controlling the campaign budget and cutting tele-
vision spending and travel expenses. But former Vice
President Joe Biden’s massive cash lead hamstrung
Trump’s efforts to close the gap down the stretch.
The bigger problem was Stepien’s client. Trump
lost the national popular vote by nearly 3 million in
2016, but never attempted to expand his support
beyond his hardcore base. His feuds eroded his sup-
port in key states with close races. Trump appears to
have lost Arizona after insulting the state’s favorite
son, the late Republican Senator John McCain. If he
turns out to have lost Georgia, it will be in part be-
cause of strong Democratic turnout around Atlanta,
in the district formerly represented by the late Rep-
resentative John Lewis, whose civil rights legacy
Trump dismissed.
Amid a nationwide uprising over systemic rac-
ism, Trump denied the underlying issues. He never
attempted to unite the country or speak to its shared
pain. On June 5, less than two weeks after the kill-
ing of George Floyd, and with the nation gripped by
Black Lives Matter protests, Trump held a rambling
press conference and touted a strong jobs report and
the Constitution’s promise of equal justice under the
law. “Hopefully George is looking down right now
and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for
our country,” Trump said. “This is a great day for
him. It’s a great day for everybody.”
At the start of the year, the President’s advisers
saw the economy as his strongest argument for re-
election. When it cratered because of the corona-
virus, his campaign said he was the best person to
bring the economy back. With high unemployment
and millions out of work, “the corona virus ended
the economic sugar rush,” says Timothy Naftali,
a historian at New York University. “That was
his undoing.”
Trump didn’t stick to the script, either. His clos-
ing campaign argument was a litany of grievances:
against the media; against Dr. Anthony Fauci; against
the phantom “fraud” of mail-in voting; against the
hard reality of increasing COVID-19 cases. He re-
fused to see the writing on the wall in the final days
of the vote count, spreading unfounded allegations
of voter fraud and baselessly claiming that Demo-
crats had stolen the election. The race showed the
power he still has to drive GOP voter turnout, and
Republicans have rallied to his defense once more.
But once the election results are certified, it
will be harder to deny that Trump has become the
one thing he was raised to fear being most: a loser.
“Losing is never easy,” Trump mused at his cam-
paign headquarters on Election Day. “Not for me,
it’s not.” For a man who has craved praise above
all else, being the first President in nearly 30 years
to be cast aside after a single term must be a
difficult blow. —With reporting by Molly Ball,
Mariah Espada and aBBy VEsoulis □
in octoBEr 2019, aBout a yEar BE-
fore Election Day, a lawyer representing
Donald Trump made a striking argument
before a courtroom in Manhattan. Even
if the President were actually to shoot
someone on Fifth Avenue, he could not
be charged with a crime while in office,
the lawyer, William Consovoy, told the
court. He was careful to note, however,
“This is not a permanent immunity.”
That much is beyond dispute. While
legal scholars have long debated whether
a sitting President can be charged with
a crime, they tend to agree that former
Presidents are fair game. Their immu-
nity from prosecution disappears when
they leave office, and that is a sobering
thought for a President with as many
legal vulnerabilities as Trump.
Prosecutors in Manhattan spent
the past year investigating the alleged
hush money Trump paid in 2016 to
Stormy Daniels, an adult-film star. Spe-
cial counsel Robert Mueller found evi-
dence that Trump obstructed justice on
at least three occasions, and as many as
10, during the investigation of Russian
interference in the 2016 elections. Then
there are the civil lawsuits—dozens of
them—and the issues stemming from
last year’s impeachment inquiry, which
found that Trump used military aid to
squeeze Ukraine for a political favor.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all
these cases, and he routinely dismisses
the investigations against him as hoaxes
and witch hunts. His attorney Jay Seku-
low did not respond to TIME’s request
for comment.
NATION
TRUMP’S
TRIALS,
AFTER
IMMUNITY
He couldn’t be prosecuted
in office. Should he
be when he leaves?
BY SIMON SHUSTER AND
VERA BERGENGRUEN
ELECTION
2020
