Tag: Trump

Worst Case Scenario: What If Trump Finally Loses His Mind?

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Now, let me get some things out of the way. First, I don’t think the 25th Amendment will ever be invoked for Trump. Second, I think no matter what happens, Trump is going to win re-election for various systemic reasons that can’t be avoided or fixed.

So, let’s run the scenario. Sometime, maybe soon, Trump finally loses it to such an extent that it is obvious to even the most reluctant of observers. I think the first sign we would have is Trump would make few — if any — public apperences.

He would just vanish.

Depending on how bad his mental deterioration was, I think we might gradually start to see Pence more often. But I doubt anyone would admit that Trump was actually heavily medicated and in bed. In fact, I believe Trump would win re-election under these conditions. They would figure out some way to prop him up long enough to get sworn in and that would be it.

It would become something of a state secret that Ivanka, Jared and Pence were, in fact now running the country. So much so that I think the big mystery of Trump’s second term would be where he was most of the time.

The only weakness to this plot, of course, would be if Trump flipped out in public in some way. If he finally lost it in public in a conspicuous fashion, then that would be a different story altogether. That, in itself, would be a huge crisis. Some pretty unprecedented things might happen if that was the case. It would be a huge crisis if we all knew that Trump was no longer functioning as a rational human being and yet we did not have the political will to do anything about it.

If that happened, I think Trump would remain president, but Pence would be the de facto president, serving in his name. There is just no political will to impeach Trump or to use the 25th Amendment. And, like I said, I think Trump will win re-election even if he has, in fact, completely lost his mind.

But if Trump did finally lose it, I think Regency would be comprised of Ivanka, Jared, Pence, Miller and maybe a few other people. But Trump would still be president. They would just rule in his name.

And there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

Trump Loses The Country (?)

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The conditions are there for our long Trump nightmare to end. Sorta. I say this knowing full well that the election is eons away in political terms and Trump is unlikely to go peacefully, if at all.

But lets do a quick run through of why it’s at least _possible_ Trump may find the obstacles to re-election insurmountable.

People Really Want To Vote
This, if nothing else, should concern Team Trump. The Trump strategy is to so rile up the base, make them so absolute in their devotion to him, that on election day they will simply have the sheer numbers in real terms to get him over the line. This is a risky strategy because while you’re so busy thinking about the base, you ignore how angry you’re making the majority of everyone else.

It Appears The Economy Is Slowing
This is probably the most significant threat. While his base would not care if he started a nuclear war, 60% of the electorate might. And for a lot of those people who generally don’t care about politics, if a recession hits between now and November 2020, they might begin to take notice.

The Mood Of The Country Is Shifting
This is the most nebulous of metrics. The only thing I can compare it to is the how different the early Carter Administration was to the later Carter Administration. A president sets the tone of his era. As such, by the third year in office, America is a reflection of him. As I understand it, this is not going well for Trump. The very things Trump harps on — immigration and free trade — people are beginning to disagree with him on. So, if anything, that’s a sign that his “base first” strategy is not working the way he may have thought.

Now, I still believe Trump is going to win re-election with absolute certainty. The reason I say this is: populists don’t lose. Add to this Trump will be a caged animal at any hint he might lose and I just don’t see him going down without a fight so angry, so politically damaging that he may leave a historically bad taste in everyone’s minds. Here’s why I just don’t see him losing, despite signs that he might.

The Entire System Protects A Presidential Incumbent.
While there used to be an ebb and flow to presidential history, that is not the case anymore. Since Bill Clinton, if you are elected, you stay in office for 8 years. So, while Trump is historically bad at his job, I just don’t see him losing. While Republicans will spooge their pants, I would suggest they temper that sentiment. Second terms are historically bad for presidents. Given what a bad president Trump is, there’s a real chance that having escaped impeachment his first term, he may not be so lucky in his second. Also, it takes time for leaders to bubble up in the opposition. So by the time Trump’s six years in, there’s a real chance he may finally have met his match. I think it should be Jon Stewart, but that’s just me.

Trump Cheats
I think this is the most dangerous aspect of all of this. Trump is such a fucking drama queen that he will do anything — anything — to stay in office. He is so selfish that he will be willing to bring the entire country down with him if need be. Some of the crazy things I could see him doing are start a war, any war. Go full Nazi. I could see him suspending the election itself should there be a major terrorist attack at any point within three months of it. And, really, the absolute worst of scenario is Trump goes after individual Electors themselves in an attempt to bully them into being faithless. Really, all he needs is just enough of them to be faithless to throw the election into the House.

The Russians & Plutocrats
This is the wildcard. I don’t see either the Russians or the plutocrats who love those sweet, sweet tax cuts allowing Trump to lose. Period. Both of these parties have way too much of a vested interest in Trump to let him be forced out of off. Now if it becomes pretty obvious that Trump lost the election and yet he mysteriously wins the election, we’re in uncharted territory. It would tear the country apart in a way not seen since the Civil War. And, since possession is 9/10th of the law, even if by the time the Electoral College is set to vote it’s been established that the Russians hacked the election — again — I just don’t see Republicans caring. Trump will stay president and after a few months of people being upset we’ll go back to being unhappy. We’ll be told that all the proof of Russian hacking is “fake news” and, besides, the economy is doing well. (Until it isn’t, of course.) There’s always a small chance that if it is absolutely proven that the election was hacked that Electors might go rogue. That, in itself, of course, would cause chaos. Which, of course, is what the Russians want in the first place.

So, Trump’s going to win re-election. All I can say is vote. Vote. Organize. Participate politically as best you can. I do think that if Trump wins re-election that he’s such a horrible person and president that he’s likely to be impeached exclusively for things he did while in office in his second term.

In 2024, of course, the issue will be Trump’s “legacy.” I really have no hope that we’ll ever get rid of Republican presidents for the next 20 years. It won’t be until the youngest of the Baby Boomers begin to die off that things will change. At about the same point the browning of America will kick in and things will begin to change. For the time being, however, we’re screwed.

V-Log: A Depressing Trumplandia Future

Some thoughts.

Why We Must Impeach Trump Immediately

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It is self-evident that we’re in a no-win situation. Either we do nothing about Trump and wait nearly 18 months for “the people decide” in an election that’s unlikely to be free and fair, or we go down fighting by impeaching Trump sooner rather than later.

One one had this is not a very easy thing to decide. The current conventional wisdom of the Democratic leadership in the U.S. House is to punt the issue of impeachment and let Speaker Pelosi rattle round in Trump’s head until Nov. 2020 rolls around. I find this an untenable position.

I say this because Trump and MAGA have one guiding principle and that’s the gamesmanship of white knuckled power politics. Democrats still think we’re in some sort of hazy feel-good situation from the mid-1980s. This is, sadly, not the case.

MAGA wants to remake the United States structurally to a “managed democracy” like what is found in Russia and will do whatever necessary to achieve that goal.

This brings us to our other option — impeaching Trump immediately. While I understand that Speaker Pelosi is playing 80 dimension chess against Trump who’s barely playing checkers, this is not what’s going on. An more apt comparison would be the scene in Raiders when the knife wielding guy comes after Indy and he just shoots him. Speaker Pelosi can use all the Jedi mind tricks she wishes, in the end, Trump is going to spin no matter what happens.

So why not just impeach Trump?

I would rather the history books — should we last that long — when they’re written say the United States put up a fight right before the cancer of MAGA finally enveloped it for the last time than that we did nothing when given the choice.

I think that’s the least we can do at this point.

Perfect Storm: No Deal Brexit & The Ides Of Mueller (Redux)

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

We may — maybe — be careening towards a perfect storm. It’s possible that within days of each other, The Mueller Report will drop in the States and No Deal Brexit will occur in the UK.

This would have us on track (should we actually ever learn what’s in The Mueller Report) for one of the most eventful Aprils in our nation’s history in the sense that no only will there be growing calls for impeachment of POTUS, but the global economy will come to a screeching halt.

But there’s a lot we don’t know at this point.

Trump could lock away The Mueller Report with his taxes.
No Deal Brexit might not happen or might be significantly delayed.

We just don’t know.

There is, however, a greater than zero-sum chance that Trump will, in April, face an unprecedented political existential threat to his administration. There’s also the chance, of course, that America is so divided that not even if Trump’s electorate base melts down to anti-vaxxers and flat earthers will he be removed from office.

Because of demographic, economic and social trends, it may be that Trump will simply be the beginning of a political dynasty that lasts until either the country finally tears itself asunder or the youngest of the Baby Boomers finally begin to die off just as the browning of America begins to have real political impact.

We just don’t know.

A Deep Dive Into MAGA’s Origins & Trump’s Potential Ultimate Political Fate

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Trump is an avatar for some extraordinary systemic issues in the American political system. In other words, someone like Trump was going to pop up at this point in American history demographic and economic issues. All that was up in the air was the exact nature of it all.

So, the case could be made that Trump’s rise has more to do with the conditions that existed in 2008 than whatever specifically may have existed in 2016. Though, of course, there were at least two — two! — criminal active criminal conspiracies that helped push Trump across the victory line in 2016.

But even if Trump had lost, things were going to suck.

And had Trump not won, the only difference between what we have no and supposed counter-factual is the Republican who won would probably have not been, well, insane and a norm breaker like Trump. But the sudden, abrupt shift to the insane conservatism of the modern Republican party was bound to happen for no other reason than, well, Obama turned them all into insane racists hell bent on overturning his legacy.

White people can suck so bad sometimes. (I say this and I’m white.)

I say all of the above because all the people who seem to think The Mueller Report is going to magically bring Obama back from his extended trip to grab a pack of smokes at the corner store are deluding themselves. MAGA is a long-term, chronic issue that will always be on the cusp of going septic until, well, it does.

Maybe not a civil war, but a situation whereby the one thing America has had for about 200 years — even through a civil war! — will be lost: regular elections and civilian control of the military.

If you have to debate with a MAGA person if the United States is a democracy or a republic, well, you have your answer right there. There’s going to come a point when the United States is run by a military junta for no reason than both sides will grow so polarized that the the entire system freezes up and because the American military won’t follow an illegal order, either they step in to cool down the situation or there’s enough unrest that we might have a situation like Reconstruction where some states are run as military districts (probably the Blue States the way things are going.)

It’s so difficult to address why we’re going to have to wait until the 2021-2023 era to “get” Trump politically because there’s so much going on on a macro level. The point is, Trump is going to win re-election in 2020 and either he starts to tout someone as his “successor” who will protect his “legacy” in 2024….or we do, in fact, finally “get him.”

By “get him” I mean he’s removed from office because the preponderance of evidence against him is so staggering — and the time before he leaves off is long enough — that even though he will say he’s been “vindicated” there’s a real chance that the economy will finally tank and then he’ll be down to about 20% of the electorate who will continue to support him.

And, yet, I have to address the most fucked up scenario again.

That scenario, which I just don’t see happening, but still, is this: The Mueller Report finally comes out and somehow, someway we learn (after a few months of court battles) that “obstruction is collusion / conspiracy” and impeachment hearings began in the middle of an extended 2020 campaign.

It would be the most completely fucked up political event in modern American political history because the cold hard facts of how we’re now two America’s will be laid bare.

One one hand, Trump’s many, many, many crimes will be investigated in the House and just about 50% of the electorate will think he should be convicted in the Senate.

Meanwhile, the other 50% of the electorate will be busy RE-NOMINATING Trump for 2020.

Talk about a crazy split screen.

While highly unlikely — I think Trump will easily win re-election for various reasons, there is a non-zero chance it could happen. Probably the exact timing of No Deal Brexit will play a large part in all.

But what do I know.

The Mueller Report’s Absolute Worst Case Scenario

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

When the House flipped, I thought we had until August 2019 to “get” Trump. Guess what! I was wrong!

The very thing I thought wouldn’t happen until August of this year, people saying “let the people decide in 2020” has already begun. It’s happening now. So, there’s no window of opportunity to “get” Trump politically. We’re stuck with him until at some point in the 2021 – 2023 period for no other reason than The Resistance is so hopelessly divided between the extreme Left that wants everyone to free bleed or be transgendered (Wink! Just kidding!) and the Centrists who just want Obama to come back from grabbing a pack of cigs at the corner store.

Hyperbole aside, right now Trump’s re-election prospects stand at 100% in my mind.

Unless.

Here’s where things get really, really messy.

I see Trump politically as a chronic illness that if not properly treated can go septic at any moment. In practical terms, that means Trump is perpetually both doing fine and about to be removed from office at the same time. This can go on for a very, very long time.

But the absolute worst case scenario is this — The Mueller Report is as big as we all hope / fear and it all happens not in the context of a Congressional mid-term, but a presidential election. The absolute worst case scenario for everyone involved is Trump realizes he faces the prospect of jail time if he loses in 2020 or is otherwise removed from office. You can babble about state crimes all you want, but apparently New York State still has an anti-double jeopardy law on the books, and, as such, Trump will likely be able to weasel his way out of it if the Federal statute of limitations expires.

Now, from Trump’s point of view, a series of things would have to go wrong for the absolute, total worst case scenario to happen. For me, that would be Trump facing a material existential threat to his administration using a metric that Blue Check Liberals would see as valid.

So, to get to that point, first, The Mueller Report has to be REALLY BAD. But even that isn’t really that bad for him. Even if “obstruction is collusion / conspiracy,” if we don’t see it because Attorney General Bill Barr pulls some stupid justification out of his ass, then Trump is safe. I say this because if the most damning aspects of Mueller’s report are held up in the courts until after election day 2020, then we will have lost the battle, but been set up for winning the war against the American Nazis that are MAGA.

But, let’s suppose things continue to get worse for Trump.

So, let’s say Bill Barr decides he has some sense of honor (and wants to do his good friend Bob Mueller & or the America people a solid) and he releases the “obstruction is collusion / conspiracy” part of the report to Congress. This promptly is leaked to the American press and it goes off like a H-Bomb across political Washington.

Now, I’m pretty sure all we’d get is simply silence from the Right Wing Echo Chamber for about 24 hours until they got their talking points. There will never, ever, ever be a point when MAGA does the Pence Pivot until it’s politically expedient using white knuckled political calculations.

Things would have to continue to get worse for Trump if the “obstruction is collusion / conspiracy” move for impeachment / conviction were to continue to move forward at this point as the 2020 campaign really began to pick up steam.

Remember, at every single moment, Republican MAGA will object to doing anything because they’ll say, “let the people decide in 2020.” And once Trump is re-elected, they’ll crow that Trump’s been vindicated and why don’t you just shut up about it all and enjoy the humming economy. (If Trump loses in 2020 — which he won’t — I don’t know what they’d do. Probably start a civil war.)

So for there to be serious talk of Trump being not only impeached in the House but convicted in the Senate, Mueller would have to lay out in a material way that not only did Trump and the Russians give each other a handjob, but that they took it to the next level and at the direction of the Russians, Trump fired the head of the FBI!

I just don’t see that happening.

I could see on a political level it being seriously suspected, but if Mueller actually could prove anything, ANYTHING CLOSE to that, Trump’s goose it fucking cooked.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that’s literally the only way that it’s actually possible that we might see Trump in front of the Senate for trial late enough in the 2020 campaign that some seriously fucking surreal things would happen.

I mean, imagine if Mueller had Trump dead to rights for the Russians directing him to fire Comey and yet Trump’s base of about 37% (80% of the Republican electorate) simply didn’t care and re-nominated him. Imagine the CNN split screen of Trump giving his re-nomination speech as very annoyed Republican Senators contemplated his removal from office for effective treason.

And it gets worse. Much, much worse.

In this absolute worst case scenario, Trump is convicted in the Senate.

And he refuses to leave the Oval Office.

Just won’t leave. He spends all day, for weeks, hold up in the White House with the FBI struggling to figure out what to do as he tweets and tweets and tweets extremely passive-aggressive shit about how everyone wants him to kill himself or how he could kill himself because of those “radical Democrats.” (I said this was worst case scenario, folks.)

How this would all end, I don’t know.

I think it would be with a 9/11 level amount of national heartbreak when the FBI, sensing that the MAGA shitheads are going to do something crazy like try to form a human shield around the White House will have to go in and physically remove Trump from office.

It’s not going to be pretty and I hope, for Christ’s sake, it doesn’t happen.

I just want Trump politically destroyed. On a human level, I hope he lives long enough to have his mind uploaded into a database so he can live for fucking forever.

Anyway, reality is much more likely to be a lot more soft, take a lot longer and be a lot more inconclusive than my dire worst-case scenario.

The Biggest Constitutional Crisis In 50 Years — The Potential Catch-22 Of The Mueller Report

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

A Constitutional Crisis usually happens not because the system doesn’t work, but because human nature runs up against at cross purposes in a quirky way that one could never foresee.

As such, given my back-of-the-envelope knowledge of the Special Council guidelines, it seems there’s a quirk that might cause the entire American Constitutional system to freeze up until someone blinks.

The potential Constitutional Crisis goes something like this: Attorney General Bill Barr being a Trump loyalist takes one look at what is laid out in the Mueller Report and sends over a few pages summing up that while some seriously shady shit happened between the Russians and the Trump Campaign, because it did not reach the level of statute for “conspiracy,” no collusion happened (even though the two things are not the same.)

Now, the crisis kicks in when one of two things happen — Barr words what he sends to Congress in some a way that it’s obvious that he’d hiding some seriously big news against the Trump Administration or it leaks out that while Trump, Don Jr. or Jared weren’t actually indicted by Mueller, a propendency of evidence points to Trump himself needing to be indicted….

…but he can’t be indicted because of DOJ guidelines…

So we would have a massive clusterfuck on our hands as Trump hunkers down to not release this information (even though he’s been babbling about the need for “transparency” for months now ) because for the ostensible reason of not “casting aspersions against the assumed innocent” (him). But because in that case only Congress could weigh the political necessity of impeachment first in the House and later in the Senate (hopefully) if they don’t get that information, they can’t very well do the job of impeachment properly.

This tug of war could go on for some time, bouncing back and forth in the Courts long enough for Trump to sail to reelection and they we actually get into the business of getting rid of Trump at some point between 2021 and 2023. The absolute worse case scenario being, of course, that Trump does Nixon one better and simply ignores SCOTUS should they somehow have a shred of decency left and vote against him when it comes to releasing as much of The Mueller Report as possible. (Given that this would likely happen in the middle of a Trump’s re-election campaign…I think he probably would ignore SCOTUS until after he’s been re-elected.)

And, yet, if you’re a Trump supporter — or one of his dipship lackies — I wouldn’t whip out your cock and start stroking it for joy quite yet. Remember, the reason why The Mueller Report is actually so important is because it will kind of mark a significant moment in the Trump Era because the now Democratically controlled House will have to weigh the political moment to see if it’s worth finally beginning the process of impeachment.

This is going to happen no matter what we learn — or don’t learn — about Trump via The Mueller Report, even if all the most damning aspects of it never see the light of day. Once the House realises they can’t use The Mueller Report as political cover, they’re going to keep investigating Trump anyway and while it might take some time, Trump’s going to have to account for his political sins at some point in the future by, say, 2023.

Or put it another way — Trump’s second term is going to fucking suck.

It’s a historical truth that typically presidential second terms are much, much worst than the first and Trump’s is unlikely to be any different. In fact, in a way, Trump’s second term, in itself, is an existential threat to Trump’s political future.

What I mean is, I give up on getting rid of Trump between 2019 and early 2021. We’re stuck with him, no matter what.

But once his second term starts, the clock resets. We have a solid three years before the talk of “letting the people decide Trump’s legacy” begins in about 2023. As such, if the House stays Democratic, which it should, Trump’s totally fucked.

He. Is. Fucked.

If he’s not driven out of office, he’ll be impeached and come extremely close to being convicted in the Senate. In fact, he might actually even be convicted in the Senate. Yes, if you’re MAGA, you’ll have had a solid six or so years of destroying America, inciting needless violence and racial discord. You’ll have had the opportunity to ram young, conservative hacks into the Judiciary. You will have gotten your tax cuts. You will have had the opportunity to destroy the environment and either destroy or dramatically change the nature of the “administrative state.”

But let one thing be clear — the political depth charge that will be Trump’s final demise at some point between 2021 and 2023 is likely to be so dramatic, so surreal and so damaging to the long-term MAGA agenda, that you fucktards might at least pause between counting your tax cuts long enough to reflect on how maybe, just maybe Trump might have been something we could have avoided if we’d be a little less craven.

So, people like me just have to hunker down for just over 2 years.

Once we lose the 2020 election and Trump runs around naked on the National Mall proclaiming his “vindication” and pardons every MAGA person in America of every crime they’ve ever thought about committing, just know that the clock, at last, is finally ticking.

‘The Ides Of Mueller’ Would Be The Setup To Something Historically Messy In Scope

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Again, I don’t know anything about anything.

But if you want to waste time time with me, let’s reflect on what would happen if Friday (March 15th) was The Ides Of Mueller and The Mueller Report somehow not only dropped by was obviously an existential threat to the Trump Administration.

The thing that I’ve long thought is that if we got Trump by August 2019, we could put this all behind us and move on. But what I didn’t fact in was the the moment the polls closed for the 2018 Congressional mid-terms, the 2020 presidential campaign began.

As such, it is taking the American ship of state much longer to right its course. Furthermore, it’s possible that criminality associated with the Trump Administration is so massive that it won’t be sorted out until 2021. Thus, the drumbeat of impeachment will be just a lot of white noise in 2020 and people are really going to be more interested in the economy and paying off their mortgage.

And, yet, if The Mueller Report is the rhetorical and political equivalent of Caesar walking into the Senate in 55BC, the distance between what is politically possible and necessary may snap back into place in a pretty fast, pretty dramatic fashion. I say this because right now for some pretty white knuckled political reasons, both parties feel they have a vested interest in slow walking any talk of impeachment. They feel this, in large part, because of, you guessed it, the 2020 presidential campaign.

But what happens if The Mueller Report turns March 15, 2019 into The Ides of Mueller and the whole political equation of the moment is thrown out the window? I struggle to think of it would play out. It seems as though the House Democratic Leadership sees immediate impeachment ahead of the 2020 campaign as a fool’s errand.

I’m enough of a student of history, however, to know that occasionally the dead hand of history has other ideas. This, of course, is the worst case scenario. There are plenty of scenarios where what I expect will happen, happens — there’s a slow boil that finally begins to bubble at some point in Trump’s second administration.

If the issue of impeachment should happen to be become a crisis sooner rather than later, the most likely scenario is Trump is impeached in the House, acquitted in the Senate and he runs around saying he’s been “exonerated” of every illegal thing he’s ever done in his entire life.

But let’s play pretend.

Not know anything means there’s a chance that what I — and we — don’t know is far worst than we could ever imagine, so bad, in fact, that at some point in the next few months the “bipartisan” part of Speaker Pelosi’s demands for impeachment are met and away we go.

This is where things get crazy. Trump could literally stir up civil unrest on a massive scale. He could start to pardon everyone he needs to pardon. He hold up in the Oval Office and should be actually be impeached refuse to leave. And he might not leave unless Federal agents physically remove him.

But that’s the absolute worst-case scenario.

The absolute worse. Reality is likely to fall in some sort of murky, muddled in-between that takes far longer than any of us would like. That’s why I see Trump either being succeed in 2024 by someone like Tom Cotton or maybe, just maybe leaving power in some way around August 2022. Maybe if Ivanka is allowed to become VEEP?

Who knows. The macro problems that led to Trump aren’t going anywhere are likely bound to only get worse.

The Trump Era, ‘Trumplandia,’ Is Likely To Be A Completely Value-Free Historical Experience

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

There’s a real chance that one of two things will happen — either the entire nation, in a sense, turns into Trumplandia after Trump finally leaves office in 2025, or the whole thing is completely value free.

What I mean by this is, either just like the Reagan Revolution fundamentally changed modern America’s political landscape, so too will the Trump dystopia, or when Trumplandia is over, all his defenders will slink back under the rocks from whence they came.

At this point, either eventuality is about 50/50.

I guess the only difference between the two is if we get a center-Right successor to Trump or a center-Left one. And, really, it doesn’t matter. Trump is totally destroying America on a fundamental level and all I ask is I eventually make enough money to leave the country and never come back.

If a weaponized ICE doesn’t put me in a camp before I can escape, that is.