New York Times: “In the final days of his presidency, Mr. Trump has been snubbed by foreign allies and banned from social media. Some members of his cabinet fled, and some in his own party helped deal the final blow of a second impeachment. High-profile friends, like the New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, are declining national honors to avoid being in his presence. His hometown wants little to do with him.”

“Mr. Trump arrived in Washington as an insurgent, an unlikely politician who defied the odds to win the White House. He departs isolated and diminished, leaving behind a Capitol transformed into a war zone, a frayed body politic and a fractured Republican Party that has been ousted from power.”

“Donald Trump plans to fly to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida the morning of Joe Biden’s inauguration, where several current White House staff are expected to work for him or his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, after his presidency,” Bloomberg reports.

“Trump intends to live at the Palm Beach resort, the people said, though some of his future neighbors are trying to stop him from taking up permanent residence.”

“We squandered the best opportunity we had on North Korea…With Putin we didn’t get anything done. We’re nowhere with China on national security. We’re in a worse place today than we were before he came in, and I didn’t think that was possible.”

— Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, quoted by Foreign Policy, on President Trump’s foreign policy legacy.

“Not since the dark days of the Civil War and its aftermath has Washington seen a day quite like Wednesday,” the New York Times reports.

“In a Capitol bristling with heavily armed soldiers and newly installed metal detectors, with the physical wreckage of last week’s siege cleaned up but the emotional and political wreckage still on display, the president of the United States was impeached for trying to topple American democracy.”

“Somehow, it felt like the preordained coda of a presidency that repeatedly pressed all limits and frayed the bonds of the body politic. With less than a week to go, President Trump’s term is climaxing in violence and recrimination at a time when the country has fractured deeply and lost a sense of itself. Notions of truth and reality have been atomized. Faith in the system has eroded. Anger is the one common ground.”

Jonathan Chait: “From the beginning, the danger presented by Donald Trump was so insultingly obvious it hardly required analysis: Here was an unfit leader driven by contempt for democratic rules and norms. From this observation, the conclusion was equally simple: Supporting the political opposition — i.e., the Democratic Party — was the only responsible course of action.”

“The logic was clear enough to just enough Americans in just enough states to end the Trump experiment after a single term. But one of the confounding things about this era is how many otherwise intelligent people have been unable or unwilling to grasp the obvious. What these skeptics shared was a distaste for the remedy of supporting the Democrats, even temporarily, which motivated them to deny the underlying malady. If they wished to support Trump, or at least not to give the Democrats unreserved support, then they had to demonstrate that Trump did not pose any special danger to the Republic.”

“Even after four years of Trump abusing power, fomenting violence, and actively attempting to rig the vote while claiming any prospect of defeat must be fraudulent, his supporters denied any danger…”

“The debate came to a sudden end last week, when Trump directed a mob to storm the Capitol, in an attempt to pressure Mike Pence and the Senate to carry out a wild plan to nullify the results of the election.”

“President Trump is leaving America in a vortex of violence, sickness and death and more internally estranged than it has been for 150 years,” CNN reports.

“The disorientating end to his shocking term has the nation reeling from a Washington insurrection. The FBI warned Monday of armed protests by pro-Trump thugs in 50 states, which raise the awful prospect of a domestic insurgency. Health officials fear 5,000 Americans could soon be dying every day from the pandemic Trump ignored. Hospitals are swamped and medical workers are shattered amid a faltering rollout of the vaccine supposed to end the crisis.”

“It took 200 years for the country to rack up its first two presidential impeachments. Trump’s malfeasance has led the country down that awful, divisive path twice in just more than a year.”

“In the span of four days, President Trump’s family business has lost its online store, the buzz from Mr. Trump’s promotional tweets about its luxury resorts and bragging rights as host to one of the world’s most prestigious golf tournaments,” the New York Times reports.

“The mob attack on Congress last week by Mr. Trump’s supporters has spurred a reckoning for the Trump Organization by businesses and institutions, at a scale far greater than his previous polarizing actions.”

“And the Trump brand, premised on gold-plated luxury and a super-affluent clientele, may not fully recover from the fallout of his supporters violently storming and vandalizing the U.S. Capitol, hospitality analysts say and some people close to the business acknowledge.”

President Trump would almost certainly have Secret Service agents charged with protecting him even if he winds up in prison, former agency officials told Business Insider.

Richard Haass: “What took place last week was a distinctly American failure, but the consequences go far beyond American shores. A post-American world, one no longer defined by U.S. primacy, is coming sooner than generally expected—less because of the inevitable rise of others than because of what the United States has done to itself.”

“Whether President Trump is forced from office or serves out the remaining days of his term, he is now destined to slink out of the White House considerably diminished from the strapping, fearsome force he and his advisers imagined he would be in his post-presidency,” the Washington Post reports.

“Trump had planned to retreat from Washington to plot a comeback that could return him to the White House in four years, but now he will have to contend with a possible second impeachment or perhaps even criminal charges.”

Said GOP strategist Scott Reed: “The way he handled himself in the last 60 days has tarnished his reputation and his ability to be a future leader — and by botching the Georgia Senate races, his entire economic agenda is about to get overturned by the Senate. He’s really gone backwards like no one ever would have imagined.”

“My observations about his character and his conduct certainly have been validated, unfortunately, with people’s lives being lost. And our country appearing to be run by a tin pot dictator to people around the world.”

— Former Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), quoted by Politico, on President Trump.

Jack Shafer: “It makes sense that Trump would want to build his own impregnable forum where nobody can police his speech. He maintains his base by communicating with it at all hours of the day and night. He desperately wants to maintain that continuity to preserve the momentum he has achieved over the past four years. He rightly worries that his pack will ditch him for someone more compelling or entertaining, ergo, he needs to lay plans now or face oblivion.”

“But then as now, the business challenges to launching a TV channel or other high-profile media property seem beyond the talents, resources and patience of Trump and his crew. This isn’t to predict that Trump won’t enter the media business, only to record that if he does, he won’t get very far.”

“They have been snubbed by potential employers, told they would be a ‘liability’ and in one instance were even compared to the ‘Hitler Youth,'” Politico reports.

“This is the job market many experienced national security officials who work for President Donald Trump are facing just days before a new president takes office and they will be out of work.”

Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley sharply criticized President Trump over the Capitol riot and his behavior since the election, telling RNC members in a closed-door speech Thursday evening that Trump’s actions “will be judged harshly by history,” Politico reports.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) announced in a tweet that he would be introducing legislation that would prevent any federal buildings or property from ever being named after President Trump.

Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told Bloomberg Radio that President Trump’s incitement of Wednesday’s assault on the U.S. Capitol now stains his legacy, and people who worked for him aren’t sure it was worth it.

Said Mulvaney: “The level of embarrassment and shame is hard to describe.”

John Avlon: “There is now no question that Donald Trump will go down as the worst president in American history.”

“This was an attempted coup, encouraged by the President… designed to stop the peaceful transfer of power.”

First Read: “The unprecedented political insurrection, the violence and the vandalism at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday was no spontaneous accident.”

“It was the culmination of the last four years, which started with Donald Trump’s words of ‘American carnage’ at his inaugural address.”

“It carried over to Charlottesville (after which Trump said he condemned ‘many sides’), to last September’s first presidential debate (‘Proud Boys, stand back and stand by’), to Trump’s inability to denounce QAnon (‘I know nothing about them’), and then finally to Trump’s words to his supporters before they stormed the Capitol.”