The Daily Fuckup: Backfill Edition — January 18, 2021

Edition · January 18, 2021

The Daily Fuckup: Backfill Edition — January 18, 2021

A grim final-week Trump edition: the pardons were still hanging over the presidency, the Capitol attack was swallowing the transition, and the political wreckage was already turning legal and institutional.

On January 18, 2021, the Trump era was still finding new ways to curdle in its final 48 hours. The most consequential damage that day was the widening fallout from the Capitol attack and the increasingly obvious fact that the outgoing president had left behind a governing crisis, not just a political loss. This edition focuses on the clearest Trump-world screwups materially reported that day, with an emphasis on the consequences already starting to harden.

Closing take

By January 18, the Trump presidency was less a lame duck than a dead weight: still capable of doing damage, but mostly by leaving behind chaos, grievances, and paperwork for everyone else to clean up. The rest of the week would only make that clearer.

Ranked by how bad the fuckup was

5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.

Story

The Capitol Riot Fallout Is Swallowing Trump’s Final Days

Capitol fallout Confidence 5/5

★★★★★Fuckup rating 5/5 Five-alarm fuckup

The January 6 attack was still dictating the news cycle on January 18, with resignations, security failures, and impeachment consequences continuing to ricochet through Washington. Trump’s last stretch in office was no longer about a transition or a policy agenda; it was about the institutional wreckage left behind after he spent weeks egging on a fantasy that the election could be reversed. The fallout was now broad enough to hit his party, his vice president, the Capitol Police, and the incoming administration all at once.

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