Former President Donald Trump was audible, if not visible, all day on Monday – and the effect is to keep him at the forefront and center of the Republican Party’s talks.
His reluctance, or inability, to remain silent is exactly what many Trump observers expected, but a radical departure from the behavior of other former presidents.
“The presidents club code is to get out of the way and let the new commander in chief be a year or two,” said CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.
But Trump is so narcissistic that “he cannot accept being out of the spotlight for a day,” concluded Brinkley.
Lately, Trump has been doing what comes naturally to him – dictating tweet-like statements, calling conservative talk shows and generally creating problems. “I like it better than Twitter,” he said on Newsmax. “In fact, they did us a favor. This is better.”
Trump has shown no courtesy to President Joe Biden since leaving the White House. On the contrary, he repeatedly hit the eyes of the Biden government.
On the phone with one of his biggest sycophants, Greg Kelly of Newsmax, on Monday night, Kelly speculated about Biden’s mental faculties, prompting Trump to say “there is something” going on with Biden. Trump then questioned “whether or not he understands what he is signing” when the bills cross his desk.
Trump is the first U.S. president to lose re-election in almost thirty years. The last president who failed to win a second term, George HW Bush, “made it clear that he hoped to retire from public life,” according to historian Tim Naftali’s Bush biography.
Naftali said that Bush told his successor, Bill Clinton, in November 1992 that “when I get out of here, you won’t have any problems with me.”
The outgoing president added: “I will do nothing to complicate your work and I just want you to know that.”
Since then, it has gradually increased its visibility, with emails to members of the “45 Office” media so far in March, double that of February. His “Save America PAC” has also become quite active in recent weeks, with numerous endorsements, criticisms of “RINOs” and critical statements from the media.
Trump seemed self-conscious about his approach to the media during a podcast recording with Lisa Boothe, which was released Monday morning. Trump was Boothe’s inaugural guest – meaning that the podcast does not yet have a large profile or a large following. Trump said in a statement that she has done “an excellent job” at Fox, so maybe he wanted to give his new podcast a boost.
In the conversation, Trump said “people saw some silence” from him, “but in fact, if you take a look at what happened in the last period of time, we are sending announcements. They are being captured much better than any tweet.”
Trump told Boothe that he now believes the official statements to the public are “much more elegant than a tweet, and I think it is best captured. You are seeing this.”
“Caught” was the key phrase. The need for pickup – which means American media attention – is at the heart of Trump’s post-presidential actions.
Instead of flying to a vacation destination and writing a memoir, he is trying to stay relevant and on the media radar. And he continues to push the incendiary allegations that led to the January 6 riot, about winning the 2020 election and Biden stealing it from him, despite calls from even his own party to stop lying.
“Trump is the only one who wants to make noise and get attention after leaving the White House,” said Brinkley. “And it comes from his psychological belief that he remains the real president.”
In the podcast with Boothe, Trump falsely said that “we won, and they took it away”.
“He’s desperate,” said Brinkley, “to let people know ‘I didn’t throw in the towel, I didn’t go anywhere, keep covering me.'”
Brinkley compared Trump to “an active political hand grenade, ready to blow up the US political system in any way it can. And he is starting to threaten the Republicans who crossed him. He is determined to ensure that he remains Trump’s party. “.
He has several TV networks at his disposal that seem willing to help.
Last week, Trump called Fox for a live interview with Maria Bartiromo. The following day, his comments to Bartiromo were in high gear on other right-wing networks and vehicles.
In some cases, networks are clearly looking for him. On Monday, when he called Harris Faulkner’s morning show on Fox, Faulkner asked why he felt the need to issue a statement attacking Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: “Why did you think you needed to do this on this issue? “
“Well,” said Trump, “you called me, I didn’t call you, in all fairness.”
For Kelly, he shied away from the possibility of a new social platform, saying that “something will happen to social media if I want it to happen”.
At the end of the interview, Kelly seemed impressed. “Very cool,” he said, “the president of the United States,” forgetting to call Trump an “ex” president.