The Final Days of Donald Trump
His flailings echo the last days of Richard Nixon and Adolf Hitler
“The Führer has lost all sense of reality,” says a Nazi general in “Downfall,” the vivid movie about Hitler’s last delusional days in his Berlin bunker.
The film — based on voluminous research — portrays Hitler’s underground labyrinth in April 1945. The place is a madhouse of denial, rage, and end-of-times frivolity. Unable to believe his house of cards may be about to fall, Hitler lives in an alternate reality. With the Russian army already in the streets of the capital, none of Hitler’s sycophants wants to tell the manic dictator the truth: it’s all over.
Is that what is happening these days in Trumpworld? The president of the United States seems on a binge of denial and desperation. He cannot believe he is losing the election to sleepy Joe Biden, so he bounces madly around the country holding Covid-inducing rally after rally. Or indulges in Learian telephone tirades with his favorite radio and television hosts, like Rush Limbaugh. Trump’s frenzy around the pinball machine of his head resembles that of a child on a sugar rush.
Nixon drank and cried
Trump’s behavior already echoes Richard Nixon’s final days in the White House. Awaiting political execution in August 1974, the fallen president wandered the darkened rooms, sipping whiskey and consulting with portraits on the walls. He ranted about the injustice of it all and fell crying into Henry Kissinger’s arms. He bade the Jewish secretary of state kneel with him in prayer. Night after night, he got drunk.
Trump’s confrontation with his likely political demise is more frantic. He summons the faithful to his backyard for a Supreme Court swearing-in, daring the virus to strike again. Also like Hitler, who considered himself indestructible after surviving several assassination attempts, Trump sees himself as a kind of wonder child, the beneficiary of “miracle” drugs. Hitler, too, was on a dizzying cocktail of drugs in his final days in the bunker. They were gladly supplied by the Führer’s obliging personal physician, who gave his boss up to 20 injections a day for his trembling hand and stomach trouble.
Trump’s rush back into political rallies and radio rants is an echo of Hitler’s diatribes over battle maps, moving ghost divisions around like a child with toy soldiers, trying to stave off the overpowering Red Army.
“That was an order, that was an order!” Hitler screams when told his (non-existent) forces had not attacked. A general mumbles, “It’s madness.” Hitler crumbles in his chair, finally understanding: “It’s over. The war is lost.”
New worst enemies
Confronted with downfall, Hitler lashes out at his generals. In a line that reverse-echoes Trump’s endless whining about his own appointees and now-resigned national security advisors, Hitler shouts: “All you ever did is thwart me! I should have had all the high-ranking officers executed, as Stalin did!”
Trump’s manic flailing takes similar forms. He recently targeted his own closest cabinet enablers, Attorney General William P. Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Neither had moved fast enough, complained Trump, in efforts to jail Hillary Clinton for her missing emails and maybe even Barack Obama for investigating Trump’s 2016 Russia connection. Like Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson before them, Trump’s top cabinet members are now his new worst enemies.
Is this “’roid rage” induced by the anti-Covid drugs? Nixon, too, was in heavy mood swings during his last months in the White House. Though he used Kissinger as his ultimate confidant and confidence builder, Nixon couldn’t resist excoriating Jews to others. “Most Jews are disloyal,” he said. “You can’t trust the bastards.” Hitler, too, blamed Jews to the very last hour for Germany’s collapse, even as his own overreach plunged the nation into hellfire.
No one outside the White House is sure what admixture of pharmaceuticals, fear, and narcissistic overload is driving President Trump’s behavior. Rush Limbaugh, in what could have been a benediction to a fading moment in political life, called Trump’s reign “providential.” Hitler used that same word about himself in the first line of his autobiographical manifesto, “Mein Kampf.” As we know, it did not turn out well.
