Donald Trumps final scene didnt go according to script

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Trump had just told the mob he would march with them to the Capitol to protest the certification of the election. He knew things could get ugly; he and his aides had been warned of impending violence days before. The morning of the siege,

Trump was informed that many in the crowd were carrying weapons, which had been detected and confiscated. (This upset Trump: Theyre not here to hurt me, he said, ordering the magnetometers around the Ellipse removed. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol.)

Trump has a long history of exploding when he doesn’t get his way, as unhinged narcissists are wont to do.

Sitting in his limo after his speech, Trump directed the Secret Service to take him to the Capitol. The agents refused, citing security concerns thereby intruding on the theatrics Trump had so carefully engineered.

Im the f — ing president, take me up to the Capitol now, he insisted. They refused. He flew into a rage, trying to grab the steering wheel and lunging at the throat of one agent who stopped him.

Trump eventually returned to the White House, where he gloated over threats to former vice president Mike Pence and took his time telling rioters sacking the Capitol to stand down.

Acting like a mob boss

Trump has a long history of exploding when he doesn’t get his way, as unhinged narcissists are wont to do. But Tuesdays hearing put that behavior on national television. Hutchinsons testimony also exposed Trump as acting like a mob boss. Aides without legal or moral rudders acquiesced; others asked him to observe the law, which he repeatedly declined to do.

Some law-abiding rationalists in his administration tried to make the perils of what Trump was doing plain to him. Still, he plowed ahead. Hutchinson said Trumps former White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, told the former president that they were going to be charged with every crime imaginable including obstructing justice and defrauding the Electoral Count Act but Trump wanted to have things his way.

He still does. Congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of the Republicans overseeing the committees work, presented evidence that Trump or his minions have apparently tried to intimidate witnesses asked to testify before the committee. She offered statements from a pair of them at the end of Tuesdays hearing.

Each of the committees hearings has brought the possibility of criminal charges closer and closer to Trump. Tuesdays hearing was especially damning: He knew exactly what he was doing and did it anyway.

But its unlikely that those are the things that bother him the most about what went awry with his unsuccessful coup. What really gets to him, I suspect, is that he didnt get to stage his show exactly the way he planned.

Trump and I watched Sunset Boulevard on his jet together nearly 20 years ago. Gloria Swanson plays the silent film star Norma Desmond, bemoaning the arrival of the talkies and her subsequent loss of stature. In one of the films iconic scenes, she says: Those idiot producers. Those imbeciles! Havent they got any eyes? Have they forgotten what a star looks like? Ill show them. Ill be up there again, so help me!

At that moment, Trump leaned over my shoulder. Is this an incredible scene or what? he whispered. Just incredible.

Trump doesn’t want anyone questioning his star power or impeding his storylines. Like Norma Desmond, he plans to show any doubters what hes made of. Hell be up there in the White House again, so help him.

The question is whether the law or, as the case may be, a congressional committee will stand in his way.

Timothy OBrien is a senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald

Bloomberg Opinion

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