How Trump Makes use of the Energy and Imagery of His Presidency

Solely 5 days after Donald J. Trump left workplace, one among his aides emailed a lawyer to request approval of a formal-looking seal to be used on statements from the workplace of the forty fifth president.

Margo Martin, one among his closest private aides, advised the lawyer, Scott Gast, that consultants had designed a subtly modified seal for Mr. Trump. “They said they changed a few things to avoid trademark issues,” she wrote, asking Mr. Gast if the design was acceptable.

The eventual picture that Mr. Trump’s group used — a recognizable eagle from the Nice Seal of the US, positioned in a circle — was evocative of the presidential seal that recognized Mr. Trump with the job he had simply left. And whereas he’s hardly the primary former White Home occupant to affix an eagle to his web site, the early conversations about presidential imagery revealed what has turned out to be an essential obsession of Mr. Trump’s: being seen as a lot as a future president as a former one.

Mr. Trump vacated the White Home earlier than midday on Jan. 20, 2021, as required by the Structure. However from the second he arrived house to Mar-a-Lago, his members-only membership in Florida, he has grabbed at each alternative to inhabit the position of an incumbent president, together with by placing the everyday trappings of a post-presidency to make use of in making an attempt to reclaim the workplace.

At a minimal, that method might have helped to assuage Mr. Trump’s bruised ego. However it has indisputably grow to be an important think about his effort to return to energy.

A majority of Republican voters, polls present, view Mr. Trump not as a “defeated former president,” as President Biden typically calls him, however as a wrongly deposed president whose re-election would amend a grave injustice. Elected Republicans who as soon as privately mocked the conspiracy theories a couple of stolen election now publicly insist that Mr. Trump was the true winner, out of concern of getting crosswise with their constituents or with him.

This widespread accession to Mr. Trump’s denial of actuality has reaped him monumental political advantages. His posture as a president in exile robbed his rivals within the Republican major of one among their most potent accessible arguments towards him. Whereas evoking his presidency has been a internet asset for him within the short-term G.O.P. major contest, will probably be used towards him — particularly on abortion coverage — by Democrats and the Biden marketing campaign if he turns into the Republican nominee within the basic election.

From the second he started his post-presidential life, Mr. Trump refused to behave like somebody whose days as president have been over.

He shut down any conversations about constructing a Trump presidential library. He clung to categorized authorities paperwork, reveling in his information of the federal government’s closest-held secrets and techniques and displaying them off to guests and aides — an act that resulted in one among his 4 indictments. “I get to keep my title for life,” he advised a Home member in 2017 of the facility of getting been president.

On Jan. 25, 2021, Mr. Trump’s workplace emailed a information launch, indicating the formal opening of his post-presidential workplace, beneath the heading: “Statement from the Office of the Former President.”

The phrase “former” was by no means used once more. Subsequent statements have been despatched by “45th President Donald J. Trump.”

As he rolls towards the Republican nomination — which might make him the primary former president to win his get together’s nomination since Grover Cleveland in 1892 — Mr. Trump is capitalizing on his uncommon standing to twist the method in his favor in methods huge and small.

He has forged himself each because the rightful president and because the inevitable future president. He has used the privileges, pageantry and powers afforded to the presidency to make his rivals look insignificant. And he has infused his marketing campaign with presidential imagery, touring on a airplane his aides name “Trump Force One” and utilizing his Secret Service motorcade and safety element as a muscular expression of pseudo-incumbency. Uniquely, his lone remaining rival, Nikki Haley, was appointed to be the United Nations ambassador by him and served beneath him, making her international coverage accomplishments additionally his.

He has additionally used his post-presidency as a protect — each inside and outdoors the courtroom. He claimed presidential immunity from costs of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. And his group granted information networks’ requests to position dashboard cameras in Mr. Trump’s motorcade on courthouse visits, turning his felony arraignments — there have been 4 in 2023 — into compelling live-TV spectacles.

Requested about Mr. Trump’s use of presidential imagery within the Republican nominating contest, Mr. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, mentioned in a press release: “President Trump is the most famous person in the world and he’s running for the White House. The media needs him and his campaign, because their entire existence revolves around what he does.”

Mr. Trump has used his energy because the get together’s chief to squeeze Republicans in Congress, intervening within the Home speaker races and the present battle over a border safety and Ukraine funding deal. He has used the facility of his endorsement to exert and retain management over the get together aggressively.

Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian and author, mentioned Mr. Trump had been “using the presidency as a steppingstone to getting re-elected, but when you’re an election denier, he’s basically telling the country, ‘I’m actually a shadow government.’”

“So that’s where the waters get muddy,” he added.

On this marketing campaign like no different in American historical past, Mr. Trump has tried to behave extra like a sitting president than a typical candidate. He has acquired lots of the advantages of incumbency — the grandeur of the workplace, the deference from rivals and voters — however, thus far, not one of the political repercussions of really occupying the White Home, equivalent to being held accountable for international wars or inflation.

Urgent Management

Within the interval instantly after the 2020 election, a few of Mr. Trump’s aides and confidants inspired him to graciously concede his loss. They made the case that if he took credit score for Republican victories in Home and Senate races and acknowledged Mr. Biden’s slim win, he would protect a future for himself in American politics.

That future, they believed, was unalterably marred by his election lies and the assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.

These aides and confidants have been improper. Removed from ruining him, Mr. Trump’s refusal to simply accept his loss — a monthslong match of rage that culminated in a lethal assault on the Capitol — nearly actually helped safe his political future: It stored his grip on the Republican Social gathering and allowed him to run his 2024 marketing campaign as if he have been the rightful occupant of the Oval Workplace pursuing not more than his restoration to energy.

Mr. Trump — who has inhaled media consideration like oxygen for many years — had little interest in the quieter, much less seen lifetime of different previous presidents. George W. Bush took up portray and high-paid speeches. Barack Obama gave speeches, performed golf, sailed with rich mates on superyachts and raised cash for varied causes, together with a presidential library in Chicago.

Mr. Trump performed numerous golf, however the similarities finish there.

Minimize off from social media after he was banned from Twitter and Fb within the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Mr. Trump established his personal pipelines to voters. He created his personal social media web site, Fact Social; gave interviews to right-wing influencers with their very own platforms; and communicated along with his supporters by emailed fund-raising appeals.

Mr. Trump clung to the trimmings of the presidency — as devices of energy, leverage and, some have recommended, psychological comforters. Many Republicans have welcomed him behaving as an incumbent. Certainly one of his most-covered early stops as a candidate final yr was in East Palestine, Ohio, the location of a practice derailment that President Biden had but to go to. There, he met with native officers and urged motion to assist residents. Mr. Trump’s arrival at a close-by airport and his descent down tall plane stairs from his airplane have been evocative of an Air Drive One arrival.

Mr. Trump additionally by no means stopped behaving just like the chief of the get together, holding rallies, intervening in Republican major races and dealing to finish the careers of congressional Republicans who had opposed him. Candidates traveled to Mar-a-Lago to hunt his assist. And Mr. Trump made them work for it. He handled their assist for his false claims of widespread 2020 election fraud as a litmus check.

In time, he would anticipate these Republicans to return the favor and assist him again. They didn’t disappoint.

A President within the Courtroom

Maybe most notably, Mr. Trump has tried to make use of the powers of his former place as a defensive measure in his felony and civil court docket battles.

He has asserted immunity, by advantage of his workplace, as a protection for his habits within the months main as much as the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, in each a felony indictment and civil legal responsibility fits. That declare of immunity is being litigated and is anticipated to be finally determined by the U.S. Supreme Courtroom.

Within the civil defamation trial towards him in Manhattan, Mr. Trump talked again to the choose, Lewis A. Kaplan, with out struggling the type of punitive penalties an strange defendant may nicely have. And whereas Decide Kaplan known as him “Mr. Trump” all through the trial, when Mr. Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba introduced her consumer as her last witness, she mentioned, “The defense calls President Donald Trump.”

Equally, in a separate civil case in Manhattan, during which Mr. Trump and his firm have been discovered to have engaged in pervasive monetary fraud, he confronted no penalties for sharply and loudly criticizing the presiding choose, Justice Arthur Engoron of the State Supreme Courtroom, from the witness stand.

And when opposing legal professionals protested Mr. Trump’s filibustering, his lawyer Chris M. Kise recommended that Justice Engoron ought to “grant the former president of the United States” — who, he rapidly added, was “perhaps soon to be the future president of the United States — a little latitude to explain himself.”