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reThe Trump era ends as it began. Washington is currently debating the number of supporters of the president who gathered in the capital on Saturday. In January 2017, the presidency began with the bizarre claim that the “National Mall” drew the largest crowd ever to attend a grand opening.
Majid sattar
Political Correspondent for North America based in Washington.
Ten weeks before his departure from the White House, the outgoing president accused the media of not sending the protest of “hundreds of thousands” of his supporters. His spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany called it, on her private Twitter account, astonishing that “more than a million” have turned up in Washington. Even then, Trump later only spoke of “tens of thousands.”
He can be granted a lot: There were many Trump supporters who had gathered in “Freedom Square” near the White House and then went on to the Supreme Court, including conservative evangelicals, conspiracy theorists from the “QAnon” milieu. . Right-wing “Proud Boys” and people who, by their own admission, simply wanted to show once again how much they loved this president. They shouted “America, America”, demanded “four more years” for Trump and claimed, like the president himself, that they would steal the election.
Trump is working on the legend of the stab in the back
The president walks a fine line, he knows that he will not get very far talking about electoral fraud. Just on Friday he received several defeats in court, where the claims of his lawyers were dismissed or withdrawn. With Republicans in Congress, play mikado: who shrugs first? So far they haven’t done him the favor of publicly distancing himself. That would give him the opportunity to claim that his own people overruled him in his valiant fight for the American people. So that he could position his base against the party establishment, which of course wants to avoid it.
But Trump knows it too: he shouldn’t overdo the game. If he had spoken to the crowd, things might have gotten out of hand. A call to revolt, and his stab at the back legend would disappear. Trump is still president, with all his powers. However, with all the restrictions of the constitution. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, felt compelled to testify publicly last week after the Secretary of Defense was removed from office that the military had taken an oath on the Constitution, and not on a “king, tyrant, dictator or a individual “.
Milley’s appearance was not without drama. But Trump is so trusted in his efforts to rewrite history in order to ensure control of his party beyond January 20, the “lame duck period,” as the time until the new president takes office feels. don’t feel like a run-up to the hit. Trump knows what will happen in the coming weeks. He said it himself on Friday in his own way, almost at least. There he was standing in the rose garden of the White House and talking about what should really cease to exist: the Corona crisis.
During the election campaign, he kept yelling at his supporters to pay attention: on November 4, the day after the elections, the pandemic would not be heard again. Democrats only used the virus to aid the election campaign and spread fear, that is.
