At 9 p.m., he got out of bed, opened his laptop, and started to write a statement. A statement—the considered language of politics, the true mandarin’s language—was the indication of ongoing business. What would silence mean?

It would leave the Trump White House on the side of chaos. They were not the government; they were the disruptors of government. Without a statement, there might truly be anarchy.

The Trump White House was the story of impolitic, incendiary, and disruptive language overriding officialese. The president considered this to be part not only of his tactical arsenal, but of his charm. Arguably, its result was now in the street. Now what was needed was to override that language, to override Trump’s voice with an official government voice.

This meant doing what Trump had refused to do for the past sixty-four days: acknowledge that Joe Biden would be the inevitable president. Trump’s feelings left open-ended, his denial left in place, his refusal to accept the new president—all these might well mean that the violence could go on longer and spread farther. At nine o’clock that evening, it was far from out of the question to imagine Trump’s irregulars—intuiting his rage, resentment, and need—fighting through to January 20 and beyond.

But there was not going to be an abject or contrite Trump, or even a formally defeated one. It was necessary to skip over the fairness of the election and to skip over the Trump-told narrative—the election in his mind would remain stolen, forever stolen. This statement could certainly not be the official, belated concession—at least not to Trump—but it had to establish acceptance, a fait accompli, and put Trump’s stamp on the new, if disagreeable, reality.

Miller was trying to get the headline, the chyron roll: the message from Trump that something had changed.

Orderly transition.

Not exactly the torch passing, and hardly a round of applause for democracy in action.

That was as far as the president could be moved. But it would work, if Trump acknowledged the importance and primacy of an “orderly transition.”

Satisfied that he had navigated around what Trump would not say and had reached the reasonable minimum of what had to be said, he called Kushner and read him the draft.

“Will you call the president?” Kushner smoothly pushed Miller into the fray.

Miller called Meadows, still in the West Wing, and then the president. The president seemed eager to hear from Miller, eager to be on the phone. Most often for Trump, the phone was a one-way instrument: callers listened.

“How bad is this?” Trump asked, a stark difference from his usual opener, “How are we doing?”—which was not, mostly, a question at all, but a preface to Trump’s saying how well everything was going.

“Mr. President, today is literally going to change everything.”