As Trump inauguration nears, anxiety reigns

The capital has never been more anxious about its own government. The town is suffering pre-traumatic stress disorder. Donald Trump is really going to be president.

Finally, there is bipartisan consensus: It’s time to flip out. No one knows what is going to happen, but they know it will be utter chaos and that the old familiar ways have vaporized.

On the verge of the inauguration, a time of stately ritual and tradition in a city baked in ritual and tradition, ritual and tradition are out the window. Trump is operating on an utterly new, unique and freaky frequency.

The city’s mood is “surreal,”as Sen. Dick Durbin told The Times’ Carl Hulse on “The Run-Up” podcast. As the Illinois Democrat looks down from his Capitol Hill office at the inaugural stands going up, he is still in disbelief that it’s not Madam President and that they didn’t scoop up the Senate.

“I spent months never believing that he would be elected president,” Durbin said. “I sincerely hope that the office makes the man.”

House Republicans who had to back off their attempt to eviscerate the independent ethics office, after the president-elect tweeted his disapproval of their priorities, looked dazed as they walked out of their party conference meeting at the swift power of the Trump thunderbolt-tweets.

Can you imagine what would have happened if President-elect Barack Obama had called McConnell “a clown,” as Trump tweeted about Schumer?

Can you imagine a scenario where two Republicans in a row lose the popular vote but win the White House with a shady helping hand? Can’t the GOP win fair and square? Was it the Russians who turned Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania truly red?

As Congress was officially certifying Trump’s election Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol—“It is over,” Biden firmly told Democrats who had still been yearning for the miracle of a recount or redo—the intelligence services were meeting with Trump and essentially decertifying his election.

For Trump, every humiliation is a small death. So you know he was furious about the searing report –reflecting rare unanimity by the turf-battling intelligence agencies—implying that he did not win on his own, given that Putin ordered up a cyber-campaign designed to “denigrate” Hillary and help Trump.

McCain called it “an act of war.” It’s certainly the biggest Russian conspiracy to hit Washington since Kevin Costner’s “No Way Out.”

Russia tried to rig our election in favor of Trump even as Trump was decrying a rigged election.

The intelligence report ascribed a motive: “Putin has had many positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.”

Back in 1987, I interviewed Trump when Mikhail Gorbachev made his first visit to America. Trump was very suspicious of the Evil Empire then and warned that the U.S. should not be too eager to make a deal with Gorbachev. But then the Soviets invited him to a business round-table and softened him up by telling him they loved Trump Tower and inviting him to build a hotel in Moscow.

A year later, Trump heard that Gorbachev was back, out in front of Trump Tower, and rushed down from his office to shake hands with the communist, who turned out to be an impersonator from New Jersey named Ronald Knapp.

Trump was easily fooled that time. It remains an open question how gullible and malleable he is.

But those in Washington like Mike Pence, Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan who think they can manipulate him might be in for a surprise.

IT WON’T HAPPEN!•