I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness, and mayhem. I immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders. America is and must always be a nation of law and order.

This was not true, that he had immediately called in the National Guard, but it had become certain in his mind that he had.

The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay …

My campaign vigorously pursued every legal avenue to contest the election results. My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote. In so doing, I was fighting to defend American democracy. I continue to strongly believe that we must reform our election laws to verify the identity and eligibility of all voters and to ensure faith and confidence in all future elections.

Now Congress has certified the results. A new administration will be inaugurated on January twentieth. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.

Here it was again: “orderly.”

These were perhaps the bitterest words he had ever had to speak, and this moment was the nadir of his presidency—not because he had been shamed by or forced to account for events, but because, at virtual gunpoint, he had been made to capitulate and, finally, concede.

Still, with his strange prescience and intuitive finger in the wind, he had nonetheless slipped into his speech a new political cry, a new flag—like birtherism, like building a wall, like China, like fake news, like taking a knee. America had a broken and corrupt election system that was robbing people, his people, of their vote and their choice of leaders. Of him.

At 10:44 a.m., on January 8, in his last tweet as president—his Twitter account forthwith suspended, followed shortly thereafter by a permanent ban—he announced that he would not be attending Joe Biden’s inauguration, joining only three other presidents who skipped their successor’s swearing in, the last being Andrew Johnson in 1869.

This was in some sense an effort to exercise his remaining power, the opposite of capitulation: “Why would I want to fucking go? They just want to attack me on TV. Isn’t it so great they got rid of Trump and brought in Biden?” This last said in a mincing, mocking, mimicking voice.

In the media view, this was him expressing further contempt for Biden and casting doubts on his successor’s legitimacy, a manifold and historic (and destructive) sour grapes.

His daughter and wife wanted him to go, but Kushner and the remaining staff felt there was little point in pushing him—there was, of course, little point in pushing a resistant Trump to do anything.