a day later he tried to turn back.
Trump did not condemn the actions of an Illinois teenager accused of fatally shooting two people and injuring a third during the summer protests on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kyle Rittenhouse pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In October, he chose not to report the people who planned to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. “When our leaders meet, encourage or fraternize with domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions and are complicit,” she said. “When they feed and contribute to hate speech, they are accomplices”.
For Mary Trump, the way her uncle defeated helped set the stage for the toxicity she presumed to say would happen in November.
Republicans in the Senate and House contests overcame him, increasing their minority in the House and maintaining a majority in the Senate until Georgia’s two elections this month tipped the Senate balance for Democrats.
His November 3 defeat was his, not the party’s. “So he also has no one else to blame,” said his niece. “So I think he’s probably in a position where no one can help him emotionally and psychologically, which is going to make things worse for the rest of us.”
The worst came.
Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League Extremism Center, called the attack on Wednesday “a logical conclusion to extremism and hatred not being controlled” during Trump’s presidency.
“If you’re surprised, you haven’t been paying attention,” said Amy Spitalnick of Integrity First, a civil rights group involved in lawsuits for the 2017 violence in Charlottesville.
Thursday night, Trump tried a unifying message, after months of provocation, saying in a video “this moment requires healing and reconciliation”.
But on Friday he went back to looking after “his great American patriots” and demanding that they be treated fairly, and said he would not go into Biden’s possession.
He acknowledged that his presidency was ending, but he did not recognize – he could not, perhaps never – acknowledge defeat.
Despite all the insulting nicknames he gave his political enemies – sleepy, cunning, weeping, corrupt, crazy, small, brain dead, crazy, pencil neck, low IQ, watermelon head, dummy, crazy, sick dog, low energy – nothing was done to hurt more than “loser”. And nothing, it seems, hurt more than when he was the loser.