Bitter, Trump skips chance to say splashy, high-profile farewell

3 min readJan 19, 2021

A president’s most valuable commodity is time and Donald Trump is out of it.

With a day remaining in his term, Trump is still consumed with grievance over Republicans he believes abandoned him and insistent to people around him that he actually won the election he lost.

On Tuesday, the once-loyal Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor that the insurrectionist mob was “provoked” by Trump.

McConnell touted that Congress did its duty despite the violence on January 6, certifying the victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

“We’ll have a safe and successful inaugural right here on the very front of the Capitol,” said McConnell.

The President, meanwhile, has been in a foul mood for several days and has lost interest in the performative parts of the presidency he once relished, a source he’s spoken with in recent days told CNN.

While he’s eagerly anticipating his military-style send-off from Joint Base Andrews on Inauguration morning — one of the few items that have cheered him up recently — there were already signs the crowd may be smaller than he’d hoped. And a slate of actual celebrities lined up for Biden’s inauguration has disappointed a president who tried and often failed to secure A-list support for his own presidency.

He hasn’t left the White House or been seen in public for a week. On Monday evening he taped a valedictory final message from the Blue Room of the White House, ticking through several achievements that he believes should define his administration.

The video is expected to be released on Tuesday, an official said, although a final timing had not been determined. Unlike most of his predecessors in the television era, a live prime-time farewell address attempting to burnish what has become a badly tarnished legacy is no longer in the cards.

Trump recorded the message late Monday with a skeleton staff. In it, he made a reference to the “new administration,” an official said, but it was unclear whether he offered a concession to Biden that he has refused so far to do.

On his last full day as president, Trump is expected to issue a final raft of pardons and commutations and could sign new executive orders, according to White House officials. He is taking exit meetings with aides, posing for photos in the Oval Office, keeping tabs on his carefully planned departure ceremony and receiving briefings from the Secret Service on security for an inauguration he does not plan on attending.

His schedule was empty except for the notice he dictated himself weeks ago asserting he’d “work from early in the morning until late in the evening” and “make many calls and have many meetings.” His vice president was scheduled to convene a final meeting of the coronavirus task force.

For Trump, there has been relatively little reminiscing about the past four years, according to people who have spoken to him. Although he often waxed nostalgic about his 2016 presidential campaign, the years he was actually president have inspired less fond memories. Instead, Trump has appeared embittered at those he believe deprived him a second term, from the “deep state” to ruthless Democrats and disloyal members of his own party.

On Monday, trucks from a Washington-based moving company pulled up at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s South Florida club, as his nights remaining in the White House dwindled to one.

Bitter, Trump skips chance to say splashy, high-profile farewell

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