Exit now looks more like a Donald Trump collapse than a Biden transition
Razor wire is added Thursday atop a fence installed recently near the U.S. Capitol amid heightened security concerns for next week's inauguration. Credit: AFP via Getty Images/Brendan Smialowski
Twice-impeached President Donald Trump seethes in isolation, turning against the remnants of his team. More details emerge about last week's massive security breakdown. More Republicans are marking their distance from their disgraced standard-bearer. Staffers flee for their careers.
Businesses and institutions cut ties. Government agencies descend into chaos. Pandemic response spins out of control.
We are witnessing the U.S. version of a collapsing regime. Trump subverted what should have been a working transition to Joe Biden's presidency, which begins Wednesday. Cooperation was delayed while the loser insisted he'd won and filed phony lawsuits to sell it.
Trump is departing amid scandals much darker than the ones that ushered him in. The nation's capital has been turned into a fortification with armed security to ensure a peaceful transfer of power threatened by his supporters' deadly Jan. 6 riot.
We have never quite seen this in America. Biden and his well-wishers speak of returning to normal. Basic functionality might be a start.
Trump's legacy lingers in the wild grins and poses of his loyalists. They indulge in performance art, not governance. New Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) vowed to carry her Glock across Washington and caused a scene at a security checkpoint in the House.
Nearly a week before Biden takes office, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), also new to town, said she will try to impeach him.
So much for the Constitution. And so much for the Trump cultists who wailed for so long at all critics: "Forget your feelings! Get over it! You lost! Give him a chance!"
By last week, the leadership vacuum grew so obvious that Michael Chertoff, who served as homeland security secretary from 2005 to 2009, told The Washington Post that Trump needed to leave right away.
"He’s not functioning as president now," Chertoff said. "We’ve got a vacancy at the top of the U.S. executive branch."
Word that Trump does not wish to pay lawyer Rudy Giuliani for his failed services hints at the larger picture. Fewer people are on hand to contain Trump's lack of focus and composure, which has always been an issue.
"Everybody feels like they’re doing the best job they can to hold it all together until Biden takes over," one Trump adviser told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Dr. Bandy Lee, a mental health professional who published "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" in 2017, told journalist Bill Moyers this week of the circumstantial change in a sick president's behavior.
"The difference is that the growing pressures and the mere period of time that he has been in power have caused his symptoms to grow worse," Lee said. "But the basic psychological makeup that he brought at the start of the presidency was the same, in that he lacked mental capacity for rational decision making, which was basic fitness for the office."
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
