Inside the White House: One last wild ride with a president at bay

Tens of thousands flocked to his political rallies on the campaign trail and he managed to win millions more votes than he did in 2016.

But Donald Trump could be the loneliest man in US politics now as he attempts to cling on to the presidency, according to renowned BBC journalist James Naughtie.

The broadcaster and author, who has covered every US presidential election since 1988, was in the White House briefing room on Thursday night when Trump made the extraordinary accusation that the election was being stolen from him.

He said: “The Trump era has ended as it began – with a lot of bluster, argument, allegation and hurt. Despite all the big rallies and everything he has been doing, Trump now looks like a figure who is really alone.

“When he strode into the White House briefing room to say that he hadn’t lost and was a victim of massive fraud, for which he offered no ­evidence at all, he looked like someone who was on his last wild ride.

“The vice-president didn’t come into the room with him and his chief of staff wasn’t there. He didn’t take any questions. He just came in and delivered this extra­ordinary, self-obsessed claim that the world was against him and that he was a victim of malfeasance and corruption. It was seen by most experienced people here, Republicans and Democrats, as pure fantasy.”

Even if Mr Trump finally concedes defeat, Trumpism, the rejection of the political establishment and putting American interests first, is unlikely to disappear.

© BBC

Mr Naughtie, speaking to The Sunday Post from Washington, said: “There is a large chunk of the Republican Party which felt it had to accept this was the tide of the moment and had to go along with it.

“Privately they have been appalled by the crudity and the presidency of self. They will try to pull things round. But I do think the conspiratorial, isolationist, in some cases frankly racist, stuff whirling around in the echo chamber of the far-right will be there in perpetuity.

“Trumpism without Trump is difficult to imagine. It has been an edifice built on his ego, personality, energy and sure touch of knowing what will stir up an audience. He is a very instinctive animal who understands what to do with a crowd. His opponents will say demagoguery works – I couldn’t possibly comment.

“But I think on the populist right there will be a very, very strong movement. Joe Biden will be dealing with a very divided and angry country, with Trump doing everything he can to stir up that anger. There is quite a dangerous atmosphere. It is going to be very, very difficult for anyone to pull it together, but that is Biden’s job.

“I’m sure Biden will bring some Republicans into his administration as a symbol of national unity. He will try to say, ‘Let’s all calm down. We have big problems, we need to start listening to science on the pandemic, we need to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, we need make sense of the relationship with Iran, we need to deal with Putin and the Middle East.”

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The Election in Numbers

74,811,378 votes so far for Joe Biden

70,554,537 votes so far for Donald Trump

87% registered voters who have cast a ballot in the 2016 election

7.6million more votes for Trump compared to 2016

9 million more votes for Biden compared to Hilary Clinton in 2016

93,131,017 postal votes had been cast by last Sunday

491 absentee ballot frauds discovered in elections between 2000 and 2012

0.0009% estimated proportion of fraudulent votes in US

70 tweets from Donald Trump referring to electoral fraud

130 poll observers, Republican and Democrat, were in position at the count
in Detroit

55% of Florida’s Cuban-Americans vote for Trump

69% of American voters are white non-Hispanics down from 85% in 1996

52 average age of registered Republicans

49 average age of registered Democrats

$1.57 billion raised for Trump’s election campaign

$1.51 billion of dollars raised for Biden’s election campaign

91% of black women vote for Biden

78 Biden’s age on his birthday in 12 days, which would make him the oldest-ever first-term president

70 Trump’s age when he assumed office in 2016, making him now the second oldest-ever first-term President.

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Once elected as president, Mr Biden faces the likelihood of a Republican-controlled Senate and a struggle to have legislation passed.

But Mr Naughtie said: “It is not absolutely clear the Senate has been lost. There will be two run-off elections in Georgia on January 5. I think it is unlikely but that could mean a 50-50 tie for the upper chamber, which would give Kamala Harris as vice-president the casting vote under the constitution.

“So the whole political scene is in confusion, though I don’t think people should talk about this being a chaotic election. There hasn’t been anything chaotic or ­untoward about the counting.

“It has taken a long time because there has been a record number of votes and it has been very close in a significant number of states and therefore the count has proceeded with enormous care. It is actually the opposite of chaotic.

“At some point Trump will have to concede, and the question is who in the Republican Party can say to him, ‘If you want to have any kind of respectable legacy as an individual, you have to accept it’.

“His sons are out stirring out the crowd, with Don Jr talking about ‘total war’ over the election results. When you are talking to some white supremacists who have a fairly brutal view of politics, it is a slightly unfortunate phrase, to put it mildly. But it is interesting that the people he is sending out to say that are the family.

“I remember walking back from Trump’s inauguration in 2017 with a friend from the Washington Post. I told him I was trying to get a ticket for Hamilton, which had just opened on Broadway.

“I said it was how extraordinary it was that Alexander Hamilton, a Scot who was one of Founding Fathers of the United States, was the subject of a hip hop musical. My friend said to me, ‘You know that the script of the Trump administration won’t be written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, it will be written by The Godfather author Mario Puzo’.

“With Trump, it has always been about the power, the family and the business.”