Miller and Scavino debated about getting the statement out when Biden reached 270 votes or when the full electoral count was finished. But Scavino, next to only Trump himself a kind of direct-messaging link to Trump’s base, held out for letting the Republicans in Congress make their case. Miller thought they needed to immediately greet the moment when Biden achieved the threshold number.

Kushner, looped in, wanted to move even sooner. He was worried that if they waited even until the 270 point, the media’s undoubtedly preferred narrative of the bitter, implacable, and unaccommodating president would already be written into everybody’s stories. So, Miller started to make his calls, giving out the “orderly transition” statement, embargoed until the final vote.

Every call—to the wires, networks, and major dailies—yielded variations on the same question: When are we going to hear directly from the president? When is he going to come and talk about it? When is he going to stand in front of us and in front of the American people?

For Miller and Kushner, this was merely an invitation from the media for Trump to self-immolate further.

Catching up, Miller—not yet aware that the vice president had earlier been held as a virtual hostage in the Capitol, with the mob quite literally screaming for his head—called Marc Short to let him know that a statement would go out. A disgusted Short blew him off, curtly ending the call. Short was finished with the Trump White House.

As Miller and Scavino continued calling each other throughout the night to stay awake, as the vote dragged on, they both realized that there was no one else to call. Everybody else in the press arm of the White House or the campaign was AWOL.

This is over, Miller thought. This is the end of the road.

Scavino could use only his personal Twitter account to finally, at 3:49 a.m., get out the president’s statement.

Of all the news outlets, Miller realized in the confusion, only Fox had never gotten back to him. Even Fox, Miller accepted—perhaps Fox most of all—was truly over Trump in a most monumental sort of way.

11

DEPLATFORMED

The story popped a couple of minutes before 11 a.m. on January 7: Facebook was blocking the president until at least the end of his term. Scavino’s accounts were blocked, too.

Everybody was off television. This was now both an official White House and campaign blackout and a personally imposed one—nobody could offer a January 6 defense. The networks were wary, too: any administration voice might likely be a bilious and inciteful one.

There was silence. Nearly all communications in Trumpworld dropped to, at best, a whisper. One yet-loyal staffer, accustomed to fielding many hundreds of messages a day, received only a single email on the seventh.