WASHINGTON – With 13 days to go, President Donald Trump finally addressed the reality on Thursday amid growing discussions of attempts to get him out early, acknowledging he would leave peacefully after Congress confirmed his defeat .
Trump led a White House video condemning the violence committed in his name in the Capitol the day before. Then he admitted to the camera for the first time that his presidency would soon end – though he refused to name President-elect Joe Biden or explicitly state that he had lost.
“A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20,” Trump said in the video. “My focus now is on ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transfer of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation. “
The speech, which seemed intended to avoid talk of forced early eviction, came at the end of a day when the cornered president remained out of sight in the White House. Silenced on some of his favorite Internet lines, he watched the layoffs of several top employees, including two cabinet secretaries.
And as officials went through the aftermath of the pro-Trump mob’s siege of the US Capitol, there was a growing debate about impeaching him a second time or calling in the 25th Amendment to expel him from the Oval Office.
The invasion of the Capitol, a powerful symbol of the country’s democracy, upset Republicans and Democrats alike. They struggled with how best to contain the impulses of a president who is deemed too dangerous to manage his own social media accounts, but who is still commander in chief of the world’s largest military.
“I’m not worried about the next election, I’m worried about getting through the next 14 days,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of Trump’s closest allies. He condemned the role of the president in Wednesday’s riots, saying, “If anything else happens, all options are on the table.”
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that “the President of the United States had instigated an armed insurrection against America.” She called him ‘a very dangerous person who would not stay in office. This is urgent, an emergency of the greatest magnitude. “
Neither option to remove Trump seemed likely, with little time left in his tenure to draft the cabinet members needed to invoke the amendment or to organize the hearings and trial that would require impeachment. But the fact that the dramatic options were even debated in Washington’s ranks of power served as a warning to Trump.
Fears of what a desperate president might do in his last days spread in the nation’s capital and beyond, including speculation that Trump could incite more violence, make hasty deals, grant ill-conceived pardons – including himself and his family – or even a destabilizing international incident.
The president’s video on Thursday – which was released when he returned to Twitter after his account was restored – was a complete reversal of the video he released 24 hours earlier, in which he said to the violent crowd, “We love you. You are very special. His refusal to condemn the violence sparked a wave of criticism, and in the new video he finally denounced the “lawlessness and chaos” of the protesters.
As for his feelings when he left office, he told the nation that “serving as your president was the honor of my life,” alluding to a return to the public arena. He told supporters “our incredible journey has only just begun.”
Just a day earlier, Trump unleashed the destructive forces in the Capitol with his baseless allegations of electoral fraud at a rally that prompted supporters to disrupt Congressional certification of Biden’s victory. Following the storming of the Capitol and the eventual certification of Biden’s victory by members of Congress, Trump released a statement acknowledging that he would adhere to a peaceful transfer of power on January 20.
The statement was posted by an assistant and did not stem from the president’s own Twitter account, which has 88 million followers and has been used for four years as a political weapon dictating policy, dividing and conspiring.
Trump himself couldn’t tweet because the social media platform first suspended his account, stating that the president violated his terms of service by inciting violence. Facebook passed a broader ban, saying Trump’s account would be offline until after Biden’s inauguration.
Deprived of that social media blood, Trump remained silent and settled in the executive mansion until Thursday night. But around him, loyalists went to the exits, their departures – which would come in two weeks anyway – moved up to protest the way the president handled the riot.
Transport Secretary Elaine Chao became the first cabinet member to resign. Chao, married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the lawmakers detained in the Capitol on Wednesday, said in a message to staff that the attack “troubled me deeply in a way that I just can’t put aside.”
Education secretary Betsy DeVos followed. In her letter of resignation Thursday, DeVos blamed Trump for fueling tensions in the violent attack on the country’s seat of democracy. “There’s no question about the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it’s the turning point for me,” she wrote.
Others who resigned in the aftermath of the riot: Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger; Ryan Tully, Senior Director of European and Russian Affairs at the National Security Council; and First Lady Melania Trump’s Chief of Staff, Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary.
Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former Chief of Staff and now Special Envoy to Northern Ireland, told CNBC he called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “ to let him know that I was resigning. … I can not do it. I can’t stay. “
Mulvaney said others working for Trump had decided to stay in their posts in an effort to provide the president with some sort of guardrail during his final days in office.
“Those who choose to stay, and I have spoken to some of them, choose to stay because they fear the president will put someone worse in it,” Mulvaney said.
Mulvaney’s predecessor in the post of chief of staff, retired US Marine Corps General John Kelly, told CNN that “I think the cabinet should meet and have a discussion” on Section 4 of the 25th Amendment – making the Trump’s mighty removal by his own cabinet.
Senate Leader Chuck Schumer joined Pelosi, declaring Trump “should not be in office for a day longer” and urged Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to take action. But Chao’s departure could delay early attempts to invoke the amendment.
Staff-level discussions on the matter took place in multiple departments and even parts of the White House, according to two people briefed on the talks. But no cabinet member has publicly expressed support for the move – which would make Pence the acting president – though some were believed to be sympathetic to the idea, believing Trump to be too volatile in his waning days. in function.
In the West Wing, the shell-shocked aides packed their supplies, following a delayed guideline to offboard their posts before the Biden team arrived. The delay so far has been due to Trump’s deliberate focus on his defeat since election day at the expense of his office’s other responsibilities.
Most notably, the fight against the raging coronavirus that is killing record numbers of Americans every day.
Few aides had any idea of the president’s plans, and some wondered if Trump would be largely out of sight until he left the White House. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany read a brief statement in which she stated that the siege on the Capitol was “terrible, reprehensible and contrary to the US”.
But her words had little weight. Trump has long made it clear that only he is speaking on behalf of his presidency.
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Lemire reported from New York. Jill Colvin, Associated Press author, contributed from Washington.