King Lear: Facing his last full day in office today, President Trump has been closeted in the White House drawing up a list of pardons and raging about his fate, according to reports from the inside.

  NY Times reporter Maggie Haberman posted that, “The president has continued to tell advisers and allies he really won the election, with less than 48 hours to go before he leaves office. On the current GOP rift, the president’s anger is with every Republican who voted for impeachment.”

  The White House schedule for today says only, “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings.”

  In one official act yesterday, Trump ordered an end to the ban on travelers from Europe and Brazil that was intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus to the US, a move that Joe Biden might immediately reverse.

  By tomorrow, Trump will leave behind more than 400,000 Americans dead of the coronavirus, nearly double any other country in the world.

  In the closing days of his presidency following the Capitol insurrection, Donald Trump, who never cracked 50 percent, sank to his lowest approval rating ever, just 34 percent.

  His average over the course of his term is only 41 percent, according to the Gallup Poll. That 41 percent is four points lower than for any other president in the history of the Gallup Poll.

  Republicans, evidently, haven’t given up on Trump. By Gallup’s last poll, 82 percent of them still like what he does.

  In a farewell video address, First Lady Melania Trump said, “The past four years have been unforgettable.” Finally, truth from the White House.”

State of Siege: A day ahead of the inauguration Washington DC looks like the capitol of an occupied country. Many square miles of the central city are blocked off and set behind wire fences with razor wire on top, backed by armed members of the national Guard.

  It is a legacy of President Donald Trump, who whipped up anti-government frenzy and conspiracy paranoia to such a level that an open inauguration attended by hundreds of thousands on the National Mall is considered too risky to incoming President Joe Biden and the entire Congress.

  The Arlington Memorial Bridge and several others are closed. Constitution and Independence Avenues are a no-go from east of the Capitol all the way to the Potomac. That includes the Capitol itself and the National Mall west through the Washington and Lincoln memorials. The White House, of course, is inside the security zone.

Inside the Wire: As many as 25,000 National Guardsmen have been called to Washington to protect the inauguration, but after arresting some insurrection suspects with military experience or connections, the FBI is checking the backgrounds of the guardsmen themselves to be sure no extremists are among the ranks.

  Just over the weekend, the FBI arrested a former Marine, and an Army veteran who were among 10 people recorded during the Capitol takeover wearing military helmets, ballistic goggles, tactical vests, and Oath Keepers patches who appeared to operate in an organized way.

  The Oath Keepers is an anti-government organization composed largely of military veterans and former police officers.

  As the FBI continues its hunt, a heavy-metal guitarist believed to be the leader of a Colorado paramilitary training group, and two self-styled militia members from Ohio have been charged with taking part in the insurrection.

  Also charged is a  24-year-old man from Cripple Creek, Colorado, also affiliated with the Oath Keepers offshoot, who’s accused of assaulting federal officers outside the Capitol with bear spray and a baseball bat. 

The Envelope, Please: President Trump is prepared to grant pardons and commutations to as many as 100 people today. Reports, for the moment, say he does not plan to pardon himself for unspecified crimes, but he has considered it.

  The NY Times reports that there’s a market for pardon-influencing with people who have access to Trump accepting large fees to put in a good word.

  In fairness, Bill Clinton also handed out some pardons that had an odor.

  So far Trump has pardoned mostly the wealthy and well-connected, his cronies, and family by marriage, Charles Kushner, the father of son-in-law Jared. We’ll find out today whether the President thinks there are other criminals in his family.

The Bulletin Board: A woman suspected of stealing a laptop from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has turned herself in. — Joe Biden is expected to cancel the disputed construction of the Keystone Pipeline from Canada to the Gulf his first day in office. — A Russian court has ordered opposition leader Alexei Navalny to be held for 30 days. Navalny over the weekend returned from Germany where he had been recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning and was promptly arrested at the Mosco airport. — California Sen. Kamala Harris resigned yesterday in preparation for being sworn in tomorrow as Vice President. She’s already been replaced by California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a veteran politician who’s severed on the Los Angeles City Council and the state senate. — Regnery Publishing, an outlet for right wing authors, has picked up Sen. Josh Hawley’s book after it was dropped by Simon & Schuster because Hawley tried to block certification of Joe Biden’s election.

Headline Hunting: CNN online titled a story about a salesman who spread Covid-19 to 100 people “Breath of a Salesman.”

-30-