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There, a small crowd gathered to see him off. Not among them was Trump’s vice president. “We were not a regular administration,” Trump said in unscripted remarks. “Have a good life, we will see you soon.” As the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” played in the background, Trump then boarded Air Force One and returned to his resort in Florida.
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January 20, 2021 – On his final day in office, Trump did not invite Joe and Jill Biden to the White House, rejecting a longstanding tradition among presidents and their successors. Rather than attend the inauguration of his successor — making him the first president in modern history to skip the ceremony — Trump headed to Joint Base Andrews.
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He had not yet been tried, and the rare pre-emptive pardon would protect him from any conviction. In his final round of pardons, Trump granted clemency to 143 people in all, including Elliott Broidy, a fund-raiser who violated foreign lobbying laws, and Rick Renzi and Robert Hayes, both former House Republicans. Renzi was convicted of corruption, and Hayes pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
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January 19, 2021 – In one of his last acts as president, Trump issued late-night pardons to Steve Bannon and other allies. Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, was charged with cheating donors who thought their money was going toward the construction of a border wall.
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A photograph of notes that the businessman was holding showed text that read, in part, “martial law if necessary,” suggesting that Lindell was advocating military force to keep Trump in office. Although Trump set aside time to meet Lindell, the president has not held a coronavirus task force meeting in months.
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January 15, 2021 – Trump met at the White House with My Pillow chief executive officer Michael Lindell, a GOP donor who has claimed that Trump won the election.
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In a video released after the House impeached him, Trump sought to distance himself from the violence of the siege. “Making America great again has always been about defending the rule of law,” he said, overlooking the fact that he had exhorted supporters at his January 6 rally to march to the Capitol and “fight.”
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January 13, 2021 – One week after the deadly attack that he incited, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives. He became the first president in American history to be impeached twice.
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January 13, 2021 – Rather than address the insurrection at a press conference, Trump — banned from Twitter and other social media platforms — released a statement. “That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for,” he said, not acknowledging that he had instigated his supporters to storm the Capitol.
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January 13, 2021 – Trump tried one last time to have his vice president overturn the presidential election. He called Mike Pence before the Vice President headed to the Capitol to oversee the certification of Joe Biden’s election. “You can either go down in history as a patriot,” Trump angrily told him, “or you can go down in history as a pussy.”
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He added that his remarks at the rally that preceded the siege were “totally appropriate.”
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January 12, 2021 – Speaking to the media for the first time since the Capitol insurrection, Trump expressed no regret for having incited the mob that raided the building. During his final scheduled presidential trip — a visit to his unfinished border wall — he said that a move to impeach him was “absolutely ridiculous.”
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January 12, 2021 - Salon writers argue that Trump should not be allowed to serve the final week of his first term in office because of the danger he poses, and the damage he has done.
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January 8, 2021 – Trump said on Twitter that he would not attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
He would be the first president to skip his successor’s regularly scheduled swearing-in since 1869, when Andrew Johnson, the first president to be impeached, refused to attend Ulysses S. Grant’s inauguration.
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In the video, however, Trump neither took responsibility for the insurrection nor said anything about Brian D. Sicknick, the Capitol Hill police officer who died after a rioter struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher.
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He did not congratulate President-elect Joe Biden. He also added, "I totally disagree with the outcome of the election.” A Trump adviser said that the president only agreed to record the video after being urged to do so by staffers — and only because he faced possible impeachment for inciting the attack on the Capitol.
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January 7, 2021 – In a pre-recorded video, Trump publicly acknowledged for the first time that he was leaving the White House. “A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20,” he said with little conviction, reading from a teleprompter.
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January 7, 2021 – Trump told aides that he is thinking of pardoning himself. In numerous talks with advisers since the election, he asked how such a move could help him. It is unclear what legal protection a self-pardon might provide since Trump would be the first president to issue one.
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Four died before police and the National Guard were able to restore order: one woman was shot by police and three suffered medical emergencies. A Capitol police officer later died of injuries sustained during the riot. Rather than address the nation on television, denouncing the insurrection, Trump waited for hours before posting a video on Twitter. In it, he told rioters, “We love you. You’re very special.”
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Amid the chaos, lawmakers and others in the building were forced to flee to safety, donning gas masks for protection. Police drew their guns in the House chamber in an effort to block rioters from entering the room. They also fired tear gas into the Rotunda, where rioters gathered, taking selfies and waving Confederate and Trump flags.
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