Trump's 'American carnage' presidency will end in Palm Beach on Wednesday

The "American carnage" that is the end of the Trump presidency is slated to careen to a historic end Wednesday at Mar-a-Lago.

President Trump is scheduled to arrive in Palm Beach and likely spend his final hour or so as an impeached president at the private club that served as the Southern White House during his one-term administration. He will be just the sixth American president not to attend the swearing-in ceremony for his predecessor.

Thus, the tumultuous upheaval of U.S. presidential norms by Trump will conclude with one last diss of a long-cherished American political custom — a bookend moment to how it all started.

On Jan. 20, 2017, Trump entered office by delivering a dark, nearly dystopian inaugural address in which he castigated the political establishment for creating “American carnage” — crime infested cities, forgotten ordinary people and hollowed out manufacturing might.

"How self-fulfilling," said presidential historian Robert Watson of Lynn University. "He talked about carnage, and now in fact he will leave that behind. How ironic."

Trump, indeed, leaves office with the nation bitterly divided.

The country is grieving the 400,000-plus coronavirus death toll set to surpass the number of World War II combat casualties. And American workers are in desperate straits as the economy, shredded by the pandemic, languishes in a deep recession.

When President-elect Joe Biden takes the oath, Capitol Hill will be an armed fortress with 25,000 U.S. troops encamped for protection against more far-right militia attacks. The mall and monuments will be barricaded with miles of steel fencing and barbed wire.

It is, said one Florida member of Congress, anything but the "orderly" hand-off of power that Trump for months refused to commit to and then only acceded to in the aftermath of an attack on the U.S. Capitol. It was a riot by insurrectionists who now are increasingly telling law enforcement they acted on the president's command.

More: Editorial: The carnage that Trump's four years gave America

"I hope going forward that we can get back to some semblance of normality," said U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat from West Palm Beach. "They’ve built double fences around the Capitol. There’s going to be thousands and thousands of military personnel. I guess you can say we haven't had a peaceful transition."

The heightened security is a response to an insurrection that Trump has been widely blamed for inciting. House Democrats, including Frankel and the entire Florida Democratic delegation, impeached Trump a week ago on a charge of inciting insurrection, marking the first time a U.S. president is impeached twice.

Frank Biden, the president-elect's brother and the Biden family's Florida ambassador, said healing the political chasm will require all Americans to put aside deep and personal differences.

The younger Biden, a Palm Beach County resident, said he has been doing his part by calling Republican friends and inviting them "to break bread." He said all Americans need to extend olive branches, too.

"We are dependent on the people here in Palm Beach County to bring our community together," Frank Biden said. "Let's get back to the business of knitting our soul."

However, emotions plainly remain raw, and Trump will make history as the only American president to leave office while under impeachment. Trump will also vacate the Oval Office carrying the lowest cumulative average of approval rating of his term — in the low 30% range.

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One point of solace for Trump: He is making his post-White House home in a state where his Republican base has always warmly embraced him and, so far, shows little sign of waning fervor.

Wesley Borucki, associate professor of history at Palm Beach Atlantic University, said the American carnage theme spoke to a reality of economic disappointment. He said Trump ran as "a populist, as a disruptor" and he delivered on his pledges to "forgotten" Americans — until the pandemic struck.

"I think he did make a difference for the forgotten man," Borucki said. "Wages went up, unemployment went down ... Prior to COVID this economy was humming and that resonated with a lot of people. I still think it will resonate going forward."

Certainly, he still maintains political support among Florida's congressional Republicans. All but three of them voted to contest the Electoral College ballots electing Biden as the nation's 46th president. No Sunshine State U.S. House Republican voted to impeach Trump either earlier this month, nor in December 2019.

Florida is a state that Trump won easily on Nov. 3, by 3.4%, and where he has polled relatively well throughout the past four years. He demonstrated significant coattails, helping the GOP flip two Miami-Dade County congressional seats in November. In 2018, he boosted the fortunes of U.S. Sen. Rick Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis, his political godson of sorts.

"There are many districts in this state where the president is very popular," said Kevin Wagner, pollster and chair of the political science department at Florida Atlantic University. "Our poll numbers in Florida always have the president doing better than he did typically in national polling. The president clearly has a much stronger foundation of support in Florida than he has in other states."

Wagner has said Trump is popular in Florida largely due to demographics — the state's population has broad swaths of the very groups of people that tend to lean his way. For example, Trump tends to poll high among older people, and Florida has a larger share of retirees than most other states.

More: At the end of Trump era, some in Florida base ask, 'What now?'

In northern Florida, a bulwark for evangelicals, Trump's U.S. Supreme Court and federal judicial nominees play well. Along the Gulf Coast, home to many Midwestern transplants, Trump's populist, level-playing field trade rhetoric resonates. And in South Florida, home to close to a million people who fled Cuba and Venezuela, and the children of those exiles, Trump's bashing of "socialism" echoes like a clarion call.

Even in Democratic-majority Palm Beach County, where Trump owns Mar-a-Lago and two golf clubs, his legions of supporters are vocal and visible. They line Southern Boulevard to cheer his motorcades and, a handful of locals, served in his Cabinet and as ambassadors.

"There is a perception that Palm Beach County is a blue county and that's not an incorrect perception," said Wagner. "But I think sometimes when I hear people say it they overlook the fact that there are plenty of conservative voters and Trump voters in this area as well. A lot of Trumpers."

Much of the Trump presidency certainly played out at Mar-a-Lago, giving Palm Beach County residents a front-row seat to history.

PBAU's Borucki said the historic moments that played out at Mar-a-Lago during visits here are pieces of a larger mosaic that will go down as a consequential presidency.

Borucki said he deplores violence and believes Trump bears some blame for the Jan. 6 rebellion because he held the rally that day. But he said the "record needs to be set straight" that Trump was not responsible for the attack on the Capitol.

"I just see the narrative being shaped here that he fomented this rebellion or that he inspired an insurrection in the Capitol," he said. "I just think it's false. He told the crowd to march peacefully and he did use the word peacefully ... I don't see him as having inspired a  rebellion and I think the impeachment is going to leave a bad legacy for the country going forward because it was done very hastily and very arbitrarily."

Borucki added that Trump's achievements will include his work on trade deals, including the commercial ties with China, a process that began with a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Southern White House in April 2017.

"The Chinese signed that treaty and kind of capitulated on it," Borucki said.  "So I think that was remarkable."

Another landmark moment was the January 2020 drone attack, ordered by Trump while he was at Mar-a-Lago, that killed a top Iranian military official. That action was not an isolated moment, analysts have said, but part of a realignment of Middle East power players.

"The retooling of relationships in the Middle East has been profound," Borucki said.

Trump also elevated the political profile of evangelical Christians and their agenda more so than any of his predecessors. On Christmas Eve 2019, in fact, the president and first lady attended services at Family Church in West Palm Beach.

That was far from symbolic as the president, in his federal court nominations, reshaped the judiciary. That impact, Borucki said, will be felt for decades to come on issues of freedom of worship, the use of tax money to find Planned Parenthood, and even in regulations governing health plans and abortions

"Those are the sorts of issues that resonate with the Trump voters," he said. "That's a legacy that's going to be left going forward."

And why Borucki believes Trump's political career is not over.

"If he were to run again in 2024, there's no doubt he would still be the frontrunner," Borucki said. "I think that's one of the things, quite frankly, that's fueling impeachment. I think they are scared of Trump. I think they are scared of him running again in 2024."

Others say Trump's future — whether it's a potential comeback campaign, or a Trump TV network or a digital platform to rival Twitter or the more fringe Parler — was easier to imagine before the insurrection.

Now though, the political "taint" from the violence may have damaged Trump's political brand, said Florida International University politics and international relations lecturer Kathryn A. DePalo.

"The riot is going to have some lasting effects," she said, adding that it's impossible to determine how the fallout from Jan. 6 could impact the "Republican brand."

In the short term, she said, it will dominate the narrative. Rather than being able to "talk about political achievements," the discussion about Trump's post-presidency will be dominated by an impeachment trial and potential legal exposure.

More: Editorial: A heart-wrenching spectacle at the U.S. Capitol

That said, DePalo insists it would be near-sighted to count Trump out. She said she believes he could play a major role, starting with the 2022 midterm election in Florida.

She said the former president's expected support of DeSantis in his re-election bid will be pivotal. The same goes for a GOP primary opponent to U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who already has announced he will seek re-election next year.

"Coming from Florida and building on the popularity that I believe he continues to have down here is something that Republicans have to pay attention to," she said. "He's still a force to be reckoned with. That's what we need to be watching forward. How's he going to communicate? How is he continuing to be influencing politics. And especially in Florida where his home base is."

That's why DePalo said she would not rule out a major move by Trump into the media space.

"I would not be surprised at all if he decides to create some kind of media empire," she said. "He's a businessman but he really is into being this media guru. And with all these Big Tech companies silencing Trump, silencing conservatives, I think he is planning now, how does he create this media empire? Which could be TV, could be social media, creating his own infrastructure behind that so he can't be sort of canceled, if you will. That would not surprise me at all."

What Trump — always the hands-on brand manager and image curator — won't be able to control is management of his presidential legacy. Assessments of the Trump era in the White House is a task for historians.

More: Palm Beach pariah? Island residents turning on Trump in advance of his return to Mar-a-Lago

Watson has been a participant in six previous polls ranking American presidents. He said Tuesday that history is likely to judge Trump's tenure harshly.

Watson said he already was prepared to give Trump failing marks on the three criteria he uses: Leaving the presidency stronger, leaving the country in better shape, and handling of "extraordinary" crises.

Now Watson said you can add to that dismal record the violent insurrection at the Capitol, his subsequent impeachment and his failure to preside over an orderly transition of power. In toxic atmospheric terms, the transition to President-elect Biden rivals only the hand-off from James Buchanan to Abraham Lincoln in 1861.

In the months leading up to the Civil War, Buchanan turned the presidency over to Lincoln amid an insurrection, a deeply polarized country and a lame duck incumbent who was "checked out." The end of the Trump presidency, Watson argued, matches all three factors.

"James Buchanan constitutes the perfect example of a president who is 0-for-3 and Donald Trump constitutes the second best example who is 0-for-3 in this criteria," he said. "Any way you look at it, we are looking at a historic worst."

Ironically, as the U.S. House sped toward impeaching Trump last week, media reports said the president admonished aides against suggesting he resign, as President Richard Nixon did ahead of an impeachment vote in 1974.

But Trump will still leave the presidency as Nixon did, Watson pointed out. Nixon was the last president to end his administration by departing Washington without watching his successor take the oath.

On Wednesday, that ignominious historical designation will fall to Trump.

"What Trump is doing is worse than sour grapes," Watson said. "It's really sending a message to the world and to the eyes of history about neglecting this important duty of this symbolic ceremonial, peaceful, civil transfer of power ... Even as he goes out he is going out shredding these customs that George Washington put in place that have guided us so well for so long."

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump's 'American carnage' presidency to end in Palm Beach