At the nadir of his 1990 debt crisis, Donald Trump bunkered himself inside Trump Tower for days on end, subsisting on a steady diet of hamburgers and French fries. As his real estate empire was collapsing, and his first marriage unraveling, Trump simply refused to accept the reality that his life was in a tailspin. “Do people really think I am in trouble?” Trump asked Vanity Fair’s Marie Brenner at the time, to which she replied, “Yes, they think you’re finished.” One of Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, told Brenner, “Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory. If you say something again and again, people will believe you.”
Fast-forward 30 years, and Trump is living out the final days of his presidency in a similar state of denial. “It’s rigged and stolen!” he complained during a phone call with a prominent Republican the day after the Electoral College affirmed Joe Biden as president-elect. “You can’t reason with him at all,” the Republican said. According to two sources briefed on the conversations, Republicans are privately suggesting to Trump that he should call Biden. Their advice is that Trump doesn’t have to concede. Instead, Trump should tell Biden that he will assist with the transition while he waits for legal challenges to play out. Trump rejected the idea, the sources said.
Trump’s grip on the party is slowly slipping. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell became the highest-profile Republican to recognize Biden as president-elect. A former West Wing official told me that more elected Republicans are waiting until January to come out and pressure Trump to step aside. (Congress officially counts the electoral votes on January 6.) “There’s going to be a coordinated effort to say we need peace,” the official said. Inside the West Wing, officials are aware that the end is near. “They’re packing up,” a second former White House official told me.
As Biden’s inauguration approaches, Republicans close to the White House told me Trump could be poised for a final round of norm-shattering actions. One source said Trump has discussed a preemptive-pardon blitz of everyone close to him, so Biden’s Justice Department can’t investigate his administration. (A White House spokesperson declined to comment.) “Trump doesn’t want his team targeted,” the source said. Another source said Trump wants the Department of Justice to name a special counsel to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden as a way of getting even with Democrats for the Robert Mueller probe. “If Trump is going to leave office, he wants a special counsel, 100%,” the source said.
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