At this, the president scowled and seemed to decide that Clark was a less-than-able messenger: “You’re wrong. I think you’re wrong. It’s much higher.” He said that there was at the very least a 25 to 30 percent chance, throwing out his view (details of which had largely been supplied by Giuliani) of a systemic fraud with massive discrepancies around the country. Indeed, how could they not prevail?

As they ate the meatballs (per Trump: “the greatest recipe ever”) and pigs-in-a-blanket, with vats of mustard for dipping, and wave after wave of Diet Cokes appearing, the plan for real talk floated away, and instead, the group found itself repeating what they had heard about numbers of dead people and malfunctioning voting machines, each desperately offering the random reports that had come in since Election Night.

Yes, yes, they should play this out, of course. That was the right thing. Obviously, the evidence should be looked at. Of course, of course, that’s your right, Mr. President.

What was supposed to have been the off-ramp from the 2020 campaign had now, suddenly, for everybody rushing to the exits, turned into a weird new on-ramp.

“You’ve got to fight harder. You’re not fighting hard enough. They stole it. We’ve got to fight. We have to keep fighting,” said the president, angry and certain, furiously trying to direct his weary generals.

So … not an end and acceptance and an honorable and realistic way forward at all, but somehow, a whole new agreement to pursue election challenges across the country.

Each of the men was silent as the group rode down in the elevator, uncomfortable in their incomprehension and bewilderment as they left, walking through the portico and then down the stairs near the Oval to “West Exec,” the street that divides the West Wing from the EEOB, with its VIP parking spaces (Hicks, Herschmann, Stephen Miller), looking at one another abashed and disbelieving.

To the best recollection of some of the campaign and White House staffers most closely involved in the reelection effort, Matt Oczkowski was never seen or heard from ever again after the race was called on Saturday. This had a symbolic and functional significance: the Trump campaign, such as it was, had left behind the world of actual vote counting and empirical data.

4

RUDY

Almost everybody from the West Wing and the campaign stayed home on Sunday, November 8, five days after the election. This was, even in the face of the president’s refusal to concede, a determined act of normalcy. A hard, emotionally fraught campaign was done—and lost. The readjustment needed to begin. Everyone’s life would be going in another direction.

In many ways, the Trump White House was reacting normally to defeat. People were packing up. Even senior figures in the West Wing, such as Hope Hicks, were slipping out the back.