U.S. President Donald Trump’s influence will drop “dramatically” once Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20, his former adviser says.
“At noon on the 20th of January, the world changes in immeasurable ways…But one of the ways that it will change is Donald Trump’s influence will drop dramatically,” Former White House national security adviser John Bolton told The West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson in an interview.
His comment comes after a mob violently disrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election win on Wednesday, smashing windows and scaling the walls in a riot that left four dead.
“What happened on Wednesday was a horrific act. It was a terrible day for America,” Bolton said.
“It was also the result of (the) president of the United States inciting a mob to riot. In (10) days Donald Trump will not be…president anymore. And I can tell you that sitting around the pool at Mar-a-Lago is not going to be the same as sitting in the Oval Office.”
Multiple prominent voices — including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — have pointed the finger at Trump for inciting the violence that took place on Wednesday.
Trump had been sharing unfounded claims of election fraud on Twitter, Facebook and any other platforms for months. Then, on Wednesday, he urged hordes of his supporters at the rally to “walk down to the Capitol” and resist the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
“We are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” he said.
“And we are probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them — because you will never take back our country with weakness.”
Trump did finally acknowledge he had lost the election to Biden in a video he released on Twitter on Thursday.
“A new administration will be inaugurated on Jan. 20,” Trump said in the video. “My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.”
By Friday morning, however, Trump had returned to directing all-caps tweets at his supporters they will have a “will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future.”
Bolton said that there are “significant” conversations happening in Republican circles to stamp out the mark Trump has left on the party.
“There’s a lot of damage that he’s caused to the country that has to be repaired, and to the Republican Party,” Bolton said.
“And I think there are already significant conversations going on about how to eliminate the Trump influence that’s caused so much damage.”
And in the meantime, with just 10 days remaining in Trump’s presidency, Bolton said that there’s no need to take drastic measures.
He said that impeaching Trump or invoking the 25th Amendment would simply take too long and be too complicated to complete within the next two weeks. The best option, Bolton said, would be for Trump to resign — but he added that this is also the “least likely.”
“He will never resign,” Bolton said.
With Trump’s term ending in just 10 days, Bolton said there’s a long path ahead to undo the damage of the president’s lies.
“There’s serious work to be done to correct the lies and misimpressions about the election being stolen and other things that Trump has put out there in the past three or four months,” Bolton said.
Still, he remains optimistic that the lies can be corrected.
“I think it’s a mistake to treat public opinion like a block of granite: unmovable, unchangeable, unalterable.”