Various senior administration officials just want the show to end, tired of fighting and even more tired of trying to avoid their mercurial boss’s verbal lashings and delusional crusades. “He asked me [earlier this month] about how to punish certain Republicans who weren’t standing with him and abandoning him after all he had done for them and the Republican Party,” one of these senior officials said. “During that moment, I kept thinking about how January 20th couldn’t come fast enough.”

But even if the president wanted to, he likely won’t be able to put Washington in the rearview mirror just yet. With the possible second impeachment trial in the Senate looming, the 45th U.S. president still hadn’t decided this weekend on who exactly would staff and lead his new legal team, should he need one, three people familiar with the deliberations said. He’s having difficulty building out such a team in large part because the good lawyers have run for the hills or want nothing to do with the Trump brand name anymore…

“It wasn’t my fault,” Trump told one person close to him in the past few days, while complaining about media coverage and comments from Democratic, and some Republican, politicians to keep saying he incited the riot. Behind closed doors, the president denounced those criticisms against him by claiming they were potentially defamatory.