REALLY!!!

Over the past week, President Donald Trump posted or reposted about 145 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times — and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong.  Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises afflicting the nation and largely clearing his public schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results. He has fixated on rewarding friends, purging the disloyal and punishing a growing list of perceived enemies that now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News.  The final days of the Trump presidency have taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House. His rage and detached-from-reality refusal to concede defeat evoke images of a besieged overlord in some distant land defiantly clinging to power rather than going into exile, or an erratic English monarch imposing his version of reality on his cowed court.  And while he will leave office in less than 50 days, the last few weeks may only foreshadow what he will be like after he departs. Trump will almost certainly try to shape the national conversation from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and his relentless campaign to discredit the election could undercut his successor, President-elect Joe Biden. Although many Republicans would like to move on, he appears intent on forcing them to remain in thrall to his need for vindication and vilification, even after his term expires.  Finally Trump will continue the “con of the century” by using his election defeat as a way to solicit donations from the gullible.  He will announce his intent to run for re-election in 2024 to raise even more campaign contributions and try to keep legitimate candidates from entering the 2024 presidential contest.  Trump’s term on office may end but Trump’s grift is just beginning.