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Washington — Amid calls for his ouster and rumblings of invoking the 25th Amendment over the assault on the U.S. Capitol, President Trump plans to resume some official duties this week, including diplomatic outreach, transition activities and a planned trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, a senior administration official confirms to CBS News.
As of Saturday, the plan remained for the administration to “ride out” the remaining 10 days left of Mr. Trump’s tumultuous presidency. Three administration sources tell CBS News that Mr. Trump does not plan to resign, nor does he feel any pressure to do so. No plan to invoke the 25th Amendment has been formally presented to Vice President Mike Pence by the Cabinet, and removal through impeachment is not considered a viable option.
However, the prospect of a second impeachment is frustrating to the president who, according to sources, has been talking to allies outside the White House about it in recent days.
In the wake of the attack, Mr. Trump has given the silent treatment to his most deferential of allies: Pence.
It has been nearly four days since Pence fled to a bunker Wednesday inside the Capitol to protect him from a pro-Trump mob, some of whom chanted “hang Mike Pence.”
While Pence was sheltering in that bunker, the president did not call the vice president to check on his or his family’s safety, according to a source close to the vice president. The two have not spoken since Wednesday. The president has said nothing in public to take the target off of Pence’s back, a silence that is stinging to even the most loyal of Trump allies.
The president’s last public remark about his long-deferential vice president was a hate-tweet posted during the assault on Wednesday, in which Mr. Trump continued to propagate the false idea that Pence could overturn the election results instead of certifying them.
Sources tell CBS News that Mr. Trump has privately acknowledged that the vice president got a “bad deal.” Yet the president still does not accept any responsibility for the violence on January 6, nor the underlying fact that the election was legitimate, the certification was inevitable and Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Peter Navarro and others were flat out wrong to tell him that Pence could take a different course of action.
A number of close Trump advisers are lobbying the president to make some public remarks in the days ahead. The substance of what he might say is unclear.
The public will see the president for the first time since the insurrection on Monday with remarks on big tech “cancelling” him after being permanently banned on Twitter and various other social media platforms. Mr. Trump will then appear at the border in Texas on Tuesday, a senior administration official confirmed, and he will resume some contact with Cabinet secretaries. The plan is for him to work with the Pentagon and Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller on unspecified “transition issues.”
Mr. Trump is also scheduled to complete some final “follow-up on the Abraham Accords,” the September agreement formalizing diplomatic relations between Israel and two Gulf states. That diplomatic initiative is likely to involve son-in-law Jared Kushner, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who just returned from Israel, and potentially some foreign leaders. The contact with Mnuchin is notable, particularly since he openly discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment earlier this week with staff, as CBS News has reported.
While Trump administration officials have largely remained silent this weekend, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the vice president are expected to make public remarks as soon as Monday. White House officials are keenly aware that foreign adversaries are exploiting the violence in the U.S. for use in their propaganda, and the national security team is monitoring potential threats. As CBS News reported on Thursday, no high-level national security officials are expected to resign.
CNN has reported that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone was considering resigning. As of Saturday, he remained on the job.
CBS News’ Arden Farhi contributed reporting.
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