Colwell: Hutchinson cleaned up the ketchup, but not the coup

When Donald Trump threw his lunch at the wall in dining space off the Oval Office, the ketchup-smearing, plate-shattering came in anger over his attorney general publicly acknowledging that he lost the election.

Was Trump’s anger because he didn’t want Bill Barr to tell the truth or because he really thought his loyal attorney general was hiding the truth?

For decades to come, historians, political analysts and psychologists will debate whether Trump knew he lost or whether he actually was convinced that he won.

Could be both.

Some Trump critics call him stupid, dumb enough to believe all the crazy conspiracy theories about election rigging. Trump isn’t stupid. He has problems, for sure, but stupidity isn’t one of them.

He surely knew he lost. Not on election night. No network was yet proclaiming a winner.

Then key states one after another were proclaimed. Results were confirmed by recounts. His campaign team, his White House lawyers and his attorney general told him he lost. Even daughter Ivanka was persuaded by the attorney general. None of 60 court challenges to election results were successful. Some filings, after he turned to nutty outside attorneys, were laughed out of court.

He had to know. Of course, unless you believe he is really, really stupid. Too stupid ever to reach the White House?

Trump does have a problem with accepting any loss. His ego won’t let him.

His niece Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist who has written of the family-ingrained disdain for ever admitting losing, has said it’s “impossible” for him to believe he lost. When losing before in his career, she says, he always found a way, by hook or by crook, to end up claiming a win.

So is it possible that Trump, though knowing he lost, convinced himself that his claim of a stolen election is the truth? Or at least a way to make it true that he didn’t lose the presidency?

We know more about his plot to retain the presidency because of the dramatic testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, the young woman who was top aide to the White House chief of staff. Her office was just steps from the Oval Office, where she often attended the highest-level meetings.

Clearly, Trump wanted his claims of election fraud to be believed by angry supporters he brought to Washington and riled to storm the Capitol and “fight like hell” to prevent certification of election results and enable him to remain in the White House.

Did Trump want harm to Mike Pence, his long-loyal vice president who wouldn’t go along with illegally scuttling certification?

Hutchinson, who was there, testified that Trump was angry that many supporters were kept from swelling the crowd for his Ellipse speech because they had weapons — knives, guns, bear spray, flagpoles turned into spears — and couldn’t pass through magnetometers.

She heard Trump, arguing to let everybody in, say, “I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the mags away.”

Did he care if they were there to hurt others — police, members of Congress, Pence?

They chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” Hutchinson testified that her boss, Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, said Trump’s reaction was, “He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”

As Pence hid and rioters roamed, Trump made his vice president more of a target, tweeting: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”

That was a final disillusionment for Hutchinson. “It was unpatriotic,” she said. “It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol Building get defaced over a lie.”

She helped to clean the ketchup off the wall. She would not clean up details of the attempt to turn defeat into a blood-on-the-walls re-election win.

Jack Colwell is a columnist for The Tribune. Write to him in care of The Tribune or by email at jcolwell@comcast.net.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Hutchinson made it clear Trump knew he lost.