[guest post by JVW]

By now most of you have probably heard the news that Donald Trump left a letter in the Oval Office to be read by his successor. I assume that one day the contents may be made public (and depending upon what is in the letter, perhaps one side or the other will have incentive to leak it), but for now we can merely guess. Here’s how I imagine it going:

Dear ______ Biden:

OK, so you’re here and I’m back in Mar a Lago, which is a beautiful complex, just truly spectacular, where all the best people — and I mean the best people: CEOs, athletes, entertainers, movie stars — live. It’s fantastic, I am telling you. You should look into buying a place here, but I probably will blackball you if you try.

Joe, I am not going to rehash what happened last November, not the fake election with all of the bad mail-in ballots your side created — totally illegal — just really wrong — and the way your people miscounted the votes in the middle of the night, costing us Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Arizona and Georgia and Michigan and Colorado and Vermont and California — I mean, I won more votes than any President in history and it took massive — I mean MASSIVE — fraud for you to deny me the second term. Frankly, I am owed maybe two or three more terms after all I have suffered through — without complaining, mind you, not one word — for the past four years with the fake Russia hoax and the Chinese Virus that was released here in order to stop our beautiful economy — and what a beautiful economy it was: black unemployment at an all-time low, Joe; nobody gives me credit for that — and steal the election.

No Joe, I just want to speak to you President to President, because I’ll always have to be referred to from now on as President Trump — you can’t take that away from me even with this bogus impeachment stuff; I’m still going to appear on a postage stamp one day and frankly I really ought to be on a coin too. We need to bring back the $10 gold piece to this country and name it the Trump, it would be really really great, a fine thing indeed for our country. But President to President, I want to tell you some things that the guy you used to work for — still don’t know where exactly he was born: some say Hawaii but many out there — and these are good, honest people — think it may have been Kenya — some things about the job that he probably didn’t care about but you probably will.

Joe, the chair behind the Resolute Desk is awful, just awful. I mean, bad. You have some back stiffening problems, Joe? Just try sitting in this chair while you have to listen to Nancy and Kevin and Chuck and Mitch haggle over how much money to spend on whatever things they spend money on. Boring! No wonder my back stiffens up. Anyway, you should tell your Chief of Staff that you want one of those luxury — and I’m talking high-end, top of the line — chairs that has a built-in massager and heating/cooling elements sewn in. Very high quality! And easy on your back!

Also, you’re going to find that the remote control for the TV is worn out. No, it’s not the batteries; I think that the buttons are broken from use. I don’t know where that crappy remote was made — probably China, they make all of the crappy stuff these days that was once built to last here in the USA — but you’re going to need a replacement. It’s stuck on the OANN News Channel right now, so have someone come in and manually change the channel as needed.

Come to think of it, the remotes in the White House master bedroom, master bath, and family room all need replacing too. You might get a good deal on a bulk order if you call Xi yourself. Tell him it’s the least he could do after sending us COVID-19, but come to think of it I guess he really doesn’t owe you any favors after all he did for you last year, does he?

Be careful when you step out of the shower in the master bedroom. The rail you hold on to can be kind of slippery when your hands are wet. You’re going to want to get a fur-lined bath mat to place right outside the shower. I got a really nice one — genuine wildebeast hide with an extra adhesive bottom; I told they company CEO that I would consider buying them for my hotels so he sent me a couple dozen to look over; I kept the samples but didn’t sign the deal — but I am taking the one we used back home to Florida with me.

You should get rid of the White House chef right away. He hardly ever makes hamburgers, and when he does he usually uses some kind of French buttery bun which doesn’t go well with ketchup. I wanted to fire him but Melania — you will have to agree, Joe, that she’s the hottest First Lady we have ever had — liked his cooking and said it was good for Baron. Whatever. There’s a McDonald’s up on 17th and H Streets; take an intern maybe 20 minutes to get you a Value Meal but have them order ahead and then just go in to pick it up. You may find that there are times when it’s faster to go to the McDonald’s on 13th and F, but it’s almost never faster to go to the one on 13th and New York, unless there is something big — yuge! — going on at Treasury and at the very same time Lafayette Park is hosting some demonstration of anarchists or women wearing funny hats. I guess the feminists aren’t going to bother to dress up in strange costumes for you, Joe.

Anyway, Joe, I hope you enjoy being President as much as I did, even though there is no way — no chance, none — that you will be as good at it as I was. I’m sure your wife — Trish? Sally? — whatever, she’s much older than Melania though I’m sure she was kind of hot fifty years ago — I’m sure that Betty or Peg or whoever will enjoy it here. It’s got to be better than Delaware.

Good luck, you’re going to need it.

Donald J. Trump

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

I’m remiss for not putting this up first thing. Apologies. It wasn’t intentional – I got up late and actually forgot it was happening this early and am catching up with it now. I will say this: I know I will have a lot of disagreements with President Biden’s policies in the years to come and will bark about them here, but this morning he delivered a refreshing speech of hope for our future. I appreciated the normalcy of his words and tone. They were a relief. I pray that President Biden has a positive impact on our nation. I truly want him to succeed.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

This is really not a surprise. Keep the grift going for as long as you can:

President Trump has talked in recent days with associates about forming a new political party, according to people familiar with the matter, an effort to exert continued influence after he leaves the White House.

Mr. Trump discussed the matter with several aides and other people close to him last week, the people said. The president said he would want to call the new party the “Patriot Party,” the people said.

…

It’s unclear how serious Mr. Trump is about starting a new party, which would require a significant investment of time and resources. The president has a large base of supporters, some of whom were not deeply involved in Republican politics prior to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

He certainly has a substantial base in place. And after receiving 74 million votes, we can assume that he would be able to peel off a significant number of MAGA loyalists (as opposed to the Republicans who begrudgingly voted for Trump). Calling it the “Patriot Party” is very on-brand for Trumpers too. But would it actually gain any momentum given the incredible push back that would come from the Republican Party? The longtime major party is not about to sit idly by as a third party pulls away members. But are Trump’s supporters still loyal to him – even after the events of Jan. 6? Well, at least right now, it appears so:

The new ABC News/Washington Post poll out Friday morning shows broad public support for holding Trump accountable for last week’s siege at the Capitol. But 60% of Republicans say they still want their party to follow Trump’s direction, with only one in three favoring a new direction.

Among those who approve of Trump’s job performance, a startling one in five — 19% — support those who stormed the Capitol. Two-thirds of Republicans believe the president has behaved responsibly since the election.

It points to a Trump-backing base that is feeding off different news sources and operating under different norms entirely than even their fellow Republicans…

While no one yet knows how the Republican Party will shake out in the wake of Trump’s departure from the White House, I think it’s safe to say that given the embarrassingly small number of Republican lawmakers willing to hold him accountable and vote for impeachment, he will continue to hold sway for some time.

I realize this is anecdotal but nonetheless, I’m sure this is happening in other places as well. Since the election, I know of three lifelong Republicans from separate families, who live just several doors apart from one another in my neighborhood and have left the Republican Party. Each one of them says essentially the same thing: they could not bring themselves to vote for Trump, and they had been hoping for a long time that the GOP would wake up and turn away from him. Of course, that never happened. So when Trump attempted to overturn a legitimate election, the decision was made for them. They would rather be unaffiliated with any party than spend another day as members of the GOP.

Secondly, this is another telling example of the current disarray of the Republican Party: Dan McLaughlin points to his email inbox and notes that Trump’s name has all but disappeared from Republican fundraising emails:

If you have been on Republican fundraising email lists the past several years — even if, like me, you have never given a penny to Donald Trump’s campaigns — you are familiar not only with the regular deluge of such emails, but also with the ubiquity of Trump and the Trump family in the sender line, subject line, text, and merchandise offered in such emails. Trump is everywhere. Until now: Suddenly, he’s gone. After noticing this pattern, I went through my inbox (even the spam folder) and counted up the fundraising emails from official GOP sources since January 7, the day after the Capitol riot. What isn’t said speaks volumes. I categorized these by the sender or domain…

In just under two weeks, 201 emails, of which at most eight mentioned Trump, and a few of those only obliquely. Even emails pounding away at social-media bans talk about banning “conservatives,” not Trump himself. Jake Tapper of CNN is mentioned in more of these emails than Trump is. I also saw zero examples of Trump merchandise referenced in any of these emails.

Few things are more directly aimed at the tribal id of political partisans than fundraising pitches via direct mail and email. If rank-and-file Republican donors are more likely to respond favorably than unfavorably to mentions of the president, you’d expect to see that. If my inbox is at all representative, Trump’s absence speaks volumes about what the fundraising professionals are seeing in the mood of the party.

So, while a newly sworn-in President Joe Biden is calling for unity today, the Republican Party is trying to sell their own twisted brand of it: Look the other way and do not hold a former President of the United States accountable for fomenting the horrendous events that took place on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, nor hold him accountable for a two-month effort to overturn election results because the nation needs to, you know, unify and heal. Look the other way. For the sake of the party.

[Ed. I can’t remember who it was but several weeks ago, well before this report came out, a commenter said that they thought Trump would start his own party and peel away the MAGA crowd as opposed to the anti-MAGA Republicans pulling away from the Republican Party to start a third party. It looks like you were onto something.]

–Dana