Trump, still out of sight, focuses on his own future as pandemic worsens
LA TimesIn private, President Trump is more sanguine than on Twitter about having to accept “the tainted results” of the election, a campaign official says. According to Eric Bolling, a former Fox News host who is in frequent touch with Trump, the president and his supporters are livid about the network’s early call of Arizona for Biden and its decision Monday to cut away from a news conference where White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was making unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. “By this weekend, some of the avenues may have closed down and could be an opportunity for the White House to pivot,” said one administration official who requested anonymity to avoid contradicting Trump in public. The Las Vegas Review-Journal, a newspaper owned by billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, ran an editorial on Thursday saying that it’s “simply false” that fraud cost Trump the election. Trump lost this election because he ultimately didn’t attract enough votes and failed to win a handful of swing states that broke his way in 2016.” Karl Rove, the longtime Republican strategist who has occasionally advised Trump, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “the president should do his part to unite the country by leading a peaceful transition and letting grievances go.” Trump’s media allies generally followed the same formula — flattering the president even as they tried to gently coax him off the stage.