by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
If you believe as I do that Trump is going to self-own in some spectator fashion in the final days of his administration, then it’s at least possible that the thing we’ve all hoped would happen one day, #MoscowMitch takes a delegation of senior Republicans to the White House and tells Trump “he’s gotta go,” may happen at the absolute very last moment.
It would be a surreal irony if after five years of terrorizing America, Trump’s entire political legacy is defined by a few days in early 2021. I struggle to imagine a situation where Trump is actually able to successfully pull of a coup. He’s just not done the hard autocratic prep work necessary for it to happen. If he does attempt a coup, he won’t have even a thin veneer of legality to cling to. I guess it’s at least POSSIBLE some sort of surreal event might happen January 6th, but it would be done in the broader context of something extra-political or extra-legal having had happened as well.
So, it’s pretty easy to imagine Trump is hold up in the White House the evening of January 20th, 2021 and it is then, at last, that #MoscowMitch plays Barry Goldwater in August 1974 and attempts to negotiate Trump physically leaving the White House.
If Trump really does refuse to physically leave the White House, it would be the seminal event of his era. Everything that happened before would be framed relative to those fateful hours between when Biden was sworn in and when we finally managed to get Trump to leave the Oval Office. What would have otherwise been a value free — if turbulent — few years in our nation’s history would suddenly be something of 9/11-sized cultural significance.
