We’ve always suspected Trump Org was essentially a criminal syndicate, but the recent whistleblower revelations make it clear that as my mom would say — you take yourself wherever you go. The sheer breath of the criminal activity that’s taking place in the Executive Branch right now is astonishing. And just think how bad it will get if we aren’t able to remove Trump from office.
What’s more, that House Trump is so detached from the regular methods of governance that they would release what they did the last few days is pretty telling — and astonishing. They are completely devoid of any sense of public service. The entire Executive Branch is full of craven criminals who don’t even realize how criminal they are.
Again, as I’ve said, there are some pretty big existential issues at stake. If we can’t remove Trump, there are no assurances that there will be a free and fair election in 2020. In other words, a fish rots from its head. We have to slice the boil of this systemic criminality by removing Trump as quickly as possible.
Really, in a sense, we have our fate in our owns hands. We need to do some triage. The conditions that caused Trump’s rise will remain. But we can address those issues when we are forced to get them again.
The reason why removing Trump immediately is so absolutely important — existential, even — is one very troubling fact; Trump called the president of Ukraine the day after he was given a political pardon by the “poor optics” of Bob Mueller’s testimony to Congress.
That act, in itself, requires we remove Trump from office within days, not months. In fact, if I was in charge of messaging for Congressional Democrats that’s the one point I would never shut up about. If you talked to a Democrat in Congress, you would here that mentioned at some point during the interview.
The reason why that particular point is so absolutely important is it’s a simple way to explain, in political terms, the gravity of what’s going on. If Trump was some sort of political genius, the last thing he would do it wait about 24 hours to actively commit the very crime that consumed the first two years of his presidency. It’s a very relatable insight into the dark recesses of who Trump is as a person. It’s this specific datapoint that elevates a partisan political issue into a human existential one.
Trump, the bonkers self-own artist
I mean, if you had a buddy who pull such a stunt, you would likely able him as toxic and lowly ease him out of your life. To have someone with such a mentality as the leader of the free world is absolutely, existentially unacceptable.
It proves that if you don’t remove Trump, then, well, there is pretty much no opportunity to have a free and fair election in 2020. Within 24 hours of being acquitted in the Senate, Trump is likely be even more brazen and emboldened. As such, it’s a lot like the Losers in IT and the silver bullets they hand-made. They believed they would work and then they missed.
In fact, another avenue of messaging for Democrats is to never shut up about the existential nature of what’s going on. Impeachment is a painfully slow process in the era of social media and as such messaging is absolutely, deathly critical. You have to keep reminding the populist hoards on Twitter what the stakes are. You throw everything you have at this particular aspect of the situation.
The reason is, House Trump wants this to be strictly political issue. If it’s a political issue, they win. No question. If it’s framed as a matter of politics, there’s no question Trump is acquitted so he can continue to running the Executive just like TrumpOrg — like a criminal enterprise.
Framing what’s happening as existential to the average American also keeps people entertained. If you manged to convince them this is The Stand of American history, then you keep interest and momentum. If it’s seen as a political matter, given how long it will take, then Mich McConnell won’t even actually hold the impeachment proceedings in the Senate.
Now, there’s one element to all of this that absolutely has to be at the forefront of your mind going forward. Trump is nothing more than malevolent version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner. What’s more, he’s not only the master of the self-own, he’s likely to grow more and more erratic as the pressure of the House impeachment inquiry moves forward. So, really, that’s a part of this that simply can’t be predicted.
It’s very possible that just as McConnell is about to dismiss the whole thing in a wave of his partisan hand, Trump will tweet out a dick pic. I’m not kidding it really is possible at this point. The man is not well and the entire journalist ecosystem is complicit in hiding it.
Anyway, I am very ambivalent about Trump’s fate right now. It’s just going to take too long. Trump will be able to control the narrative and that will be that. But, like I said, he’s not only got some sort of degenerative mental issues going on, he’s the master of the self-own.
While it’s reasonable to assume that Trump will life to fight another day, there are at least a few warning signs that might trouble the administration. What House Trump believes, apparently, is once they get all the information out that this scandal will go the way of Storm Daniels and all the others. People will process it, see it through the lens of partisan politics and that will be that.
To be honest, that’s a bet I would be willing to take. All they have to do is slow walk this and they win. Once they win, they can do exactly what they had planned to do in the first place — win dirty, but win — and we wake up in a Russian style “managed democracy.”
Really, the only reason why there’s a hint the strategy might not work is Trump himself. It’s difficult to “own the moment” when your arguments are so demonstrably completely disconnected to self-evident reality that people begin to notice.
It is at least possible that Republicans might find themselves beginning to do a modicum of self-reflection. This would be the first stage of The Pence Pivot. That Pence is beginning to be implicated in this scandal is not of immediate concern. Republicans got their smash and grab plutocrat tax cut and they got an enormous amount of young hack judges on the Federal bench. They would know that while Pence has no shame just like Trump, he is at least stable and a more traditional politician. As such, in the unlikely event that Trump goes so beyond the pale that they see their own political fortunes in jeopardy, they will simply do The Pence Pivot and move on. They’ll start talking about the need to cut entitlements because of the ballooning budget deficit. That they were directly responsible for that budget deficit is of no concern.
What people on Twitter too often are oblivious to is there’s a reason why Trump has such cult-like hold on the Republicans — he’s extremely popular among angry white men. Trump has so played to the base — pretty sees them as his only audience — that what he says can come off as pretty bonkers. But if you see him as always talking to the base, all the bizzare things he says and does make total sense.
Therefore, really, relative to House Trump, talking to a foreign power to get dirt on his opponent shouldn’t be a big deal for him politically. The dynamic of the Stormy Daniels scandal is identical, the only difference being the severity of the crime. Two things make this crime different. It’s existential and its simple to understand.
Add to this how fast the story is moving and the tried and true Stormy Daniels mindfucks don’t work. What’s even more interesting is Trump is obviously not taking this story seriously. I think he’s bought into the idea presented by political pundits that this will be a net win for him. When begins to believe it isn’t then things go to the next level.
Trump would then start a war. Or begin to directly tell the MAGA faithful to take active measures to defend him. That he hasn’t done this yet is curious. Either it’s a sign he’s really out of it mentally or he simply believes he can ride this out on the power of the Trump cult of personality. A cornered Trump will have no compunction about burning the country to the ground to save himself.
What happens next, I don’t know. Whatever happens, we’re in a new era, for better or worse.
The reasons why I think it’s even remotely possible that not just Trump but Pence might abruptly leave office are Trump is likely to lose his mind as the impeachment process proceeds and the sheer magnitude and brazen nature of what’s going on with House Trump.
While Trump going bonkers in the near future is pretty likely, the idea that political gravity might suddenly and abruptly snap into place is also something to at least mull. That not only Trump, but Barr and Rudy are implicated in this scandal is bad enough. But Pence in his craven desire to suck up to Trump is beginning to become to become implicated in this mess as well.
One thing that is curious is how often Barr keeps popping up in this self-own by Trump and how little political damage has resulted. No calls for resignation and barely even calls for him to recuse himself. So, for the time being, it appears Barr is pretty immune to the fate of Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell.
But there may come a point when some pretty basic problems with what’s going on within House Trump become so existential and conspicuous that not even the abject refusal of Republicans to admit that Trump has ever committed any crimes at all might not be enough. It could all blow up in a surreal, spectacular fashion that would be the political equivalent of slicing a very painful boil.
Before you get too excited, let me point out the obvious. The specific set of events that would cause both Trump and Pence to leave office fast enough to cause Pelosi to become president are pretty damn near impossible. I say this because the position of veep under Pence will be highly coveted and Republicans are likely to fill it with lightning speed. It could be Don Jr. or Ivanka or Nikki Haley. So whatever forced Pence out of power would have to be swift. I just don’t see that happen. Pence is far more likely to be Jerry Ford. 2.0 than simply a historical speedbump.
Just for fun, though, let’s imagine President Pelosi. Pelosi is seen as satan by much of the Republican Party. She’s hated so much that a lot of moderate Democrats see her as a liability. So, I would suspect she would be a caretaker president. She would simply right the ship of state while the 2020 election campaign was taking place.
We would likely have a repeat of 2016, only maybe a little less “colludy.” All of the problems that existed in 2016 would resurface. And, remember, Ford only BARELY lost in 1976. He would have won if he had been a bit more politically adept in selling the Nixon pardon and had Reagan not come so close to defeating him at the convention.
As such, it’s pretty possible that having a controversial Democratic (and female) president on election day 2020 would help Republicans and we’d be right back where we were. Our republic is barely functioning. Barely. And, to date, I have not seen any indication that we’re going to have the political will needed to face how astonishingly corrupt House Trump is.
So, for the time being, this is simply a liberal fever dream.
Before I begin, I have to note that a fish rots from its head. A lot very power, very intelligent and very well educated people are playing defense for an extremely reckless doofus. So, the thing to take into consideration is I’m trying to imagine how House Trump will respond to the upcoming impeachment battle. But there’s an existential weakness, no matter what — Trump himself. There may come a point when just like how I see a fence at the border and everyone else sees a wall, there may be a pretty big difference between what many of can actually see with our senses and what Republicans tell us we see.
Let The People Decide At some point we will get close enough to the 2020 election cycle that the Republican talking heads will say given that what Trump did isn’t really a big deal, what’s the point in going through the impeachment process in the first place. The critical flaw to this argument — and the one they don’t want us to think too much about because, well, lulz, they have no shame and lust after power for power’s sake — is that Trump demonstrably is so shifty and corrupt that there are no assurances that there will be a free and fair election in the first place. And that, in itself, is the more existential aspect of this clusterfuck. Our entire 200 or so years of republican rule rests on Trump doing something so catastrophically bad that he loses enough Senate Republicans that they vote to convict.
I say this because if Trump is so a craven doofus as to call the president of Ukraine 24 hours after being given a political pardon by the “bad optics” of Bob Mueller’s Congressional testimony, you damn well the moment he’s acquitted by the Senate he’s going to be emboldened AGAIN. If this wrapped ups around, say Feb. 2020, that gives him a pretty long time to use the levers of Federal power to fuck with the election. That’s his thing. He’s so obsessed with winning at any cost that he’s willing to pretty much destroy the entire country and it’s tradition of free and fair elections to do it. Nothing will be off the table. He will be completely above the law. Trump will grow so absolutely brazen that he can bribe Electors or dox them or whatever. He is going to win. There will be no stopping. What are Democrats going to do, impeach him AGAIN just a few days before the election? Or between when he loses the election and when he uses corrupt means to secure an Electoral College victory? Have you been paying attention? So it’s reasonable to assume that if Trump somehow magically lost the election that he would simply use post-Election Day corrupt means to win. And there simply would not be the political will to do anything about it. So, Republicans with no shame and a craven lust for power “win.” This is not a hysterical scenario. This is a scenario using the metrics that have been established in broad daylight about Trump’s personality and motives.
Abject Denial Of Reality There is a chance that, like I said, Trump will self-own again. There will come a point where is behavior is so surreal and erratic that it is literally impossible not to notice. But Republicans, knowing that Trump has the love of the base and people generally aren’t interested in politics (lulz) will simply not just be party over country, they’ll be party over reality. The way to combat this is, well, make their life hell. A Republican pressure point is cramming through young hack MAGA Federal judges. If Republicans simply deny reality altogether — or refuse to talk about the dick pic Trump tweeted out — you shut down the Senate using parliamentary warfare. I don’t know the finer points of the Senate, but I’m under the impression that if you really wanted to be a dick, you could slow it so much that it essentially ground to a halt.
“Managed Democracy” The most chilling aspect of the problems Trump is experiencing right now is they are in large part the result of Trump finally figuring out how to use the levers of power. So, it makes sense that if Trump managed to stay cogent enough to realize he may be facing an existential crisis, will simply break the entire liberal democracy that we currently enjoy. He pardons a dozen powerful people. He appoints a Special Prosecutor to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. He leans into how the Judiciary is now but an extension of the GOP. He will figure that most people really won’t care (lulz) about some pretty basic rights as long as they economy is doing well. The only response I can think of this is, on an ideological level, radicalism. Radical Resistance would manifest its in the use of enlisting “civilians” into the fight against fascism. One of the few times House Trump has backed down — the whole kids n cages situation — the bolts popped off civil society for a few days as pretty much everyone on TV looking into the camera and said the policy was horrific. In this case, it wouldn’t be a day, it would be weeks. There would come a point, maybe, when a few Republicans might realize they had gotten all the massive plutocrat tax cut they wanted and Pence would give them the young hack MAGA judges on the Federal bench too. They might not abandoned Trump, but they might lesson his political power.
Again, let me stress something to all the powerful Republicans who still believe Trump is going to establish The Thousand Year Trump — Trump is not just an evil version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner, he’s also a criminally incompetent self-own artist. If you thought today was bad, there’s a non-zero chance you’re going to be on TV defending a presidential junk pic. Or the president tweeting in the N-word to Obama. Or the president “joking” on Twitter that MAGA should kill the Whistleblower. I know Republicans have no shame and are craven in their lust for power for power’s sake. But maybe I’d like to end this on an up note and speculate maybe, just maybe a Republican with power might at least do The Pence Pivot. They won’t, of course. We’re fucked.
I would just like to note that there is a minor amount of chatter on Twitter about Russian forces moving around near the Ukrainian border. It isn’t too much of a stretch to think that Putin might, just might, see his Trump investment about to go belly up.
As such, he might strike Ukraine while he has the chance. I doubt it would be a general war because Russia has the economy of something like Spain. But Putin has bragged that he could take Kiev in two weeks.
I have not been this rattled since election night 2016. We’re not in a crisis because the system isn’t working. We don’t live a liberal democracy anymore because one of the two major parties in our body politic doesn’t believe in it anymore. They have no shame. Power is for power’s sake. They only care about “democracy” when they’re out of power.
But, let me make some observations.
One of the big flaws in my opinion of Democrats is they’re oblivious to the asymmetrical radicalization that’s taken place. To date, the Democrats have picked up the slack. They represent a broader type of people because the Republicans have grown so radicalized that they are able to function quite well feeding off the votes of angry older men without a college education. So, it’s at times like this that you have to think more about triage than any form of “victory” if you’re dealing with something Trump has done.
At the absolute best, you’re going to get The Pence Pivot. That is the absolute best case scenario. And that is likely only to happen not because of anything you may actually be able to prove, but because Trump finally snaps. Trump would have to do something so surreal, so absolutely demonstrably impossible to defend that Republicans simply start talking about how great Pence is. And they still won’t vote to convict Trump in the Senate. So Trump will still be in power. He will still be setting policy and he will still be sending Federal judges to to the Senate to be confirmed. The only difference is, Republicans won’t shut up about how great a president Pence will make in 2025. Even then, Trump is likely to fire Pence, and they’ll have to rationalize that away. And they will.
With that in mind, what can you actually expect to get? The first thing you have to accept is they want to own the moment. They want to own the moment so bad that they will lie, they will distort and they will deflect. All I can say is pick whatever point you want to made and stick to it. At some point the MAGA person will either stop talking to you or attack you personally. To lose the moment is to show weakness.
One thing interesting is it’s possible the reason why The White House was so chill with the transcript is they figured that people — specifically the base — would shrug and say, “That’s just Trump being Trump. We knew that about him when we voted for him, fuck you.” This is the reason for the dramatic difference in takes on this issue. Normal people are astonished that a sitting president would act this way, while MAGA either lulzs it or they start talk about how Trump did not do what we all think he did and by the way fuck you.
In this environment, what can we, in fact, hope for? Well, the only thing I got is Trump himself. If Trump is such a wreckless numbskull that he would call up a foreign power and behave the way he did a day after the “poor optics” of the Mueller testimony, it’s reasonable to believe Trump is going to continue to be his own worst enemy. If he really wanted to get kind of dark, you would suggest that Trump is likely going to finally lose his mind and take us places as a nation that we never imagined. And, like I said, even then Trump will never be convicted in the Senate. Because Republicans have no shame and only care about power for power’s sake, it’s reasonably possible that Trump could be in a catatonic state and still be president. Everyone would know this. About 60% of the electorate would be flabbergasted and an organized, passionate 40% would think we should lay off in Trump’s time of need.
The most astonishing aspect to all of this is House Trump is consolidating power in a spectacular and brazen manner. That the only way we extricate ourselves from this is Trump is criminally incompetent and on the cusp of maybe losing his mind is maybe the most devastating aspect to all of this.
Just as Trump’s wall is being built as a fence, it’s becoming pretty clear that he’s not the political genius access journalists are making him out to be. It pains me to say this, but we’ve elected Being There’s Chauncey Gardner president.
Here’s what I think happened. In Obama’s second term, the Republican Party’s base stopped believing in liberal democracy. The conditions were there for someone like Trump to rise. And, remember, all the front runners for the nomination before Trump secured the nomination were, in relative terms, extremely conservative. So, given how poorly Hillary Clinton acted as candidate, if Trump had decided to play president on Sharknado, we would now have a President Cruz or President Rubio. They would likely — especially with Fed court nominations — be appointing the same Federalist Society hack judges that Trump is. But, in a way, they would be far better in getting what they wanted because, well, they aren’t complete idiots like Trump.
Chauncey Gardner
So, really, because Trump was a conservative celebrity Twitter troll that the base knew from TV, Trump did not have to do any work. As others have noted, Trump was simply playing the role written for him on The Apprentice. Trump is demonstrably a barely functioning human being, much less an adult. He’s a grifter and a con artist. He’s far better at rhetoric than he is any form of political theory.
The reason why we’re told he’s a political genius is a lot of very intelligent, very well educated people are projecting on to Trump things that don’t exist because they have no other explanation for what’s going on. Making him a genius helps them feel good about the metrics that they, themselves are successfully measured by. They know they’re smart and well educated and would think the same way given the results Trump gets. But what they can’t admit — because it would threaten their self-identity — is Trump is just a malignant version of Chauncey Gardner. Trump became president not because he is smart or clever or worked hard like they did. He’s president because of macro social, political and economic problems in the United States that he has no control over.
So, if the people who are covering Trump have a vested interest in making him seem far more adept than he is, then he becomes invincible. Access journalists write in hushed tones that Trump’s latest clusterfuck is actually a subtle play for single women liberal voters just outside Phillie. They say that because how else do you explain such bizarre behavior? To say that Trump is pretty much a lucky moron is to suggest that you can be not only stupid and criminally incompetent, but not go to a good school and have more power than people who did to it “the right way.”
With that in mind, some things come to mind. One is, if you’re not only a political grifter but have poor impulse control, you’re likely to get in trouble. That Trump would actively collude again the day after being given a political pardon by the “poor optics” of Bob Mueller’s testimony to Congress is a sign that maybe you shouldn’t be president anymore. The surreal irony of all of this is Trump is getting into more trouble now because he is beginning to get the hang of how to abuse the levers of power. Again, if he was a political genius that access journalists want us to believe, this is not what he would do.
And so now, we’re in the situation we’re in. Trump will grow in power because he’s able to use his power more effectively. Trump’s likely to wiggle his way out of this TrumpUkraine scandal and, well, I guess if we’re such idiots to let him do it we deserve what we get.
I don’t often get this angry over Trump, but the idea that Trump’s going to use the Mueller playbook with the complaint against him is making me pop a gasket.
The House Trump media game plan:
The transcript of Trump’s call is a dud. The network talking heads say the “optics” of the transcript are bad for Democrats. Meanwhile, a heavily redacted complaint is also released. This, too, is seen by Chris Cillizza and his ilk that Nancy Pelosi made a strategic mistake. All the energy for impeachment fizzles. By Friday evening, Trump, realizing he’s escaped yet AGAIN calls up Putin and directly asks him to hack into our election. He’s learned how to cover his tracks better and that, as they say, is that.
I have every reason to believe this is going to work. Why else would they suddenly change strategies so abruptly? Impeachment is a game of retail politics on a massive scale. Once the talking heads of cable news believe the “poor optics” of the House Trump’s limited hangout is gaining traction, then we have Mueller’s testimony to Congress all over again.
All I can assume is House Trump is nervous about how quickly things are moving and they believe if they managed the release of information properly it’ll all go away. That Trump himself is a brazen, lawless moron is none of their concern. Their goal is to get him pardoned AGAIN in the court of public opinion. If they can stumble into about May 2020, Trump is free to do whatever the fuck he wants. He is completely immune politically do any criminal act. He will be totally above the law.
After that, Trump has sex with Ivanka on FOX News while eating a live baby. Senate Republicans will say we should wait until November for the “people to decide” what should happen to Trump.
All I can say is, if we want to keep America a liberal democracy, we’re going to have to act like it. We’re going to have to pressure the Nancy Pelosi even MORE. We’re going to have to demand that Trump follows the law as written and sends the entire, unredacted complaint to Congress. The complaint isn’t supposed to be released to the public, it’s supposed to be send to Congress.
Trump’s admitted an impeachable offense on TV! At a minimum, the House should begin using its “inherent contempt” powers immediately. Like, Wednesday afternoon. You start jailing and fining people in the Trump Administration until someone, somewhere begins to think maybe America is a rule of laws and that the Constitution means something to someone.
Trump thinks HE is at political war, so maybe we should too. Throw a Molotov Cocktail into the workings of Congress. Nothing happens, period, until the Trump Administration stops acting like it’s above the law. I would also suggest you enlist Jon Stewart to help the cause, but that’s just me.
This is serious.
But I guess it’s Chris Cillizza world, we just live in it.
If he was still on Twitter, I would write this to John Podhoretz as a tweet. But he’s not. So, I hope he sees this ego surfing his name soon. Podhoretz was on Chuck Todd’s show today and he insinuated that Rep. Adam Schiff may have done something “illegal” if he had already seen the compalint against Trump.
Let’s unbox this idea. First, it’s obvious the man just wanted to get the words “Schiff” and “illegal” in proximity to each other in a sentence on TV. Second, as the law is written, Schiff is among those individuals who are supposed to see the compalint in the first place. How he could possible do something illegal given the letter of the law is curious. What’s more what deep state machinations would lead him to be able to see the report and yet not show the rest of his committee who also are supposed to be able to see it.
So, with all do respect, Mr. Podhoretz, at best your a right wing partisan hack and at worst you’re just full of shit.
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