According to a new report from Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt for the New York Times, President Trump has sequestered himself in the White House during the waning days of his presidency, embracing conspiracy theories that claim he still has a chance to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“He is almost entirely disengaged from leading the nation even as Americans are being felled by the coronavirus at record rates. Faced with an aggressive cyberassault almost surely carried out by Russia, his response, to the degree that he has had one, has been to downplay the damage and to contradict his own top officials by suggesting that the culprit might actually have been China,” Haberman and Schmidt report. “He played almost no role in negotiating the stimulus bill that just passed Congress before working to disrupt it at the last minute.”
Sources speaking to the Times say Trump’s increasingly alarmist rhetoric and embrace of conspiracy theories has some of his closest aides “deeply concerned,” one of whom is reportedly outgoing Attorney General Bill Barr.
“Mr. Barr, whose last day in the job is Wednesday, has told associates he had been alarmed by Mr. Trump’s behavior in recent weeks,” the report states. “Other advisers have privately said they feel worn out and are looking forward to the end of the term.”
Read the full report over at The New York Times.