Here was, it could not be missed, a send-off into the waters of oblivion—it was a sparse plane ride. There was no Hope Hicks. There was no Stephen Miller. No Jared and Ivanka. No CEO buddies. No members of Congress. No cabinet folks. The traveling adulation chorus of Air Force One had disappeared, or run for the hills.

“Can we do this again in four years?” He seemed to ask everyone on the flight. And everyone seemed to give the same answer: “Oh yes, oh yes.”

He was presented with a world map with a pin in every place he had visited on Air Force One; he murmured his appreciation. Then he was given a replica of the presidential podium. “What do I do with this?” he asked with a hint of sourness. “Like a nightstand…” But then he rallied: “Oh we can put it in the library.”

The only other model for a president leaving the White House and Washington in disgrace was Richard Nixon—a reviled but tragic figure. Washington insiders, or anyone with an establishment leaning or yearning, seemed inclined to see Trump’s disgrace in Nixon-like terms, the humiliated and broken man.

And yet, obviously, there was something wrong with that dramatic arc. The Trump being cast out of office was the same Trump who had come into office. There had been in the long narrative no transformational moment. People waited for his shame to catch up with him, to bring him to his knees. But this wasn’t Shakespeare. He didn’t learn, he didn’t grow, he didn’t change. He was a simple machine: he got punched, and he punched back. As long as he still stood, he was still punching.

Never admit, never apologize, never back down. Attack.

Thousands of fans lined the road from West Palm Beach to Mar-a-Lago. There were TRUMP PENCE 2020 signs with a line through Pence’s name. YOU WON signs. FUCK BIDEN signs. STAND WITH TRUMP WHO HAS GRIT AND DETERMINATION. WE LOVE YOU.

12

REDUX

It was an almost incomprehensibly wrongheaded sense of story line, a fool’s version, that, right away, the Democrats, not even taking the time to breathe the air without him, would bring him back again—rescuing him from the waters of oblivion.

Two weeks out of office, and he was yet dominating the news—without staff, without facilities, without even a desk—they were putting together a makeshift arrangement above the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago—and with the support of only a few ambivalent souls, he was still the superseding presence in the nation.

You could not, in fact, take away his platform.