WASHINGTON (AP) — The video message that plunged Washington into chaos was filmed in secret.
By JONATHAN LEMIRE and JILL COLVIN WASHINGTON (AP) — The video message that plunged Washington into chaos was filmed in secret. President Donald Trump stood in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room, holiday garland and gleaming ornaments draped on the fireplace behind him. He spoke into the camera not to deliver warm Christmas wishes, but to threaten to detonate Congress’ $900 billion COVID-19 relief and year-end package. The video was released without warning Tuesday night, its recording orchestrated by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and kept from all but a handful of aides. On Wednesday, few Republicans or even White House staffers knew what Trump plans next, in a return to the around-the-clock chaos of his first months in office. The moment was also a flashback to the start of Trump’s political career, when he delivered direct assaults on GOP leadership and the party’s establishment. Now Trump appears willing to do that again on his way out of office, potentially sabotaging his party’s chances of controlling the Senate as he lashes out in anger at those he believes have not supported his efforts to overturn the election. Since his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has been holed up in the White House with an ever-shrinking circle of aides and allies, including some pushing fraudulent conspiracy theories about the election. He has ignored the surging pandemic that is killing 3,000 Americans a day, and has mostly left it to others to promote vaccines being counted on to bring it to an end. His focus has largely been on trying to overturn Biden’s victory, embracing baseless conspiracy theories, pushing futile legal challenges and undermining confidence in the tenets of American democracy and the peaceful transfer of power.
