Report: Trump Thought He Could Stop Biden’s Presidency by Literally Refusing to Leave the White House

Think back to mid-November 2020. Do you recall Donald Trump taking his election loss well? That he seemed of sound mind and body? That he was not going to shred whatever last ounce of dignity he had in an absurd effort to hold on to power? No, of course you don’t. The man was acting crazier than he had at any point in the last four years, which is obviously saying something, given that the last four years had seen him advise people to inject bleach into their veins. He had, quite clearly, completely lost it, and if you need any more convincing, perhaps a new anecdote about him thinking he could stop Joe Biden from becoming president by simply refusing to vacate the White House will do it.

Yes, in her forthcoming Trump tome, set for release on October 4, New York Times scribe Maggie Haberman reports Trump spent the days following his loss telling aides that, despite a long-respected custom to do otherwise, he would not be leaving the White House on January 20. “I’m just not going to leave,” Trump told one aide, according to Haberman. “We’re never leaving,” the then president told another person. “How can you leave when you won an election?” If you’re wondering whether there’s some kind of precedent for a POTUS losing an election and then crossing his arms and telling people, “I’m not going,” Haberman informs us in her book, Confidence Man, that there is not. The closest historical parallel, she reports, would probably be when Mary Todd Lincoln refused to leave the White House for almost a month after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. (Incidentally, Todd Lincoln was subsequently declared insane and committed to a mental institution.)

According to Haberman, in the immediate aftermath of the election, Trump seemed to understand that he had lost and would have to go, telling one adviser, “We did our best” and remarking to press aides, “I thought we had it.” Of course, this brief brush with reality did not last, and at some point, Trump reportedly decided he wasn’t conceding anything, asking Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, “Why should I leave if they stole it from me?” While Confidence Man is the first book to report on Trump’s unhinged adamance on staying in the White House, anyone observing his behavior at the time could have probably read between the lines; in fact, as one outlet headlined on November 6, 2020, “It Sure Sounds Like Trump May Barricade Himself in the Oval Office and Refuse to Come Out If Biden Wins.”

Haberman wasn’t the only one to serve up fresh Trump-related book revelations this week. According to Peter Navarro’s Taking Back Trump’s America, which is set to be released next week, the former president blessed a plan to oust Jared Kushner from the reelection campaign and replace the then first son-in-law with Steve Bannon. That plan, according to Navarro, ultimately failed when Trump, concerned about “family troubles if [he] himself had to deliver the bad news to…the father of his grandchildren,” tasked a Republican donor, Bernie Marcus, to “be the messenger.” Kushner apparently skipped out on a call with Marcus, and then told him “things were fine with the campaign, there was no way he was stepping down and, in effect, Bernie Marcus and his big moneybags could go pound sand.”\

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