Indeed, there was some confusion here. There was, at this moment in the Trump administration, nothing positive, nothing optimistic at all. Except, it was hard to believe that, at just the point when Trump could fall no further, the Democrats and the media, in one of the weirdest reflexes in modern politics, might once again turn themselves into bullies and Trump into a victim. No one here, or anyone close to him, could say how he had continually been able to save himself—because maybe he hadn’t. Rather, it was the strong belief, an awe-filled one, that it was the Democrats who were always saving Donald Trump.

The plan, then, was to get a poll out as soon as possible and ask the impeachment question. Everybody, putting the sixth behind them, was sure that this would be good news.

Impeachment!

Anyway, it was something to do.

And anyway, it was Friday. Thank God it was Friday, after the worst week in the history of the Trump presidency—losing the Senate, failing in an Electoral College showdown, the Capitol attack, impeachment on the agenda, again. In fact, it was the worst week in the history of any presidency.

The impeachment survey went into the field on the tenth and eleventh in key swing states.

Meanwhile, there were two days when, for the first time, there seemed to exist the actual possibility that the Republicans would break against Donald Trump. At least, this was the hoped-for story the un-Trump media was telling. Here was an old-fashioned ending: downfall.

This is how American politics is written—liberals prevail.

In the end, everybody deserted Nixon.

It was rats off the Trump ship: Betsy DeVos, the education secretary; Elaine Chao, transportation secretary (and the wife of Mitch McConnell); Chad Wolf, acting secretary of homeland security; Mick Mulvaney, the president’s former chief of staff and now special envoy for Northern Ireland; Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security advisor; Tyler Goodspeed, the acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors; Stephanie Grisham, chief of staff and press secretary to the First Lady; Sarah Matthews, White House deputy press secretary; Rickie Niceta Lloyd, the White House social secretary, and the list continued, all those on it issuing chest-beating letters of resignation.

Alyssa Farah, the White House comms director and a Meadows protégée, had abandoned the White House in early December, judging the election challenge futile. (She was shortly identified as interviewing TV agents for a hoped-for on-air career.) She now returned to the air to burnish her I-got-out-early credentials. In hits on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC on the eighth, she said the president had always known he lost the election; he had lied to the American people; he should resign from office. Among all the bad news coming at Trump, among the harshest was his being attacked on television by his own people.

Jenna Ellis sent in her resignation and asked that it be dated a week before January 6.