Trump’s world has gotten smaller and smaller, with ever more unqualified sycophants serving his every need. No one even tries to tell him anything he doesn’t want to hear:
When Donald Trump invited the rapper formerly known as Kanye West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes to join him for dinner on the patio of his Florida club last month, the former president had no chief of staff or senior aide at his side.
There was no scheduler, either, nor a press aide. Only one person staffed Trump at the gathering with antisemites that drew days of denunciations: Walt Nauta, a cook and military valet in the Trump White House who is now employed as an all-purpose gofer for the former presidentand who ushered the group to the table before leaving them alone to talk. Nauta has continued to serve Trump loyallyat Mar-a-Lago, even as he has emerged as a key witness in the Justice Department’s investigation of whether Trump purposely hid classified documents storedat the club from authorities.
TheNov. 22 dinner, described by three people familiar with the event, neatly encapsulates Trump’s post-presidential life — a reminder of how a former president who worked steadily to dismantle the government guardrails imposed by his elected office is now almost entirely without restraint.
From almost the instant it became clear he had lost the 2020 election, Trump refused to accept the results, creating a disorganized transition process during which he rebuffed efforts to prepare for his post-presidency.
In the two years since he left office, Trump has re-created the conditions of his own freewheeling White House — with all of its chaos, norm flouting and catering to his ego — with little regard for the law. With this behavior, Trump prompted a criminal investigation into his post-presidential handling of classified documents to compound the ongoing one into his and his allies’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election results — which presents potential legal peril and risks hobbling his nascent bid to be elected president again in 2024.
Even as he works to convince supporters that the documents probe is the result of an overblown paperwork dispute, and that the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of his Mar-a-Lago Club was an abuse of power, the investigation is in fact a product of how Trump has approached post–presidential life.
Though few rules guide the life of a former president, Trump has exhibited a characteristic disinterest in following any of them. These days, he is served almost exclusively by sycophants, having replaced successive rounds of loyal yet inexperienced aides with staffers even more beholden and novice.
Natalie Harp, one of Trump’s employees and a former host on the pro-Trump cable network One America News, often accompanies Trump on his daily golf outings, riding the course in a golf cart equipped with a laptop and sometimes a printer to show him uplifting news articles, online posts or other materials.
On some quiet days, another aide, Molly Michael, who served asTrump’s assistant in the White House, has called around to Trump’s network ofallies across the country requesting that they dial the former president to boost his spiritswith positive affirmations. There’s nothing going on, she has told them, adding that his friends know how restless he gets when nothing is going on, according to people who have heard her appeal.
Multiple Trump advisers said there is no senior aide living in Florida full time, with advisers flying in and out as needed. “He needs someone there to say, ‘Here’s a really bad idea, and this is why.’ I don’t think he has that kind of crowd around him right now. Nor does the president want anybody like that,” said David Urban, a longtime Trump adviser turned critic.
Like he did as president, Trump has looked for ways to turn a profit with his new arrangement: Trump’s staff tried, unsuccessfully, to get the General Services Administration to pay rent at Mar-a-Lago — potentially for his lifetime — for the office space he has created for himself above the club’s ballroom.
A longtime Trump confidant termed his Mar-a-Lago existence, where he has tried to re-create the trappings of the presidency, as “sad.” Comparing it to life at the White House, this person added,“It’s like a Barbie Dream House miniature.”
Does he have what it takes to run for president again? I’m really beginning to wonder. He’s about to face the full force of the federal government and his people a re bound to get agitated over it. Maybe that will reinvigorate him. But he seems to be retreating more and more into a sort of Howard Hughes-like existence.
Here’s a sampling of what he sharing with his cultists this weekend:
And the problem is that nobody cares. Social media is obsessing over the other weird, rich, white guy and his persecution complex. He just seems so tired.
It’s Happy Hollandaise time here at Hullabaloo. If you’d like to throw a little something in the old Christmas stocking it would be most appreciated.