by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
In the end, what will decide Trump’s fate will be, as always, Trump. If he can just behave for a few more weeks, he’s going to get away scot free with everything he’s done. Everything. There simply will be no political will do do anything about any of his crimes.
What’s more, he will be in a position to not only be a king maker in Republican Politics for the rest of his life, but come roaring back in 2024. There may even be talk of naming him Speaker of the House in 2023 when Republicans take over again.
But.
Trump is not the political genius that everyone –including me — has thought he was over the years. His actual political ability is little more than a grunt. While he is an avatar for the rot and rage in the American political system, that’s all he is. He doesn’t have any innate political leadership ability. So he pretty much just thrashes around, destroying things and being corrupt without any overall strategy.
As I’ve said before, we live in an autocracy without the autocrat. The only thing stopping the United States from being a Russian-style autocracy at this point is Donald Trump. That’s it. If there was virtually anyone else in his position right now, we would be an autocracy.
The most surreal point of all of this is Trump isn’t going to behave. He probably is going to do some dumb self-own move that redefines his era to such an extent that he destroys himself politically. Whatever extra-political or extra-legal thing he attempts, may finally, at last, give us the political will to do something about the Trump cancer.
But it will come at a cost.
He’s likely to extract a pound of political flesh from us along the way. It could be a war, or him going transactional on Twitter. Nothing is off the table. So, it’s not going to be some sort of liberal fever dream where Rachel Maddow becomes president.
Nope, it’s going to suck.
