Statement | Trump brings a chill to Washington

For many moons across the Potomac, the protocol of inaugurations has been as immutable and dignified as the presidents’ words engraved on their monuments.

Leaders and luminaries would put aside their grudges and come together to celebrate democracy. This day marks the deepest conviction of the American experiment – that power must pass peacefully from one commander-in-chief to the next.

But what if you come to honor a man who tried to overthrow the government and steal an election? A man who incited his followers to sack the Capitol and then stomped out of town, a sore loser in a foul mood, skipping the inauguration of his successor?

Does he deserve the usual privileges? Should everyone honor him in his moment at the center of the sacred traditions he desecrated?

When Michelle Obama and Nancy Pelosi blast Donald Trump on his victory day, are they rude and unpatriotic? Or are they justified given his inflammatory words, misogyny and racism, his desecration of this tradition at the heart of America?

The weather will not be the only bitter cold in the city. Besides Michelle and Nancy’s cold shoulders, Barack Obama and the Clinton family skip the inaugural lunch.

Trump returns like a colossus. He has brought Washington — Democrats and Republicans — to heel, teamed up with Elon Musk and slapped a gold “Trump” sign on Silicon Valley. The Cloud Lords helped fund the coronation, and they make the pilgrimage here to bow to their new overlord. (This includes the CEO of TikTok, who surely hopes his company’s sponsorship of an inauguration party and his online flattery about Trump’s 60 billion TikTok views will prompt the new president to save the social media platform.)

But not everyone is looking forward to what lies ahead.

It will be hard to forget Trump’s day of infamy, Jan. 6, when he is sworn in at the Capitol, which was smeared with the blood and feces of rioters, recast by Trump and his acolytes as “hostages,” “patriots,” “tourists “. ” and “grandmothers”.

The wintry cold is usually part of the introductory tradition. William Henry Harrison contracted pneumonia and died a month after his 8,445-word speech in March 1841. John F. Kennedy gave his speech without an overcoat in a 7-degree wind chill. Ronald Reagan came in from the cold for his second inauguration. Trump wrote Friday that the “Arctic blast” would force the shindig into the Capitol Rotunda. But given Trump’s obsession with crowd size, many wondered if he was just shuddering at the thought that the weather would keep spectators away.

An X account belonging to a beloved DC dive bar, Dan’s Cafe, dry submitted on the switch to the rotunda: “Good that his followers already know how to get inside.”

Trump’s last inauguration was marred by his meltdown over the crowd; he called the National Park Service director the next day to press him to produce additional photographs of the crowds at the mall after the agency shared photographs that showed Obama had a much larger crowd at his inauguration than Trump did. The one-day-old president also sent out his White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, to bluster falsely about how Trump’s crowd was the largest ever to witness an inauguration.

It set the tone for the high-chair king’s first period: reality must take a back seat to stroke the ego – otherwise.

The mood in Washington is very different this time. Instead of vociferous resistance and a Women’s March that drew nearly 500,000 here and some five million around the globe—an international assortment of pink hats—we have Republicans who have become even more sheepish and Democrats who still seem deflated and restless , without any compelling ideas or pols to lead them out of the wilderness.

And this, since Trump is not surrounded by advisers, generals and a daughter who try (and fail) to temper him, but by fervent loyalists who will help him throw out orders the same way he threw out paper towels out in Puerto Rico, with no worries about who might get hit.

When she tried to lure Joe Biden out of the race last summer, Pelosi said he had been such a consequential president that he belonged on Mount Rushmore. And Biden has given several speeches this week to try to burnish his achievements.

But he will be a mere footnote in the dizzying saga of how Trump won the White House again, despite a hail of impeachments, lawsuits, insults and lies, and an attempted coup that endangered his vice president, lawmakers and police.

The chip on Biden’s shoulder swallowed his judgment about what was good for him, for his party and for the country. His narcissism trumped his patriotism.

A new Times article, “How Biden’s Inner Circle Protected a Faltering President,” reveals that Biden was encased in the same kind of delusional bubble as Trump. Biden’s staff mimicked Trump’s self-serving sycophants, garnering positive comments from allies to show the boss, shielding him from negative stories.

Many noticed that Biden was in a haze, or “dans les vapes,” as an aide to President Emmanuel Macron of France called it. But challenges to the Panglossian narrative of the president’s stamina and mental fitness were met with hostility. Jill Biden and advisers spun a Trump-like web of deception around the White House.

Even Biden now admits he’s not sure he could have made it through four more years. “Who knows what I’ll be when I’m 86?” he recently told USA Today’s Susan Page.

But he persisted with his fiction that he was hale and hearty long enough to ensure that Democrats had no time to pick a ticket with a real chance of stopping Trump.

As Biden, steeped in Washington tradition, dutifully follows the script on Monday, he should consider what his legacy will really be: resurrecting Trump.