On Feb. 27 at a White House press meeting President Donald Trump said, “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” Less than a year later, President Trump’s statement rings true. Not for the coronavirus, but rather for himself. 

The past few weeks have glimpsed a world absent of Donald Trump. Although as his final term comes to a close entering the new year, Trump’s ability to meddle with major policies is more real than ever. In a race against the clock, the Trump Administration is, for once, attempting to maintain a low profile while pushing to fulfill the empty promises he made all the way back in 2016. Prior to delivering his first real appearance to the press for the seemingly innocent Thanksgiving turkey pardon, the president made a harrowing remark: “I think that there will be a lot of things happening between now and the 20th of January, a lot of things,” he said in his Oval Office appearance early Thanksgiving morning. According to ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism organization,

the Trump administration is currently looking into 36 different ‘midnight regulations,’ which may take years to reverse, if approved. 

Among these ‘regulations’: Making it harder for asylum-seekers to compile their applications — and easier for judges to cherry-pick evidence, setting standards that don’t require airplanes to reduce greenhouse gases, allowing religious exemptions for federal contractors (and allow religiously-motivated institutions with federal contracts, including for-profits, to not hire people based on faith), allowing federally subsidized homeless shelters to exclude transgender people, preventing banks from withholding credit on the basis of social, political or environmental considerations, and allowing federal death row inmates to be executed by means other than lethal injection.

And that’s just a handful of under review.

Yet, after Nov. 7, it was as if moderates and Democrats alike took Joe Biden’s victory as a consolation prize after the rollercoaster that was 2020. Biden won and 50.8%, according to The Washington Post, of America, tuned out and moved on. Trump’s ability to command the attention of the American people, with his outrageous tweets and hot-headed press interviews, had nosedived. The rising concern of the coronavirus coupled with the anticipation of the candidate he couldn’t beat allowed the nation to let its guard down. 

After watching state after state verify votes for Biden throughout November and now into December, Trump’s attempts to burn down the house created a pathetic reach to rewrite his name in history as anything other than the failure that abandoned America in one of the greatest public health crises in history.

Yet the Trump Administration’s legal effort with his domination of cabinet members has resorted to these ‘midnight regulations,’ otherwise known as an attempt to reinstall the long list of failed programs that had been denied or delayed throughout his one term. 

With less than a month for 45 to wreak havoc on the United States, now is as important as ever to keep a watchful eye. After four years of “his moral imperviousness, his ineptitude, his speciousness, his national and international abominations,” as The Boston Globe so eloquently put it, President Trump remaining quieter than ever is no thanks to the amount of legal distress that he is about to be released into, come Jan. 20. An interesting concept, Donald Trump claiming the consequences of his actions as the rest of America sits back and relaxes, watching his attempt to burn down the house with him still inside. He faces indictment for tax fraud, restitution for stolen tax dollars, multiple sexual assault allegations, large legal expense fees, as well as deadlines for more than $3 million in loans to meet, as says The New Yorker. Hunkered down in the White House, Trump has stayed largely silent for close to weeks following the election, save for the occasional disputed tweet to negate the election.

He simply couldn’t afford to lose the election, and now that he has, it seems as though he’s going to work quietly to get his last full gulps of power in before he slinks silently off to a foreign country of his choosing. However, as relieving as it may be to celebrate Biden’s victory and begin the countdown to the holidays, Donald Trump remains the leader of the U.S. and is more dangerous than ever. Watch out.