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WASHINGTON: On Wednesday (November 11), US President Donald Trump spent 10 minutes in public honoring America’s war veterans, a veneer of normalcy for a White House that is frozen by a defeated president who ponders on his options, mostly giving up the mechanics of ruling and blocking his inevitable successor.
Trump’s appearance at the annual Veterans Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery was his first public outing for official business in more than a week.
He has spent the last few days privately tweeting angry and unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
The president has not commented in person since last Saturday, when Democrat Joe Biden won the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
Meanwhile, his advisers are increasingly confident that legal challenges will not change the outcome of the election, according to seven campaign and White House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the thinking of the president and others at the mansion. executive. .
President Donald Trump participates in a Veterans Day wreath ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2020 (Photo: AP / Patrick Semansky).
Before leaving for the solemn commemoration in Arlington, Trump took to Twitter Wednesday to criticize “bogus pollsters” and complain that a Republican city commissioner who defended the tabulation of votes in Philadelphia was not a true Republican.
It also sought to draw attention to a Pennsylvania poll worker who recanted allegations of voter fraud on Tuesday before reaffirming his allegations Wednesday.
Trump later posted a discredited video purporting to show poll workers collecting ballots too late.
“They’re watching TICKETS! Is this what our country has come to?” Trump was enraged.
Though his official schedule has been devoid of public events, Trump has made several personnel moves: He fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper and installed three loyalists in top defense positions.
His choice as Acting Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller, was one of the Pentagon’s top brass who joined him in Arlington.
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Some supporters rejected the idea that Trump is shirking his presidential duties.
“The president is on Twitter as much as ever, and the White House team is moving forward with budget and personnel priorities,” said Dan Eberhart, a prominent Republican donor and Trump supporter.
He added: “The president is understandably focused on counting the ballots, but sometime soon he needs to turn his attention back to the lame duck session and put a finishing touch on his first four years.”
However, few high-level staff have been close to the President in recent days, and many are in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 or in isolation after a confirmed exposure or simply not wanting to be around the Office. Oval, according to White House staff and campaign officials.
Staff working at the White House dwindled after Chief of Staff Mark Meadows confirmed last week that he had tested positive for the virus.
Some staff still believe that the election outcome may change with litigation and recount, but there is growing recognition among the majority that the election was lost and the building will be vacant on January 20 of next year.
Trump’s moods have wavered in recent days.
At times, he has been enraged, enraged that he lost to a candidate he does not respect, and believing that the media, including what he sees as typically friendly Fox News, worked against him. He has also expressed his anger over alleged misconduct with the mail ballots.
But attendees say he has been calmer than his tweets suggest, showing a greater understanding of his situation and believing that he needs to keep fighting almost like a performance, like a show for the more than 70 million people who voted for him. who is still fighting.
Lights shine from inside the White House at dusk Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2020 (Photo: AP / Patrick Semansky).
In recent days, some aides, including his daughter Ivanka, have started talking to him about an ending, questioning how much longer he wants to fight.
Outside the White House, a prominent former ally turned critic of Trump warned that the president was doing potentially irreparable damage to the Republican Party.
“The real problem is the serious damage it is doing to public confidence in the US constitutional system,” Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Wednesday. “Trump’s time is running out, even as his rhetoric continues to mount.”
But no one in his inner circle – the West Wing staff or the Cabinet – is pushing hard for him to stop.
Though he’s been in the Oval Office late two nights this week, the president has done little in the way of governing and instead has been working the phones.
He has called friendly governors – in red states like Arizona, Texas and Florida – and influential confidants in the conservative media, like Sean Hannity, but has not responded as much to Republican lawmakers as he did before the election.
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Always an obsessive viewer of cable news, he has been watching even more television than usual in recent weeks, often from his private dining room next to the Oval Office.
Trump’s focus on two crucial Senate runoff elections in Georgia remains an open question: He has not yet signaled whether he will campaign there, and aides have begun to worry that the protracted legal battle could undermine support for the candidates. republicans.
Trump has also started to talk about his own future upon leaving office.
He has pondered declaring that he will run again in 2024, and his aides believe he will at least openly flirt with the idea to enhance his relevance and increase interest in any money-making effort he pursues.
As he ponders his options, his involvement in the nation’s day-to-day government has nearly come to a halt: Based on his schedule, he hasn’t attended an intelligence briefing in weeks, and the White House has done little lately to manage the unfolding pandemic. it has skyrocketed to record levels in many states.
President-elect Joe Biden and Jill Biden attend a service at the Korean War Memorial in Philadelphia at Penn’s Landing on Veterans Day, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2020 (Photo: AP / Alex Brandon)
The president’s resistance to acknowledging the outcome of the contest has stalled the transition process, and the head of the General Services Administration (GSA), appointed by Trump, has refrained from certifying Biden as the winner of the election.
The certification, known as verification, would free up money for the transition and clear the way for Biden’s team to begin placing transition staff in federal agencies.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said he was “not aware” of any communication between the White House and the GSA administrator about the verification.
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Biden on Tuesday downplayed the importance of certification for now, saying his team continues to prepare to take the reins of the US government.
The president-elect also suggested that he was not overly concerned that he is not yet receiving the president’s daily report, a highly classified intelligence analysis.
Denis McDonough, who served as the White House chief of staff during the Obama administration and helped oversee the 2017 transition of power, said that even as Trump has tried to block the transition, significant progress has still been made.
Biden’s transition team has released an ethics plan and the Trump administration previously established a Transition Coordinating Council in the White House as required by law.
