Trump says he is winning – but he looks every inch like a man who had lost

It is true, you can read pretty much whatever you like into a man’s face.

Yet it is equally the case, Donald Trump looked just plain sad when he finally spoke to the media, and to the nation, after being beaten by Joe Biden.

It had been six days since the former vice president – now president-elect – had won Pennsylvania, its 20 electoral college votes taking him over the threshold to secure the White House.

They have been six difficult days for the country. The president had refused to concede and launched a half-hearted legal challenge over the results, claiming without evidence that he had been the victim of fraud.

He had spent those days holed up in the White House, his mood switching – depending on who one read – from defiance to quiet resignation. Ivanka, his eldest daughter, and her husband, Jared Kushner, have been seeking to persuade her father to leave with dignity, while his two sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr, have said he should fight on and that victory might be his still.

All the while, people wondered: was he going to stand down and admit defeat, or was his firing of the defence secretary this week the prelude to something more fanciful and sinister.

And so, here he was, a bright, sunny winter afternoon in the nation’s capital, stepping out of the White House and into the Rose Garden, all of which he must vacate in just 68 days, taking the chance to reflect on the clement weather with the assembled media.

“Operation Warp Speed is unequalled and unrivalled. It’s been an incredible effort,” he said, adding that with another administration “what we've done would have taken, in my opinion, three, four or five years”.

He added: “Case levels are high, but a lot of the case levels are high because we test far more than any other country.”

He said that “as a result of Operation Warp Speed, Pfizer announced on Monday that its China virus vaccine is more than 90 per cent effective – that far exceeds any and all expectations, nobody thought they'd get to that level”. He said: “And we have others coming which we think will be an equal level – maybe more.”

Trump had many reasons to look dour. Earlier that day, officials in Georgia announced that Biden had taken the state and its 16 electoral votes, taking him to 306, the same number Trump secured against Hillary Clinton fours ago in what he then termed a “landslide”.

Aside from the politics, there was the matter of the pandemic, the reason for which he had called the press conference. The death toll in the US now stands at 240,000, with 10.7m infections. Experts warn of new spikes across the entirety of the country and of a difficult winter.

Trump must know that had he made tackling the pandemic his government’s priority, rather than worrying about the stock market, he might indeed have been re-elected. As it was, the president looked distant, disengaged. Rarely during the past four years has the man who mocked the person who beat him last week as “Sleepy Joe”, looked so weary.

It may be a low blow to mention a man’s hair, especially when he is down, but the 74-year-old’s locks were white or grey, not a hint of orange.

“Ideally we won't go to a lockdown. I will not go – this administration will not be going to a lockdown,” he said, briefly appearing to indicate the possibility he would not be having a second term.

“Hopefully – whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration will be. I guess time will tell. But I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown.”

Mike Pence tried his best to cheer the president up. When he spoke, he said repeatedly it was because of the president the vaccine was just around the corner. It was because of the president, he said, the country had all the medical equipment it needed. Trump just nodded, his head down.

Was he uninterested, or disinterested? That is, was he bored by what Pence was saying, or was it a reflection that he knew all of this would soon be someone’s responsibility rather than his, that person being Joe Biden.

Neither Trump or Pence stopped to answer questions. The president may have claimed that when it came to the coronavirus, he was finally winning. It looked like anything but.