I’ve written about this before, but it’s ever more timely. There’s a greater than-zero sum chance that very soon a lot of people are going to The Pence Pivot. This is when at the very point you would otherwise agree with me that maybe Trump was mistake in the first place, you, without missing a beat, say, “It doesn’t matter. Trump’s gone. I support Pence. I didn’t even vote for Trump, really, I voted for Pence.”
This is an outrage on any number of different levels. The chief amongst them being, your previous support of Trump becomes little more than your similar support for the Iraq War based on the lie of WMD. You never have to “own” (as MAGA people are so fond of saying) the fact that you did, at one point, support Trump. And you would still support Trump but for the fact that he’s become so politically toxic that it’s difficult for you to do so. Since you now have a more traditional pol like Pence to support, you have a ready off-ramp for your original insane support of Trump. You don’t have to “own” the political hell you put us all through because you were in a MAGA cult.
Who gets possession of the MAGA cult should the House Trump implode and The Thousand Year Trump doesn’t last…quite…as long is up for debate. A lot it depends on how, exactly, Trump might leave office (By the way, this is impossible. Trump will never resign and he will never be convicted in the Senate.) Really, the only way I could see Trump maybe leaving office is if he could get a full pardon and the right to choose Pence’s successor as veep. If he got that, then either Don Jr. or Ivanka might become veep and be in an ideal position to run for president in their own right to protect Trump’s “legacy.” Ivanka would be a strange one to do that, but you do you daddy’s little girl.
But as of right now, I just don’t see anything coming of TrumpUkraine in the first place. This is probably just another Trump scandal that gets people like me excited, only to fizzle out as the Stormy Daniels Playbook is used ever so effectively.
Despite what the esteemed access journalists of The New York Times and The Washington Post may have you believe, Trump is not a diabolical political theorist. He’s not calculating the subtle messaging necessary to convince a housewife just outside of Phillie in a sexless marriage that she should vote for him despite her reservations.
In fact, Trump is simply a very lucky doofus. He’s nothing more than Being There’s Chauncey Gardner if he was on the cusp of losing his mind. There’s no grand strategy other than some basic mindfucks he learned at the feet of Roy Cohen.
A prime example of this is the origins of the TrumpUkraine clusterfuck. If Trump was REALLY such a fucking modern day Machiavelli don’t you think he would have weighed the political pardon the “poor optics” of Bob Mueller’s testimony to Congress gave him? He might have used his SuperMind to lay low and simply coast to an easy re-election. Then, in his second term, he could turn the switch on his sinister second phase.
Is that what he did? Nope. Smarty pants saw his pardon not as an opportunity to lay the groundwork for the much heralded Thousand Year Trump, but as permission to actively pressure a foreign power to collude with him to hurt his likely political rival in 2020. What’s more, doofus did it on a veritable party line. If that’s not insight into numbnut’s true political savvy, I don’t know what is.
And, as such, that’s why he has to be impeached now, damn the political consequences. He’s proven that he’s not only a barely functioning man-child, he’s a willful one at that.
The only reason why Trump’s been so successful to date is a combination of a strong economy, the idiotic disorganization of his opponents and abject lack of shame on the part of Republicans. He owes everything to outside forces beyond his control. Yes, in a sense, one could say he has a native ability to vocalize the rage of the white disenfranchised volk. But even that is grading on a curve. Why else are people hyping Tucker Carlson in 2024? He’s just another hapless racist doofus who’s been on TV.
The Trump threat is existential. If we don’t go down fighting, then Trump is only going to see this as a sign of weakness and up the ante. Trump is so stupid in real terms, that if he felt like he might actually be not only impeached, but convicted, he might be willing to call up Little Rocket Man and ask him to start a war in an effort to wag the dog.
I wish I was joking, but I’m Not.
That such a suggestion isn’t on the face of it too outrageous to even consider is enough to demand impeachment immediately.
As of Monday, Sept. 23, 2019, TrumpUkraine is following the usual Trump scandal playbook. It might be happening a little faster because of the severity and brazenness of the alleged crime, but we’re definitely cruising towards this wrapping up as a net plus for House Trump.
The press will willfully give House Trump the cover to appoint a Special Prosecutor to “look into” the Bidens “just to be sure” as a matter of “transparency.” While high information voters will be angry, the average person who doesn’t follow politics will not know who to believe. Besides, the economy is doing well. Lulz.
No one is showing any political courage at this point. There will come a point very soon when we’re so close to the beginning of the 2020 election cycle that Nancy Pelosi will put out a statement saying while Trump should be impeached, for the good of the nation, it’s best if we just “let the people decide” in November 2020.
It’s definitely not looking like absolutely nothing is going to happen to House Trump because of TrumpUkraine. Or, to put it in political terms, while the general consensus will be Trump should be impeached, he won’t be because the 2020 campaign will have begun. Surely he won’t be re-elected, will he?
Without any sense of there being consequences, Trump will grow more brazen. Lulz.
First, let me say for the record that I’m almost always wrong. I speculate a lot, but that’s more a matter of me liking to daydream than any sort of special insight. So, in a sense, it’s likely I’m wrong again.
And, yet, because of the brazen nature of Trump’s criminal behavior with Ukraine, it seems to me that anyone who continues to talk about how we’re just going to beat Trump in 2020 like we beat him in 2018 is missing the forest for the trees.
So far, the only thing that makes this particular scandal different is the intensity of the outrage associated with it has lasted just a little bit longer than normal. And, in a sense, that might be more a function of the media needing to hype the DNI’s testimony on Thursday. I would suggest everyone hold off on 2020 horse race hot takes until at least the hearing takes place.
In all likelihood, the hearing’s going to be a dud, just like Mueller’s. Trump and MAGA get to crow about all the lies of the “lamestream media” and that will be that. In that case, I just don’t see how there’s going to be a free and fair election. I’ve gotten some pushback on my belief that autocratic populists always win. My reponse is the Electoral College is a uniquely American feature of our election process. Democrats could easily win the popular vote, only to lose the Electoral College because of any number of different skullduggery techniques by House Trump.
There’s a tiny chance that the entire march to the Iowa Caucuses could be thrown for a loop. There’s at least a greater-than-zero chance that some pretty speculator political events could take place between now and early 2020. I have my doubts because, well, Trump has a cult of personality. And, yet, for the time being, I have a nagging, lingering feeling that it’s a least possible all these people telling us that this or that person will benefit from not impeaching Trump…may….have…their plans scrambled.
But, in all likelihood, Trump is fine. This will all fizzle out like it always does and darkness will fall.
Trump has generated numerous sizable scandals over the run of his administration to date. To date, either they explode for about a 24 hour period, or they gradually fade from view as people process what happened. The most recent scandal, TrumpUkraine, is different for one important reason — it’s existential.
Any outcome will mark a watershed in modern American politics. It doesn’t matter what happens, we will have entered a new era. If it goes as expected and after the acting DNI testifies before Congress on Thursday all the energy for impeachment fizzles out, then Trump will be even more brazen in his corrupt, criminal behavior. If this is dismissed as just another scandal trumped up by liberals with Trump Derangement Disorder, then there will not be a free and fair election in 2020. Not even close. It’s going to be pretty perfunctory.
There really will be no stopping Trump at that point. He will be above the law. The Constitution won’t really even be in effect anymore. That’s the most likely outcome. I would give it about a 99% likelihood. Republicans have no shame and Democrats have no courage.
But, just for fun, let’s imagine things don’t quite go that way. If instead of all the momentum for impeachment abruptly vanishing like during the later part of the Muller Report situation, what if the pressure to somehow miraculously increases. If the issue of the complaint itself being released becomes the focal point, then I would imagine all those young hack MAGA judges on the Federal bench would slow walk it. That would be their way of effectively making impeachment a moot point. The impeachment investigation would dwindle over the months of the case bouncing around the court system and Trump uses the levers of power to win reelection. Sometime in the middle of his second term it goes to SCOTUS and he wins. Again, game over.
That scenario is also far more likely than the good guys winning. But let’s, just for fun again, imagine that somehow it doesn’t get slow walked. Imagine that it actually bounces around the Judiciary pretty quick. Then, again, any decision would be significant. If SCOTUS sides with Trump, then darkness falls.
But if somehow SCOTUS shocks us all and rules again Trump, then that would be the final endgame. As I’ve said before, this is not 1974 and Trump’s not Nixon. Trump would rather destroy the Constitution than turn over the complaint. So, he ignores the ruling and the Senate won’t convict him. Ta-da. Again, darkness falls.
If somehow the Senate did convict him — which it would not, never — then we have a 9/11 level crisis while we wait to evict Trump from the Oval Office. He will never leave if he was somehow convicted. We will have to physically remove him.
For someone so paranoid and willing to fight back, Trump often doesn’t take existential problems seriously at first. Several times over the last four or so years, starting with the Access Hollywood tape, Trump has initially laughed off or dismissed scandals threatened his political existence.
So, in a sense, we’re still in the beginning stages of this particular situation. Trump’s playing with the press’ mind, tell them he’s “considering” releasing the complaint against them, when, in fact, he has no intention of doing it. This causes confusion and initial relief among people who are growing ever-more worried about what’s going on. Soon enough, of course, we’re going to find out this is total bullshit. If past is any indication, if Trump “releases” the complaint it will be at first a summary and then once momentum to impeach dies down, he’ll get Bill Barr to release a heavily redacted version of the complaint. At least, that would follow the well-worn path hone by the Stormy Daniels and Muller Report situations. Trump appears to be using a variety of different oft-used techniques at this point. And they appear to be working. So, really, there’s no need for him to really be all that concerned.
Having said that, while I still believe in practical terms the current Washington convention wisdom is while Trump should be impeached, he won’t be impeached, I do feel a level of tension on Twitter I’ve not seen since the worst days of the lead up to The Muller Report. And some of the usual suspects when it comes to opposition to Trump have clearly been subtly radicalized by what we know so far about what Trump is accused of doing.
And so, really, Trump would have every reason to believe that while things might get a little bumpy between now and Thursday when the acting DNI is set to testify, in real terms this is just another scandal that will blow over. There will be all this excitement about an explosive testimony and it’ll be a big old dud. Within 24 hours, Trump will do God-only-knows what in his never-ending quest to secure re-election using any available lever of power at his disposal. Take into consideration that either Trump will instruct the guy not to testify in the first place or make it clear he can only talk about such a limited number of topics that it’s nearly moot for him to speak at all What’s more, he is likely to do that old stonewalling routine TrumpWorld is so fond of where he never actually invokes Executive Privilege but uses it anyway not to have to answer any questions. And House Democrats are completely incompetent when it comes to questioning.
As such, as of Sunday afternoon, I would predict that by Friday morning MAGA will be crowing that yet again the lamestream media got it wrong and Trump should be able to simply stay in office for the rest of his life because that would be the only fair thing to do.
For this not to be the case, something dramatically different would have to happen. Something that diverged from the Stormy Daniels-Mueller Report playbook. I’m at a loss as to what that might be. Populist autocrats always win. They never lose once they’re in power. So, in that sense, it’s too late. The worst case scenarios of 2016 are about to happen. It’s just a matter of the specifics.
Now, simply to make myself feel better, I’m going to walk you through the most insane, bonkers scenarios I can possibly thing of what might happen if the impossible happens — political gravity actually begins to work again with Trump.
Trump Start A War This is a gimmy. We’re already on the verge of a war with Iran. Within days of it becoming apparent that he faced an existential threat, Trump attacks Iran. Poof! Problem solved. By the time things get back to normal, Trump’s comfortably in this second term. Far less likely is somehow Trump starts a war with the DPRK. I always thought if there was Korean unification it would probably happen in some really weird way. Trump force-starting such a war in an effort to wag the dog would definitely fit the bill.
MAGA Murders The Whistleblower After A Trump “Joke” While this one might seem somewhat hysterical, it would be appropriate for Trump to finally — in effect — kill someone on Fifth Ave and not lose a vote. As sinks in to our doofus president that he faces an existential political threat, Trump doxes the whistleblower on Twitter. He rants that the guy is a member of the Deep State and “jokes” that someone ought to teach him a lesson. Some rando MAGA jackass with an AR-15 shoots up the guys house and kills him and maybe a few family members. Lulz! Fox News sends “thoughts and prayers” and Brit Hume ever-so-seriously says we simply can’t hold the president responsible for a “joke” that caused an obviously mentally-ill person to commit such a tragedy.
The Roy Cohen Option If Trump escapes political consequences AGAIN, then he orders Bill Barr to establish a Special Prosecutor to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. Not only is everything muddled — like always — but Trump can always do the drip-drip-drip of 2016, only this time he’s in control of it. At strategic moments in 2020, Trump attacks the Bidens for this or that bullshit thing.
Trump Breaks The Constitution In this scenario, Trump leans into all those young hack MAGA judges on the Federal bench. The release of the complaint bounces around for months — maybe even years. (But let’s say months.) It’s August 2020. This, in a sense, is a worst-case-scenario. Most likely Trump destroys faith in SCOTUS when he wins the case against him to release the complaint 5-4. Really, it would boil down to one person — Chief Justice Roberts. If he has a modicum of integrity, he will vote with the more liberal members of the court, giving us a 5-4 vote against Trump. This is not 1974 and Trump’s not Nixon. If Trump somehow miraculously lost the SCOTUS case, he would simply ignore it. That would be that. The entire Constitutional system collapses. Trump might actually get impeached, but Emmet Flood pops up when the case is briefly heard in the Senate. Trump easily escapes conviction. We never see the complaint or Trump’s taxes. House Trump enjoys The Thousand Year Trump. History looks back upon The United States as simply a longer-lived version of the Weimar Republic. Trump doesn’t even attempt to pretend the election is free and fair. Might even just make good on his “joke” and stay in office for the rest of his life.
If we get anywhere past this, well, we’re entering 9/11 levels of crisis.
Trump Resigns, With Conditions So, if a bunch of Republicans Senators should happen to go to the White House a la 1974 and tell Trump he doesn’t have the votes, there is a chance that he would resign, but only with some pretty stiff conditions. One would be he would get a full pardon. The other one would be he would get to pick Pence’s replacement as Veep. Trump has a chat with his kids and somehow decides between the one he wants to fuck (Ivanka) and the one who has his name (Don Jr.) This would, in a sense, secure House Trump. In 2024, there’s a battle between House Trump and Pence. Guess who wins!
The Impossible Happens This is so impossible, it’s almost a waste of time to even write these words — Trump is convicted in the Senate after he scoffs at the idea the doesn’t have the votes in the Senate. The only thing I can imagine in this situation would be, well, something pretty tragic. Trump holds up in the White House, refusing to acknowledge the decision. He rage-tweets all day long. He snaps because of the pressure losing the presidency. We have a few days of figuring out how to change the nuclear codes. Trump tweets out a dick pick. He calls Obama the N-word on Twitter. He threats to kill himself. He says anything and everything in an attempt to get the MAGA faithful to rush to the White House to protect him. For a surreal few days — maybe even weeks — Trump holds the entire county captive. Even I can’t predict how that particular situation might wrap up.
But, really, I think Trump has nothing to worry about. He’s going to cruise into a second term, weaponize the ICE camp infrastructure and I get a free bed in one of the camps.
In fact, I would say the only thing that makes this Ukraine scandal different is the severity of the crimes alledged makes it difficult for us to muddle through. There’s going to be a decision one way or another and whatever it is, there’s no turning back.
I recently found myself talking to MAGA people on Periscope. What was interesting about it was every MAGA rhetorical device used to “own the moment” was used.
You can’t get angry. If Trump destroying the country makes you angry, then you suffer from “Trump Derangement Disorder.” This is meant to own the moment in the sense that you end up talking about that, not the issue at hand.
Attack you personally. This is another way to own the moment. They think of the worst possible thing to say about you so you’re distracted. You struggle to come up with a response and, again, you’re not talking about the issue at hand.
‘Fake news’ If you do bring receipts, they say it’s fake news. Again, they want to own the moment. If you can’t agree on facts, then what’s the point of having a discussion at all.
Distraction. Bobbing and weaving is a classic MAGA discussion technique. The whole point is to not address the issue that they’re obviously losing ground on. This is a prime example of how MAGA is a cult of personality not debating Trump in good faith.
“I’ll get back to you.” This is a way for them to, again, not address the issue at hand. They tell you to give them your facts and they will decide for themselves if it’s true or not. This a way to wrap the conversation up without any resolution that involves proving that Trump may, in fact, have been in error.
“Democrats scare me” If you’ve gotten this far in the discussion, then you should give up. This is their pivot into reverse polarization. And, remember, every moment your talking about something else, you’re not talking about whatever it is that you’ve proven Trump’s done.
So someone Periscope made the following argument about what’s going on with Trump and Ukraine. He said that because there was no legal proof of collusion in the redacted Mueller Report (“It was all a lie.”) that we just have to wait for the “truth” to come out about this situation.
Now, while this is severe manipulation of what happened, it does give me insight into what’s going on with MAGA right now. They’re being told that since the mainstream media “lied” to them about Russian collusion, that it’s just a matter of time that this, too, will be debunked. I can see this being an effective argument for a number of reasons. One, people — especially MAGA — assume that because there have been no political consequences for Trump that he’s in the clear in general.
Or, put another away, even if you accept that the “lamestream” media “lied” about collusion (which they didn’t — speculation isn’t lying) you still have a few other major scandals to deal with. I mean, that Trump hasn’t been impeached over the Stormy Daniels situation is a travesty of justice. And what’s more, the only reason why we have to argue about things like collusion is MAGA *likes* all the inhumane policies that Trump does. They like the racism and misogyny. Lulz! So in the MAGA mind, all the speculation in the media about collusion is translated into a “lie.” They didn’t lie, they just got wrapped up in a narrative that turned out not to have the legal basis they believed. (That and Mueller fell on his sword, likely at the behest of Bill Barr. ) What’s more, there were 11 instances of obstruction of justice found in the Mueller Report. So the argument MAGA makes is once you not find collusion (conspiracy) then Trump’s off the hook for everything else. That says more about the realities of American politics than it does Trump’s actual legal jeopardy.
The whole point of this is this gives you some insight into perpetual bullshit machine that is MAGA. As such, things are going to get a lot worst pretty quick because the Ukraine scandal is about to wrap up. It will wrap up once the Sunday talk shows finish today. The political consensus is going to be that Trump should be impeached, but he won’t be. And that will be that. Once that becomes the conventional wisdom, this scandal will go the way of Stormy Daniels. And once Trump no longer feels any sense of an existential threat, he will take things to the next level.
Trump’s likely to appoint a Special Prosecutor to look into the bullshit allegations against Joe and Hunter Biden. Expect Trump to lean into how the Judiciary is an arm of the GOP. By the middle of his second term, ICE and its infrastructure will be weaponized against his opposition.
As I’ve said before, once you realize that America is little more than the Weimar Republic at this point the necessity to impeach Trump grows. It’s no longer a matter of worried moderate members of the House caucus. Now, it’s how history will remember us.
We, as a nation, ladies and gentlemen, are in a historic clusterfuck. This clusterfuck is such a thicket, that’s difficult to grasp what’s going on. Well, here’s my attempt to at least explain it, if not figure out a solution
The reason why this is unlike any scandal in American history is the cold hard fact that one of the two major political parties in America no longer believes in democracy. The Republican Party is pretty much a screaming white person at this point. This is important because Republicans are so unmoored on an ideological level from over 200 years of American democratic traditions as to be little more than a grunt.
We have to be honest with ourselves. Trump at this point could murder someone on Fox News and not lose a vote. He could whip out his cock and masterbate on Fox News and not lose a vote. As long as he doesn’t say “God damn” as he did it, Trump could tweet “I am the state” and within 24 hours Republicans would claim he was “joking.”
So, if you’re Nancy Pelosi, you have zero reason to what to impeach Trump. The Democrat Party is 2/3rds of the body politic and such there are a lot of moderates who would otherwise be Republicans if, well, we weren’t in a Trumpian hellscape. Her goals are simple: keep the majority in the House.
That’s it. From her point of view, there’s no upside to impeaching Trump knowing that he’ll never be convicted. What’s more, from her point of view, not only will Democrats be blamed if they impeach Trump and he loses, Trump will use his inevitable acquittal by the Senate as vindication that he can run on.
Now, if that was all that was going on, we wouldn’t be in the massive clusterfuck that we’re in. Trump would just be a chronic political problem that festered until (hopefully) he left office in 2025. (He will never lose re-election. Never. Populist autocrats never lose.)
But the reason why this is a massive clusterfuck is the longer Trump doesn’t face any political consequences for his actions, the bolder, more brazen and more surreally criminal he becomes. So, it’s not that he’s daring the House to impeach him. It’s that he knows Republicans will slob his knob no matter what he does. He will never be convicted in the Senate. If he was a normal human being, he would see this as an opportunity to grift and abuse power but in such a way that it would just be a mild nuisance.
Trump is not normal. In a sense, he sees the American government much like Hitler saw Europe in 1939. Not to have too much of an extended metaphor, but Trump believes he can invade Russia (true dictatorship) and in the end it the American system will collapse like a rotting door. At this point, he honestly believes he can “joke” his way into a life term. To date, he’s been given no indication that this is not the case.
Republicans won’t say anything and Democrats won’t do anything. But there’s a fatal flaw to Trump’s megalomaniacal dreams: himself. Trump is the quintessential self-own artist. He may be a natural when it comes to telling the disenfranchised volk what they want to hear, but he’s also a very big dumb ass.
Once this current Ukrainian scandal blows over (ETA, Sunday afternoon) he’s going to feel even more emboldened. It may not happen all at once, but in fits and starts, Trump is going to go so far beyond what any American president has ever done that we’re simply not prepared for it. Nothing is off the table. All that has to happen is a major terrorist attack or a war. In real terms, would anything happen if Trump ran for a third term? Who would stop him? Nancy Pelosi? Pod Save America?
With that in mind, impeachment grows a lot more important. But once you agree that impeachment is necessary, it’s kind of too late. If Democrats don’t impeach Trump like…NOW…the first 2020 primaries will begin and the average person’s attention will be pointed toward Nov. 2020. Our political system simply isn’t prepared for both a presidental campaign and serious impeachment proceedings.
I mean, the way things are going, Democrats won’t actually send the articles of impeachment to the Senate until August 2020. In the meantime, the average person will think Joe Biden is going to be indicted at any moment for bogus corruption charges involving Ukraine. And, really, there’s a good chance that the Democrat base won’t come out in 2020 out of a sense of disenchantment with House Democrats.
So, really, the whole thing is so muddled that it’s a lot like Brexit. Brexit it such a clusterfuck because it barely passed and was sold to the public on lies. In America, meanwhile, impeaching Trump really boils down to how strong you are on doing things on principle. If you look at the situation using strictly political metrics, then, yes, impeaching Trump isn’t a good idea. You wait for Trump to “self-impeach” one way or another.
To be honest, it’s kind of sad that the fate of the United States in a sense now rests on waiting for Trump to either lose his mind or be found to have conspired with best friend Kim Jung Un to nuke Blue State cities. Those are the only things I can think of that might cause Senate Republicans to at least mull the notion of a Pence presidency.
That’s really hanging a lot on the unknown. So, really, this current crisis with Ukraine is, in a sense, the beginning of bigger and worse abuses on the part of Trump. When it becomes obvious that the House isn’t going to do anything about it, Trump will AGAIN feel emboldened. You’re going to have to convince me that Trump wouldn’t promise Peter Thiel a pardon if he bribed the individual members of the Electoral College to vote for Trump, damn the popular vote.
What would Nancy Pelosi do about that? If she doesn’t have the backbone to impeach Trump for what he did with Ukraine, I find it difficult that she would do it for Trump buying the election. I mean, Senate Republicans aren’t going to vote to convict, are they? Nope. Trump doing that would be the final death knell of not only American democracy, but the American Republic as well. Once you can simply buy the presidency by buying off electors, either the Blue States revolt and you abolish their state governments or you break the back of the Democratic Party altogether.
Is there an answer to the impeachment imbriglio we find ourselves in? Not really. Either you’re willing to stand on principle, or you’re not. Because Trump doesn’t feel any political gravity at all, no matter what he does, impeaching him on principle is all you got. I will note how history remembers the rise of Hitler.
Would we have a better opinion of Germans if they had attempted to impeach Hitler in the early days of his rule? I’d like to think so. That in the end America was little better than the Weimar Republic is something that would give me pause for thought. It might at least make Nancy Pelosi think a little bit, too.
You must be logged in to post a comment.