Donald Trump has done more since being elected to court Vladimir Putin than the 74 million Americans who voted for other presidential candidates—or the tens of millions who didn't vote at all.

Many Democrats and Republicans alike argue that’s contributing to the incoming president’s historically low, and falling, approval ratings, and could set the country on course for a fractious four years of distrust and division while damaging the institution of the presidency.


Trump, who is most at home stirring and then surfing controversy, spent much of the 10-week transition revving up supporters still exulting in his win. He boasts in private and public about how he pulled off the upset, taking to Twitter to mock Democrats and anyone else upset that he won.

There was a thank you tour, but no listening tour. Visits took him to the heart of Trump country, but none to a state he didn't win—unless those motorcades between Trump Tower and LaGuardia count. A few Democratic senators and mayors have been brought in for meetings, but none have been brought into his Cabinet.

Trump said in his victory speech that “it's time for America to bind the wounds of division.” His time since then shows little evidence of binding, and he’s opened up new wounds along the way.

“Every time he opens his mouth, he is like death by a thousand cuts,” said Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.).

Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-Texas) said “the outreach has been severely lacking to Americans of every background and political party so far.”

“The people of the country need to know what the president-elect’s plans are, and know what he’s thinking about,” Castro said, “to establish trust with the American people, and to establish a relationship with the American people beyond just a campaign and asking for people’s votes.”

Trump declared Sunday evening on Twitter that unity is coming. “For many years our country has been divided, angry and untrusting,” he wrote. “Many say it will never change, the hatred is too deep. IT WILL CHANGE!!!!”

That was a few hours after he wrote, “The Democrats are most angry that so many Obama Democrats voted for me,” digging in again at the opposition party on a list of Twitter victims that’s ranged from the people who protested in the streets in the days after he won to “Vanity Fair” editor Graydon Carter to “the so-called ‘A’ list celebrities” who turned down performing at his inauguration.

Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign and a frequent Trump critic responded to the later tweet, “We all must hold ourselves accountable for this, but you Mr. President-elect especially must ask what [part] you played in dividing America.”

Trump’s revenge Twitter tirade over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend against John Lewis, the Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who said Friday that he didn’t consider the president-elect legitimate, was a predictable example rather than an off-message surprise.

“A pres-elect attacking a civil rights icon days from the oath divides the country, diminishes himself, and brings discredit to his office,” tweeted Michael Gerson, the conservative columnist and former George W. Bush speechwriter.

Trump’s attack on Lewis for being “all talk, talk, talk – no action or results” and insisting his Atlanta district is “falling apart” and “crime infested” created more divisions, inspiring a dozen other House Democrats to join him in skipping the inauguration.

He's been helped by how suspicious and exhausted Americans seem to feel with most institutional traditions—even the basics of graciously embracing a win and moving past a campaign. And he’s also been helped by the continuing hangover from 2016.

Republicans fluctuate between saying Democrats have brought this on themselves, and that they think Trump should be given a pass for anything he does until Inauguration Day.

“We’re in a time right now between Nov. 8 and Jan. 20 where the agony of defeat and the sweetness of victory have come colliding together to make a number of people on both sides perhaps say and do things that will disappear after the 20th,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who blushed slightly as he walked through the Capitol basement when the topic of Trump’s tweets was brought up.

But Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said Democrats should get used to Trump “smacking them down” if they’re going to keep coming after him.

“I would score back on the other side of things, to all the attempts the Democrats have made to try to discredit the election,” King said. “Trump is just answering that. If they would just accept that Hillary’s delayed concession speech and stopped, that’s what this country needed.”

Asked to point to examples of any outreach Trump has made, King said he couldn’t, but reasoned, “the man’s busy.”

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) dismissed complaints from Democrats as “typical politics, typical rhetoric. The man’s not president yet, you know?” He said he feels Trump has been “magnanimous” toward people like him who didn’t support the president-elect in the Republican primary.

“Mitt Romney’s sort of Exhibit A, isn’t he? Mitt Romney was a total jerk,” Franks said, referring to the president-elect’s meetings with the former Massachusetts governor about becoming his secretary of state—though Trump ultimately didn’t offer Romney the job.

It’s a radical contrast to what top Democrats had been predicting Clinton would likely have needed to do--had she won--to deal with the festering problems the presidential campaign exposed, and that Republicans who assumed she’d win were already beginning to demand by late October.

An ongoing series of town halls had been proposed. All sorts of ways of bringing Republicans in, trying to prove to them that she wasn’t the person they’d gotten a refresher course on despising during the campaign. And they’d been expecting this all would have played out against the backdrop of Trump’s questioning the legitimacy of the election the same way that Lewis and top aides to Clinton, including her former campaign manager and press secretary, have continued to do.

That was, after all, how Trump handled the Republican loss in 2012, when he wasn’t even the one on the ballot.

“We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” Trump tweeted as Barack Obama was re-elected four years ago in a race that was not nearly as close as last year’s contest.

Moore said she’s holding out hope for at least the show of reaching out after Friday, if only for the sake of feeding the Twitter account the president-elect says he’s planning to keep active.

“He’s someone who has been a public figure for a long time,” Moore said, “so it’s hard for me to believe that he won’t want some public photo-ops, that he won’t want pictures with people so he can tweet them out.”