So I've covered Donald Trump since 2015.

You know, I started covering him during his campaign and followed him through to the White House and have covered him for the last four years.

And I fully intended on transitioning over to cover Joe Biden's presidency, which I'm going to be doing at some point.

But this period of transition was so insane and so consequential that it just sucked me back in.

You'll never take back our country with weakness.

And breaking news tonight, the deadly siege on Congress as an angry pro-Trump mob storm.

I'm Jonathan Swan.

For this series, I talked to a range of senior West Wing officials, senior administration officials, senior campaign officials, and close personal advisors to the president.

I talked to them on the basis of deep background, many I could use the information, but not say where it came from.

The scenes that you'll hear about in this series are fire on the wall.

They're described with dates, names, who's in the room, who's sat where.

I'll take you inside the president's living quarters inside Air Force One, inside the Oval Office for some of the most consequential meetings of this period, many of which have never been reported before.

This series is my best attempt to reconstruct Trump's final days, while sources memories are still fresh and people are willing to talk.

From Axios, this is how it happened. Trump's last stand.

Part one, where it starts.

The reason I think that this period from November 30th to January 20th is so important.

It's the culmination of so many trends that have been happening in plain size.

You can draw a direct line between Donald Trump's victory speech on election night at 2.20am and the storming of the Capitol on January 6th.

Let's start in that first week of October.

This was a dark, low point for Donald Trump in his campaign. He'd just come out of a horrendous first debate against Joe Biden.

In which he braided Biden, interrupted.

You do want me to bend?

...