President Donald Trump is “lashing out” at senior White House officials for failing to actively back his bids to overturn election results and “is turning bitterly on virtually every person around him,” including Vice President Mike Pence and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, top staffers told Axios.
Cipollone is especially fearful that he might soon be ousted by Trump for not appearing loyal enough, sources suggest. In relation to Pence, the president is reportedly growing increasingly frustrated with his once devoted staffer for not showing enough support for his election fraud claims. Insiders claims that if Pence, as president of the Senate, moves to validate election results during a joint session of Congress on 6 January, this would mean an “ultimate betrayal” for Trump.
“At this point, if you're not in the 'use the Department of Homeland Security or the military to impound voting machines' camp, the president considers you weak and beneath contempt,” the report suggests.
The list of other high profile targets currently out of favour with the president's reportedly includes Secretary of State Pompeo, WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was one of the first top Republicans to congratulate Joe Biden on his election victory.
According to the White House sources, senior officials are currently trying to do their best to stay away from the West Wing as much as possible.
But the report claims that the prize for the “worst job in Washington” should still be awarded to Jeffrey Rosen, who would soon become the Acting US Attorney General after the post is vacated by William Barr on 23 December.
“The consensus is he has no earthly idea the insanity he is in for,” the outlet claims.
Axios earlier reported that White House staffers were getting increasingly anxious over Donald Trump’s intense conversations with “crackpots or conspiracy theorists” while discussing ways to overturn the election results.
Trump maintains that he won the November election, citing election fraud, ballot tampering, and alleged conspiracies behind the use of Dominion voting systems. His campaign has filed multiple lawsuits to dispute election results that placed Biden as the winner in some major battleground states.
Texas attorney general, backed by 17 states, also brought a major legal challenge to overturn Biden’s victory in four key territories: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The Supreme Court, however, rejected the bid.
On 14 December, Electoral College formalised Joe Biden’s victory with 302 electoral votes against 232 received by Trump. The president did not rush to congratulate his election rival, though.
