by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
The moment the extra-political move of releasing the Whistleblower’s name is a done deal, MAGA may find itself in something of a pickle. Now, the thing they want from this illegal act, they will get, at least in the short term.
They will dominate the newscycle for at least 24 hours. They will have something to pivot to whenever someone asks them about Trump’s many, many, many impeach-and-convict crimes. And they can probably, at least within their own bullshit echo chamber, make everything about the character and motives of the Whistleblower, not the proven criminal offenses against the Constitution that Trump has committed.
So, on a superficial level, at least relative to their own metrics, MAGA will have scored a major victory in their burn-everything-to-the-ground to save the Dear Leader impeachment strategy. But the current impeachment war is not The Mueller Report. Though Bill Barr is likely to hand down a slew of bogus criminal referrals before this is all over with, the actual impeachment train has likely left the station.
Trump’s going to get impeached. But he’s also probably going to be acquitted by the Senate. And, yet, the very extra-political things MAGA thinks will help them in the short term, could seal Trump’s long-term political fate in a way that they may not like. Maybe. If it all boils down to simply messaging the base with vitriol against Whistleblower for getting the Dear Leader in trouble, then I guess it’s a win.
But there are some pretty serious known unknowns.
There could be serious anti-impeachment violence on the part of MAGA if Trump spends all day losing his shit over the identity of the Whistleblower. What to him will be a throwaway line about, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” may come back to haunt him in an existential way. Americans don’t brook political violence of any sort. If there’s some obvious causality between Trump’s ranting on Twitter and any kind of anti-impeachment violence, that old Thousand Year Trump may not be as much of a sure thing as Don Jr. might think.
Add this to the non-zero sum chance that Trump will simply lose his shit when what he thinks will happen once everyone knows who the Whistleblower is — the impeachment process abruptly ends — doesn’t happen, and you have a recipe for a very, very dark moment in our nation’s political history.
I can’t predict the future. I have no idea what is going to happen. But do know that Whistleblower’s name is going to pop out in a big way very, very soon. My current theory is Sean Hannity will martyr himself for Der Fuehrer and blurt the guy’s name out on his show. Trump will then turn around and rant for weeks about how the guy is a traitor or hates America or wants to take people’s guns, or whatever insane bullshit happens to pop into his fevered fucked up mind.
But it could happen any number of different ways. It is, however, just a matter of time before we enter the extra-political phase of this unfortunate clusterfuck.
