by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
As of late 2018, here’s what I think the Trump endgame is going to be — Trump will ultimately fall back on the Nixon legal theory that “the president can’t obstruct justice” and that, as they say, will be that. He’ll also move the goal posts when it comes to Russian collusion / conspiracy to such an extent that that, too, will be mooted.
While all of this is going on, Trump will feel MAGA a daily dose of conflation, confusion, muddling the waters and general demagogic mindfucking. Ultimately, things will be so warped that by 2024, Trump will be as unpopular as ever, but he’ll use his Hitler-like charm with the volk to pick some young, ideological asshole across the finish line and it’ll be THAT guy who does the REAL damage for any number of reasons.
Having said all that, let’s look at the idea that Trump would go full Nixon. One thing, just from casual, passive observation of FOX News I see through my Twitter feed, is that the idea that Trump would do the most Trumpian thing ever and appoint his own special prosecutor to look into UraniumOne seems, at this point, almost a foregone conclusion. I could see Trump appointing such a special prosecutor and offering the Democratic House the following deal: I get to fire Mueller in exchange for getting rid of my insane UraniumOne prosecutor. I see that as something that might happen between now and January 1st. It would be just like Trump to do something that insane while everyone was relaxing on, say, Christmas.
So, if Trump goes full Nixon, he probably will survive. What Trump lacks that Nixon had is honor, so I could totally see Trump appointing his own special prosecutor, and saying that as president he can’t commit obstruction of justice. Any order on the part of SCOTUS for him to testify he ignores and wallow in a staggering Constitutional Crisis for the next six or so years. Trump really doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself and the idea of tearing the country apart in such a manner wouldn’t phase him one bit.
Something really, really bad would have to happen politically — or economically — for Trump to come anywhere near being forced out of office any time soon. I’m not even sure the Democrats have the guts to impeach Trump right now. So, in the end, we might have Trump dead to rights to any number of pretty staggering political crimes and…nothing happens.
Thus, in a way, Trump would be a lot like Reagan after Iran-contra. He’d just kind of drift through office, being a dick and after he’s out of office, the center of gravity in the Republican Party shifts to the right in a mindboggling way and 20 years from now Republicans will talk about Trump the way they used to talk about Reagan.
