Is Donald J. Trump Hibernating?

This being the dead of winter, it’s perfectly alright to hibernate if you’re a black bear or a brown bear…unless, of course, you’re President of the United States, in which case, it’s not okay; it’s a dereliction of duty.

And yet President Trump hasn’t been seen or heard from in the past six days.

Where is he? What’s he doing? What’s he up to these days?

Well, for one, he’s in the middle of determining who gets pardoned. Some sources say at least one hundred people are expected to be granted pardons. Which is not at all uncommon, since most presidents do that just before leaving office. But what’s atypical is pardoning people who have committed serious white-collar crimes. Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn are just a smattering of the folks expected to be pardoned by Trump.

But what Trump doesn’t seem to be spending any time on these days is accelerating the distribution and administration of the much-needed Covid-19 vaccinations. In fact, the vaccination rollout seems to be in serious stall mode, with the number of American deaths from Covid-19 just shy of 400,000. What’s more, no one seems to have a handle on how many vaccine vials are about to ship, let alone how many have been shipped and where. Then there’s still the problem of not having anywhere near the number of vaccination sites per state or the required number of vaccinators. That’s why American citizens remain at great risk of contracting the virus until the vaccination schedule gets ironed out.

Aside from not wanting to get in front of the cameras these days, Trump is busy making sure he doesn’t attend Biden’s inauguration and planning his January 20 send-off, which is scheduled to begin 8 AM at Andrews Air Force base (since renamed Joint Base Andrews) in Camp Springs, Maryland, where he will be given a 21-gun salute and a marching band, and where he’s scheduled to board Air Force One for the last time, as it flies off to his cushy Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Once Biden becomes president, the country can breathe a collective sigh of relief, as President Trump turns into a common citizen who will no longer be carrying the nuclear suitcase (a.k.a, nuclear football) containing the nuclear launch codes, which will automatically deactivate. Biden will receive a duplicate suitcase, only with different codes.