White House staff tried to warn Trump about Capitol riot fallout. He didn’t listen
The night before the president directed his supporters to converge on the Capitol, he considered announcing by tweet that he would march down Pennsylvania Avenue with them. But he decided against it out of concern that they would be blocked from approaching the federal building if he provided advance notice of their plans.
Trump had been telling aides for days that he wanted to march to the Capitol with supporters he had summoned to Washington to voice their opposition to Congress certifying the Electoral College count, sources familiar with the conversations said. At a meeting in the Oval Office the evening before his rally he discussed with aides his planned remarks and the event’s logistics.
He ended up not marching with his supporters, instead returning to the White House after delivering a speech to the rally on the outskirts of the White House in which he told them to go to the Capitol.
“You’ll never take back our country with weakness,” Trump said at the rally, pledging to walk with them. “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
To critics of the outgoing Republican president, the intent of his remarks was clear. Democrats said Friday that they could bring articles of impeachment against Trump next week. Republicans such as Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger and former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly encouraged the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
“I absolutely believe that Donald Trump’s role in instigating what was essentially sedition can’t be ignored,” said Linda Chavez, a former adviser to Republican President Ronald Reagan. Chavez said that Trump should be impeached if he does not immediately resign.
With Democrats on Capitol Hill threatening impeachment, aides to the president were said to be “mentally checked out” after an emotionally draining week. Aides who remained expected little activity in the remaining days before they turn in their cell phones and leave before the inauguration.
“The chief has been communicating with senior staff to inform them of next steps and guide usual transition practices for the next administration,” an official said of White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
One White House aide described the mood after Wednesday as “horrific” and “incredibly dark” with “distraught” staffers crying and in tears.
“People are just very very upset with the president,” the aide said. “People are visibly upset with him. Everybody is.”
White House aides familiar with the conversations taking place this week at the White House insisted to McClatchy that nobody envisioned Trump’s supporters storming the Capitol and committing acts of violence. Nor was it immediately apparent to aides listening to his remarks on Wednesday that Trump had incited a riot.
But after the storming of the Capitol was underway, the aides said that Meadows and other senior staff implored Trump to release a sharply worded statement against the mob.
The president did not want to condemn his supporters and resisted, several sources familiar with the conversations said. It was not until the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump joined the chorus — fighting successfully to have the phrase “stay peaceful” included in a tweet her father sent — that President Trump addressed the violence.
Trump in a video on the day of the riot told his supporters he was sympathetic to them but they should “go home.” But many of the staff in the West Wing did not view that as an adequate response. Senior aides urged Trump to say that anyone who broke the law would be prosecuted. They were also said to have warned him that his behavior was inviting the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and Democrats on Capitol Hill to proceed with impeachment.
Eventually senior staff wrote a script for Trump that he read in another video the following day, in which he acknowledged publicly for the first time that on Jan. 20 the nation would have a new president.
The struggle to constrain Trump’s worst instincts was all too familiar to former White House officials.
“Trump doesn’t listen to anybody,” John Bolton, former national security adviser, said in an interview after the riot. “What Trump does is find people who agree with him, and then he says, ‘Well, you know people are saying.’ Yeah, that’s him, and the last person he talked to.”
CONTINUED CONDEMNATION
The fallout continued on Friday over the president’s refusal to issue a more forceful condemnation of the rioters and his public offensive against Vice President Mike Pence while the Capitol was under siege.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said Friday on an all-staff call that she was “sickened by the despicable acts of violence and vandalism” at the Capitol earlier that week, according to a source who was on the call.
Verma also praised Pence as her friend and mentor, the source said, describing him on the call as a “man of patriotism and integrity.” Verma was a health policy consultant to Pence when he was governor of Indiana. She said on the call that she plans to see the federal agency through an orderly transition of power in the next two weeks.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos opted to resign along with some other White House officials who abandoned Trump.
Aides still at the White House described a diminished leader who had lost the confidence of his once-loyal staff and advisers. They said that events that had been planned for the president’s remaining days in office were in flux, with the appetite among aides and allies for legacy events all but suppressed and the number of staff available to assist with such tasks swiftly dwindling.
Trump was said to still be working on last-minute executive orders and one last tranche of pardons that he is planning to issue next week.
“There’s still some final executive orders that some of us are pushing for Trump to make in his last 10 days or so in office on things like healthcare and energy production,” said Stephen Moore, an outside economic adviser to Trump.
The president in a tweet on Friday put an end to speculation about whether he would as his last act in office attend Joe Biden’s inauguration, saying he would not go to it.
Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott said in a statement that Trump should rethink the decision.
Former Florida Rep. David Jolly, a Trump critic who previously served in Congress as a Republican but no longer has a party affiliation, said that after the events of the past week, it would be better if he does not attend the inauguration.
“A month ago, I would have said that he should attend and be respectful, but his presence would be a distraction, would add division, and could add danger,” Jolly said.
This story was originally published January 8, 2021 at 8:37 PM with the headline "White House staff tried to warn Trump about Capitol riot fallout. He didn’t listen."
