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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump leaves office on Wednesday under a dark cloud of his own making, ending his only four-year term tainted by two impeachments, deep political divisions and his handling of a pandemic that has killed 400,000 in the United States. .
Trump, 74, will say goodbye to the White House hours before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. That will make him the first outgoing president since Andrew Johnson in 1869 to skip the Inauguration Day ceremony marking the formal transfer of power, in a final show of resentment over his failure to win reelection.
Trump and his wife, Melania, will depart South Lawn in the Marine One helicopter for Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland, where he will preside over a military-style farewell before boarding Air Force One one last time to fly to Florida.
His arrival at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach is scheduled to get him behind the resort’s wall before Trump’s term as president expires at noon.
Banned from Twitter after his supporters stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, Trump used an old-school method, an emailed press release, to distribute a farewell video Tuesday in which he deviated from his usual divisive rhetoric and delivered an optimistic message.
“Now more than ever, we must unite around our shared values and overcome partisan resentment and forge our common destiny,” he said. But he did not mention Biden, to whom he has not formally relented.
Trump has a long way to go to rebuild an image left in tatters by his stormy presidency, particularly in recent months. Trump now has a unique place in history, as the only president to have been indicted twice.
Even after Trump leaves office, the Senate has yet to hold a trial on the impeachment charge brought by the Democratic-led House of Representatives that it incited an insurrection. His result could determine whether he will be disqualified from running again for president.
“He’s going to be an asterisk president, a member of a term that did more harm than good,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.
Trump kept until his final days in office that was stolen from the November 3 elections, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The courts have rejected the unsubstantiated claims of his campaign of widespread electoral fraud and his vice president, Mike Pence, led the United States Congress in certifying Biden’s victory over Trump’s objections, after Trump-inspired protesters were acquitted from the Capitol after a deadly assault.
The Washington that Trump leaves behind is guarded by 25,000 National Guard personnel, while the National Mall, traditionally packed with spectators on inauguration day, is closed to the public due to threats of violence from the groups that attacked the Capitol.
While worried about fighting the election results, Trump made no dent in the rising death toll from the coronavirus, which crossed the dismal 400,000 mark in the United States on Tuesday, the most of any country. Pandemic-related closures and restrictions have also cost millions of Americans their jobs.
Tarnished mark
Trump, a former real estate mogul who owns 17 golf resorts around the world, faces a daunting task to rebuild his tarnished brand.
The New York Times reported that many of its resorts have been losing millions of dollars and that hundreds of millions of debts must be paid in just a few years.
Trump must also decide how to stay involved in politics, as he has said he will. He has talked about using a super PAC (political action committee) to support candidates trying to overthrow Republicans who he believes have stood up to him politically.
But it remains to be seen whether he will be able to maintain his grip on the Republican Party.
“I would predict in the not too distant future that American political candidates will be more motivated to show they are different from Trump than candidates after 1974 to show they were different from (Richard) Nixon,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss. Nixon resigned in 1974 over the Watergate scandal. —Reuters
