Trump boarding an elevator at Trump Tower. Reports indicate the he frequently doesn’t get further outside than the lobby. Photo via AP

In October, Donald Trump, a golden goblet filled with backwash and our next president, stayed home a lot. Trump, like everyone else, believed he was about to lose the election, and the New York Times reported that he was holed up in his “enormous penthouse,” becoming “increasingly upset and isolated.” Now, with three days remaining until he’s sworn in, he’s doing the same thing. Stop waiting to be reassured. It’s not happening.


The first Times report, datelined October 9, depicted a man coping with imminent defeat by self-imposed isolation, visits from yes-men, enraged tweeting, and furious viewings of CNN. Soon after he was elected, on November 19, the Times found him doing basically the same thing, with the additional activity of calling people to ask who should be in his cabinet. At the time, the paper’s sources told them, he’d been briefly startled into self-awareness by a meeting with President Obama: “He was nervous and jolted, they said, by the 90-minute Oval Office meeting with Mr. Obama, and for the first time appeared to take in the enormousness of the job.”

Now, as we careen ever closer to really doing this thing, the Washington Post reports that he’s still in there. (The piece was co-authored by Ashley Parker, who also co-wrote the second Times story.) He’s tweeting, he’s occasionally visiting the two restaurants he likes, and he literally doesn’t get outside even to glimpse the sun:

He spends most of his days in Trump Tower, with few close friends and few meaningful one-on-one interactions beyond the family members, advisers and loyalists who are whisked by gold elevator to his 26th-floor office for private audiences. Trump rarely leaves, not even for a breath of fresh air; nor does he encounter many people he does not already know or who do not work for him.


Interestingly enough, while he’s in there, Trump is also picking up his cellphone, even for unidentified callers:

When Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) needs to reach Trump, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman does not have to go through an aide or schedule a meeting. He said he simply dials Trump’s cellphone directly, and the president-elect answers, even though Corker’s number registers as “No Caller ID.”

As a bonus, the story also features a quote from former Trump campaign manager and exuberant dick Corey Lewandowski, who defended Trump for not even venturing outdoors to do a customary day volunteering at the soup kitchen on Veterans Day. Lewandowski called volunteer efforts by previous presidents “platitudes,” adding, “Donald Trump wants to bring jobs back so we don’t have soup kitchens. He has not been a person to do staged events for the sake of doing staged events.”

Anyway, we know where this is going: Someone is going to have to lure Donald Trump out of Trump Tower with a six-foot portrait of himself and force him to be president.