Episode 2: Barbarians at the Oval

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Jonathan Swan, Zachary Basu
2 hours ago - Politics & Policy

Beginning on election night 2020 and continuing through his final days in office, Donald Trump unraveled and dragged America with him, to the point that his followers sacked the U.S. Capitol with two weeks left in his term. This Axios series takes you inside the collapse of a president.

Episode 2: Trump stops buying what his professional staff are telling him, and increasingly turns to radical voices telling him what he wants to hear. Read Episode 1 here.

President Trump plunked down in an armchair in the White House residence, still dressed from his golf game — navy fleece, black pants, white MAGA cap. It was Saturday, Nov. 7. The networks had just called the election for Joe Biden.

In the Yellow Oval Room, the same room where FDR learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, stewards brought hors d’oeuvres on trays while Trump gathered his closest political advisers to assess what options he had left.

Top aides including campaign manager Bill Stepien, senior adviser Jason Miller, conservative political activist and external Trump adviser David Bossie, and Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager, leveled with him. As they saw it, he had one last long shot at victory. It would require them to win enough outstanding votes in Arizona and Georgia to squeak home in those two states, and to win a legal challenge to election practices in Wisconsin.

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Some of the senior staff argued that Trump should spend this post-election period claiming credit for the GOP's strong congressional performances in the elections and to burnish his legacy, by talking about his achievements in office and the pace of the Operation Warp Speed vaccine development. But Trump wouldn't allow his team to move on. To be around him meant you had to accommodate some measure of denial.

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https://www.axios.com/trump-lawyers-biden-election-victory-debf79bc-750b-457b-a736-789b501d62a7.html

[lunatica]

1. This might be the foundation of the movie

It’s the first time I’ve read about what it has been like from the inside of the White House.

The mind set of his staff and campaign managers is just as delusional as Trump’s and Rudy’s. They’re still thinking they can salvage something out of the ashes left after the dumpster fire. Figuring out what lies will work because unlike Trump and Rudy, they still know they are lies.

Trump and Rudy simply have no previous experience of utter defeat through their own actions. Their machinations always worked before so they don’t recognize the end when they see it.

It’s a Shakespearean tragedy on steroids. The heroes destroy themselves in their mad overreaching.