‘It’s sad and pathetic’: Trump insiders say the president’s plans with Sidney Powell have left them baffled and scared

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. According to multiple reports, one of the two meetings – an Oval Office confab on Friday – devolved into a shouting match over Powell’s desire for Trump to order DHS to confiscate voting machines. “These people around him, they were playing the game for the purpose of building their brand, building their likability with the president and his base, and they could do that because there were other people who’d stand in the gap and say ‘No, we can’t do that’… They were allowed to push the craziest ideas because they knew someone else would make sure it didn’t happen,” she said. “And now you don’t have those people, and so even people like Giuliani are recognising that this is going beyond the play-acting they’ve been doing.” Yet even as those advisers remain cold to the possibility of Trump appointing a known conspiracy theorist as a roving prosecutor looking for non-existent voter fraud or extra-legal, other Trump loyalists are working to hobble his successor. As for his continued push to overturn the election, inquiries into declaring martial law, and his desire to appoint Powell as his personal inquisitor, Dr Trump said the idea that Giuliani could be a voice of reason in the White House “should terrify us all”, and warned that the danger to the country will increase each day until Biden takes office.