On this, the last full day of the Trump presidency, we begin today’s roundup with Asawin Suebsaeng at The Daily Beast:
In his closing hours as leader of the free world, President Trump has also focused on making his ceremonial farewell as warm as possible, during a time when so many powerful conservatives are openly wishing that he’d just go away. According to an email reviewed by The Daily Beast, the White House has “cordially” invited Trump officials and allies to a ceremony at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday at 8 a.m. ET to send off the outgoing commander in chief. [...]
Various senior administration officials just want the show to end, tired of fighting and even more tired of trying to avoid their mercurial boss’s verbal lashings and delusional crusades. “He asked me [earlier this month] about how to punish certain Republicans who weren’t standing with him and abandoning him after all he had done for them and the Republican Party,” one of these senior officials said. “During that moment, I kept thinking about how January 20th couldn’t come fast enough.”
Jacob Lambert at The Week has 12 unforgettable photos of Trump’s presidency.
Also at The Week, Damon Linker reflects on Trump’s legacy:
A large faction of Republican voters now appears to delight in being lied to — just as a bloc of their representatives in Congress seems eager to continue practicing a politics of lies and total war, even when it inspires a real-world insurrection against the very institution in which they serve. Democrats, by contrast, will be in a good mood for a while, enjoying being rid of the mad king and relishing their own return to political power. But how long will the good feelings last if the GOP continues to treat the new president as a man who rose to office through fraud?
At The Atlantic, McKay Coppins writes about the coming Republican amnesia:
[T]he narrative now forming in some GOP circles presents Trump as a secondary figure who presided over an array of important accomplishments thanks to the wisdom and guidance of the Republicans in his orbit. In these accounts, Trump’s race-baiting, corruption, and cruel immigration policies—not to mention his attempts to overturn an election—are treated as minor subplots, rather than defining features.
History professor Tim Naftali:
President Donald Trump has long exulted in superlatives. The first. The best. The most. The greatest. “No president has ever done what I’ve done,” he boasts. “No president has ever even come close,” he says. But as his four years in office draw to an end, there’s only one title to which he can lay claim: Donald Trump is the worst president America has ever had.
And on a final note, don’t miss Jamelle Bouie’s piece at The Washington Post on the scourge of Trumpism:
Perhaps the next Trump, if there is one, will be another celebrity. Someone with a powerful and compelling persona, who traffics in fear and anger and hate. Someone who “triggers the libs” and puts on a show. Someone who already has an audience, who speaks for the Republican base as much as he speaks to them. Republican voters have already put a Fox News viewer into the White House. From there it’s just a short step to electing an actual Fox News personality.