Trump is facing a second impeachment but doesn't have a leg affairs director whipping senate votes for him/anyone on his final WH staff w strong senate GOP ties. So he is making feints about primarying people but with no actual apparatus to scare folks with right now.
Instead he's mentioned to a very few advisers - meaning almost none of them - the notion of creating a third party, which he told advisers couldn't help win a presidential race in 2000 when he didn't seek the Reform Party line.
"He's golfing," said one adviser when I asked how rigorously he's focused at the moment on candidate recruitment against the 10 House GOPers who went against him.
This is not to say he will not be able to stoke supporters in primaries, and is not to say some of his family members, in particularly his oldest son, won't be effective in campaigning against House incumbents. Polling since Jan 6 shows why he'll remain a force if he wants to.
But right now he barely has a legal team for impeachment. He has political advisers who typically work in GOP politics. Creating a third party is actually really hard.
And it is contradictory to say “I’m doing a third party” as well as “I’m primarying Republicans.” You might be able to do one but you can’t do both. All this is to say that while people have learned the hard way not to dismiss Trump, not all of his endeavors are identical.
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Lots of reporters tried to talk to Birx while she was there. She was not interested. And when she spoke publicly early on, she appeared in lockstep with a president whose questioning of the science was true beginning in March 2020.
Given the rationales defenders of Birx and Fauci offered for their public statements being that they thought it was better for them to stay inside the government, it would be good for an interviewer to ask them what are concrete examples where their staying made a difference.
The list includes L'il Wayne, who Kushner is said to have pushed for, but does not include Trump family members, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani or Trump himself (this could all change but isn't likely to) nytimes.com/2021/01/18/us/…
There have been days of meetings about the pardons, with the president beginning to call people on Sunday to tell them they were getting them. Kushner has focused on a group of people working with Alice Johnson. Ivanka Trump has weighed in. nytimes.com/2021/01/18/us/…
The president has continued to tell advisers and allies he really won the election, with less than 48 hours to go before he leaves office. On the current GOP rift, the president's anger is with every Republican who voted for impeachment but singular for McCarthy, aides say.
Associates who've spoken with Trump say he's used the same vulgarity he used about Pence to describe McCarthy, saying he bowed to pressure with his House floor speech.
McCarthy did NOT support impeachment, but that’s hasn’t mattered to the president, according to people who spoke with him.
I got a bit more information about the Lindell meeting. It was a brief meeting, Trump sent him upstairs to the WH counsel's office to be escorted by an admin official sitting next to Lindell in the meeting. That official, according to another official, was Robert O'Brien.
Once up there, he insisted on meeting with Cipollone. It got contentious, in part bc supposedly on the blacked-out part of his notes was something about how Cipollone should be fired.
Lindell tells me that he was carrying the notes for an attorney he's been working with to prove the election was really won by Trump, wouldn't say who it was. Said some of it related to reports Trump is now unable to see because he doesn't have Twitter.
Confirming @jdawsey1 on Trump wanting to stiff Rudy, and a few new details - White House officials blocking Rudy calls to Trump; Trump said repeatedly on AF1 yesterday about the election: "I won;" Pence/others had to convince Trump to do the video today. nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/…
Even after Trump recorded/released the video, he had to be reassured by aides that it was the right thing to do nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/…
The president is furious with McConnell but deeper anger is at McCarthy, people close to him say. Felt like McCarthy betrayed him by condemning what he did/checking support for censure nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/…
"Earlier this month, Mr. Giuliani said he had no interest in attending the Republican National Convention in San Diego in August, prompting the state Republican chairman to say he did not want the Mayor there, either." nytimes.com/1996/06/26/us/…
"That was about the same time that the Mayor lamented Mr. Dole's support for legislation that would restrict Government aid to immigrants, calling the restrictions "a terrible, terrible mistake."nytimes.com/1996/06/26/us/…