by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
While it’s reasonable to assume that Trump will life to fight another day, there are at least a few warning signs that might trouble the administration. What House Trump believes, apparently, is once they get all the information out that this scandal will go the way of Storm Daniels and all the others. People will process it, see it through the lens of partisan politics and that will be that.
To be honest, that’s a bet I would be willing to take. All they have to do is slow walk this and they win. Once they win, they can do exactly what they had planned to do in the first place — win dirty, but win — and we wake up in a Russian style “managed democracy.”
Really, the only reason why there’s a hint the strategy might not work is Trump himself. It’s difficult to “own the moment” when your arguments are so demonstrably completely disconnected to self-evident reality that people begin to notice.
It is at least possible that Republicans might find themselves beginning to do a modicum of self-reflection. This would be the first stage of The Pence Pivot. That Pence is beginning to be implicated in this scandal is not of immediate concern. Republicans got their smash and grab plutocrat tax cut and they got an enormous amount of young hack judges on the Federal bench. They would know that while Pence has no shame just like Trump, he is at least stable and a more traditional politician. As such, in the unlikely event that Trump goes so beyond the pale that they see their own political fortunes in jeopardy, they will simply do The Pence Pivot and move on. They’ll start talking about the need to cut entitlements because of the ballooning budget deficit. That they were directly responsible for that budget deficit is of no concern.
What people on Twitter too often are oblivious to is there’s a reason why Trump has such cult-like hold on the Republicans — he’s extremely popular among angry white men. Trump has so played to the base — pretty sees them as his only audience — that what he says can come off as pretty bonkers. But if you see him as always talking to the base, all the bizzare things he says and does make total sense.
Therefore, really, relative to House Trump, talking to a foreign power to get dirt on his opponent shouldn’t be a big deal for him politically. The dynamic of the Stormy Daniels scandal is identical, the only difference being the severity of the crime. Two things make this crime different. It’s existential and its simple to understand.
Add to this how fast the story is moving and the tried and true Stormy Daniels mindfucks don’t work. What’s even more interesting is Trump is obviously not taking this story seriously. I think he’s bought into the idea presented by political pundits that this will be a net win for him. When begins to believe it isn’t then things go to the next level.
Trump would then start a war. Or begin to directly tell the MAGA faithful to take active measures to defend him. That he hasn’t done this yet is curious. Either it’s a sign he’s really out of it mentally or he simply believes he can ride this out on the power of the Trump cult of personality. A cornered Trump will have no compunction about burning the country to the ground to save himself.
What happens next, I don’t know. Whatever happens, we’re in a new era, for better or worse.
