Administration official: It would have been 'un-Trumpian' for election to not have 'some calamity involved'

The White House is in a constant state of chaos, a senior Trump administration official told The Washington Post on Thursday, which is why staffers didn't expect things to be calm after Election Day.

When it comes to President Trump, "one thing people forget, in general, is that for decades, long before the presidency, his whole life was a crisis and he thrived in that environment," the official said. "It'd be boring if he just got blown out or won big. That would be very un-Trumpian for there not to be some calamity involved."

Since Tuesday, pandemonium has ensued, as Trump — who didn't have a victory or concession speech written that night — waits to find out if he has been re-elected. As more mail-in ballots have been counted in battleground states, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been closing in on Trump's lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia, leaving those races too close to call.

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On Thursday morning, Trump tweeted "STOP THE COUNT," and the Post reports his senior advisers quickly pointed out that if vote counting stopped, Biden would win. Trump tweaked his message, and tweeted a follow up: "STOP THE FRAUD!" (There is no evidence of any widespread voting fraud.)

The senior administration official told the Post that on Wednesday, Trump's aides and allies were still enthusiastic, and felt that Trump could "catch lightning in a bottle again" by holding onto his lead in places like Georgia and flipping Arizona, where Biden is ahead. The mood began shifting on Thursday, and Trump's eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, started tweeting about GOP politicians not doing enough to help their father.

Over the next few weeks, the campaign is expected to pull out all the stops legally, senior campaign officials told the Post, and they are asking supporters to start sending money. "Trumpworld is going to go down swinging," Dan Eberhart, a GOP donor, told the Post. He noted that "the ballgame is not over, but it's fading away from Trump a lot. It could be a fitting end to Trump. He was so litigious for his business career, and he might go down in a torrent of lawsuits."