Wild read. A lot more in the link:
nymag.com
Senior Trump Official: We Were Wrong, He’s a ‘Fascist’
“The legacy of the Trump administration is going to be that the president sparked an insurrection and people died.”
nymag.com
On Friday afternoon, 48 hours after the U.S. Capitol was stormed by violent insurrectionists encouraged by Donald Trump in an attempt to overthrow the government in protest of his election loss, a senior member of his administration spoke to me while he was driving to work.
"This is confirmation of so much that everyone has said for years now — things that a lot of us thought were hyperbolic. We'd say, 'Trump's not a fascist,' or 'He's not a wannabe dictator.' Now, it's like, 'Well, what do you even say in response to that now?'
For four years, people like this official — lifelong Republican operatives — have convinced themselves that Trump's obvious faults were worth tolerating if it meant implementing a conservative policy agenda. These officials believed the benefits of remaking the courts with conservative justices, or passing tax reform, outweighed the risks that a Trump presidency posed to democracy and to the reputation of the country in the world. Now, at the eleventh hour, with twelve days left before Joe Biden is sworn into office, it's clear to some that it was always a delusion.
"This is like a plot straight out of the later, sucky seasons of House of Cards where they just go full evil and say, 'Let's spark mass protests and start wars and whatever,'" the senior administration official said.
"I went through Access Hollywood, Charlottesville — all of these insane things. There's some degree of growing accustomed to the craziness. It's not like my heart is racing, like, Oh, God, how am I supposed to react to this? It's just more that I'm depressed. For people who devoted years of their lives to dealing with the insanity in an attempt to advance a policy agenda that you believe in, all of that has been wiped out. The legacy of the Trump administration is going to be that the president sparked an insurrection and people died because he tried his best to not abide by the Constitution and the tradition of a peaceful transition of power that's been the norm since our founding. Nothing else is even going to be a side note."
This adviser, who spoke to Trump on Wednesday amid the siege, said Trump watched the events on television intently. CNN reported that he was so excited by the action, it "freaked out" some staffers around him. The adviser told me that Trump expressed disgust on aesthetic grounds over how "low class" his supporters looked. "He doesn't like low class things," the adviser said, explaining that Trump had a similar reaction over the summer to a video of Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager, shirtless and drinking a beer in his driveway during a mental health emergency in which police tackled him and seized his weapons. "He kept mentioning, 'Oh, did you see him in his beer shirt?' He was annoyed. To him, it's just low class, in other words."
The adviser said that Trump recently offered them a pardon, although they have not been charged with any crime. The adviser "politely declined." Others are taking Trump's pardon offers more seriously, whether they've been investigated or are at risk of jail time or not. "He's just talking up a storm about giving pardons to allies: His kids, and their significant others, and staffers. He's pretty generous with the offers. When you're offered one, it's like, Should I take it? Is it like insurance?"
One person close to Trump's legal team told me that the lawyers have struggled to get his attention. "He's sort of turning on everybody. The president is so visceral, he just can't hear people unless he can respect them. And he thinks everybody's a traitor, even the people who got him through impeachment. It's just nuts."
