Category: Tsar-A-Largo

Of Trump Potentially Using The ‘Presidential Text Alert System’ Instead of Twitter


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m pretty good, in a vague way, of calling what Trump is going to do in the Final Days. I pretty much called the significance of January 6th, though I didn’t call anything specific — just that it would be important.

But anyway.

One interesting thing is Trump still hasn’t snapped like I thought he would. I thought he would get into a logic trap and go REALLY CRAZY. But he’s still the usual olde crazy. One sign we would get that he was totally off the reservation would be if he started to do a quick succession of things that did not really help him as the House rushes to impeach him — again.

One of those things would be to use the Presidential Text Alert System — usually reserved for, like, announcing nuclear war — as something akin to a replacement for Twitter now that he’s lost that account.

There’s a lot to take into account on this front.

Remember, in real terms, Trump’s era is over, so he would have to do something that slowed time down significantly for there to be a even more of a mad rush to get rid of him. Trump has yet to do something REALLY FUCKING CRAZY like incite sedition using the Presidential Text Alert System to shoot out a tweet to everyone in America’s phone. In, fact, he seems pretty chill compared to what I expected he would be at this point.

Something would have to change, and change fast — like in the next 48 hours. Yes, he’s supposed to have a press conference at the Alamo, but, really, even if he went Howard Beale at such a conference, he only has less than two weeks in office.

The Final Days of Trumplandia.

Trump would have to go transactional — start a war, tell his followers to overthrow the government in a specific type way or, say, use the Presidential Text Alert System to do any number of really crazy transactional things.

But him just blabbering at a press conference wouldn’t be enough. He’s been doing that for some time now — four years — and it was only when he went transactional in front of a crazed hoard near the Capitol that it mattered to anyone.

So, really, while Trump is, in fact, a massive self-own artist, as of right this second, he’s going to escape justice, just like he always does. Only time will tell.

Trump, As Always, Has His Fate — And Ours — In His Own Hands


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So. Trump has less than a fortnight in office and if he simply plays golf — or stays catatonic — he’s safe. He will cruse into retirement and that will be that. But this is Trump we’re talking about, so it’s possible that at any moment Trump will really fucking flip out.

But I’m beginning to think maybe he’s not going to freak out. I think that now that he’s lost his Twitter account that he’ll just stew in juice quietly and that’s it.

And, yet, as Mitt Romney suggests, we may just have to “hold our breath” for the last few days of Trump’s time in office. There’s really no way to know one way or another at this point.

I dunno. It definitely seems as though Trump is going to escape justice — again — because he just isn’t going to do anything more to cause problems. It’s less than two weeks. He really is going to have to freak the fuck out before anyone in the Republican Party thinks seriously about getting Trump out of office before the 20th.

MAGA Trump Deadenders Are The Future Of The Republican Party


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Trump is probably going to be a modern day Watergate for the Republican Party. Its entire center of political gravity will shift so Trump is its be-all and end-all. I say this because that’s what Nixon became after Watergate.

Reagan was pretty much a Nixon deadender and he almost won the nomination in 1976. So, it makes sense that the Republican Party will either split into a pro-Trump and a lukewarm Trump factions, or Trump will simply consume the whole thing now. It’s also possible that if the Trump faction doesn’t take over the Republican Party that it will bolt into its own party. The Patriot Party, maybe?

So, I would keep an eye on people like Jason Miller as to the future of the Republican Party. If Trump or Ivanka aren’t the nominee, it could be someone like him who gets a lot closer to the nomination than you might think.

Or, maybe Miller will run for Senator. Or Governor.

I guess what I’m trying to say is things are a lot more up in the air than you might think.

President Chauncy Gardner #ETTD


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I called it. I said Trump would likely go bonkers around the time Congress counted Electors and I was right. And, in a more vague way, I predicted that we were careening towards something of a “political 9/11.”

And so here we are.

The conundrum of where we are now is we have only a fortnight left in the Trump Era. That’s it. Two weeks. If we can just make it through the next two weeks, then we lurch — maybe are pushed — into something quite unexpected: a true autocracy without an autocrat.

Our democracy is obviously so fragile that if Trump really was “the guy from The Apprentice” then, well, we wouldn’t be talking about Biden coming into office. Trump would have done the hard work of stealing his second term, he’d have a thin veneer of legality and that would be that.

And, yet, for all my endless speculation that Trump would do this or that autocratic thing, it turns out he really is just a deranged version of Chauncy Gardner from Being There.

TRUMP LITERALLY IS CHAUNCY GARDNER FROM BEING THERE.

Our president.

What this means is, we were all so busy assuming he was an autocrat that we missed that while he may have autocratic impulses, Trump is such a ding-dong that he can’t — or won’t — do the hard work necessary to actually become an autocrat.

As such, all the conditions and tools for autocracy are just laying around in our politics and society, waiting to be picked up by Josh Hawley (or whomever.) So, we’re probably going to just drift into the Biden Era and be in neutral until Biden gets inevitably impeached.

But.

Trump is so fucking bonkers right now that he could self-own in such a spectatular fashion in the next two weeks that the political 9/11 that we had to day could actually be a series of pollical 9/11s that absolutely FORCE us to act to push Trump out of office for no other reason than we’ve come to think he’s a threat to himself — or us.

I have no idea what is going to happen.

But it’s going to be weird.

10 Days That May Shake The World


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, here we are, on the evening of January 6th, not knowing what’s going to happen. As I’ve said before, America is running on fumes politically and the two sides have hardened their positions enough that just the barest of additional stress on the system would likely make the whole thing collapse.

And by collapse, I mean significant political violence in the United States.

But, for the moment, let’s imagine we somehow defeat the January 6th coup. This is when things REALLY get bumpy. The moment Biden’s victory is certified, Trump may really fucking snap.

It is between, say, Jan 10 (final certification if Republicans push the issue) and January 20th that Trump’s already fragile mental state could grow so perilous that he explodes. He becomes a very conspicuous caged rat who would rather destroy the nation than risk leaving office for various reasons.

He would “destroy” things in a number of ways. He could foment some sort of secessionist crisis. He could start really firing people en mass. He could frogwalk Joe Biden. He could start a war or wars. And, worst of all, he could finally implode into extreme passive-aggressiveness.

If that happens, then Trump could very well scare the ever-living shit out of the entire world as he begins to ramble on Twitter about how “liberals want me to kill myself” or “no one appreciates the power I have when it comes to nuclear weapons.”

Now, even then, I have my doubts as to would anything happen. At least at first. If Trump really went that bonkers, the first thing that would happen would be Republicans would say he was “joking” or that somehow there was some misunderstanding of what he said.

It’s when it became absolutely, 100% clear that that was not the case….then THAT would be when some extremely surreal events would happen very, very quickly.

But the one constant about Trump is you just never can tell. He could more implode than explode mentally and we just kind of drift into the Biden Era, no big deal.

Trump Goes Transactional (Almost)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Someone on Twitter pinged me, suggesting Trump had, at last, gone “transactional” via his Twitter account. But I don’t think he has, yet. For me, “Trump going transactional” would mean he told his followers to do something specific. Especially if that “something specific” was violence that was not him “just joking.”

It would have to be something completely, totally indefensible. Something that would make conservatives-who-aren’t-MAGA sit up and take notice. An “ask” of his followers in the real world for them to, well, hurt people, stage a coup, blow shit up, crash the Congressional certification, you name it.

Any different series of these things might be done in conjunction. Or not. Trump is so desperate at this point and so devoid of any sense that his actions have consequences that it’s possible he could begin to thrash about in the next 24 or so hours in a way that we’ll look back as the defining moment of his era.

What’s more, it might not even be just the next 24 hours. It could be that January 6th is just the beginning of the Fortnight That Shook The World whereby all Trump does is use a “spaghetti gambit” to attempt to stay in power.

He does all kinds of bonkers things, hoping one of them will work. He could do everything from go transactional on Twitter, to start a war to declare martial law, to frogwalk Joe Biden.

We will know soon enough, I guess.

We’re officially in the danger zone now. All the conditions are there for significant violence in DC, enough, in fact, to be Trump’s “Reichstag Fire.”

Josh Hawley — America’s Would-Be ‘Young Putin’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I thought it was going to be Tom Cotton who murdered American democracy, but, surprise, it’s Josh Hawley who probably is going to get the honor. Traditional American liberal democracy is on life support and it’s probably going to be Hawley who ultimately pulls the plug.

The scenario I could see happening is Ivanka Trump becomes a senator from Florida, she dukes it out with Hawley in the 2024 primary and he ultimately becomes her Veep. They get elected — one way or another — and together they play the part of a fascist velvet fist.

Ivanka would just be the figure head, while Hawley would be the real power behind the throne. This would be similar to the situation in Russia where Putin kept bouncing back and forth between president and premier, never really leaving office. Under this scenario, Hawley would have the potential of being in office 16 years and maybe even more once he really gets into consolidating power and rams through his own Constitutional Convention.

The thing we have to come to grips with is autocracy is actually fairly popular in the United States. Trump was elected because people thought he was going to be an autocrat. In fact, the famous quip about Trump is his governing style is “malevolence only tempered by incompetence.” So, Hawley would just be regular old malevolence, which is what a sizable passionate and organized portion of the electorate wants because they’re afraid of the browning of America and women with sexual agency.

In my mind, this is all but a done deal, but for one thing — Trump.

Trump is such a wild card because of his mental instability and growing freak out about leaving office, that as I keep saying, it’s possible that he might self-own in such a spectacular fashion in the last few days of his time in office that it’s something of a “political 9/11” that so scars people that we actually punt our decline into autocracy for a generation.

But it’s not going to be a liberal fever dream. We’ll all going to get the shit scared out of us when it happens — we may not make it out alive.

The Guns Of January: The Current State Of Political Affairs In The United States Is Untenable


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something is going to happen. The United States is running on political fumes right now and if history is any guide, someone, somewhere is going to put unexpected stress on the system. It’s almost inevitable at this point.

Or, put another way, while we could very well punt this particular macro crisis in the United States down the road four years, the lines have hardened to such an extent that something that otherwise would not really be a big deal, might spark a sequence of events with no discernable endgame.

I would compare it to Europe mid-1914 right before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Europe was a power keg that just needed a spark to explode — and that spark came. The United States is the same way. But, let me be clear to all the MAGA-Patriot Party shithead cocksuckers who think there’s going to be some sort of conservative “revolution” if the Dear Leader doesn’t stay in power for the rest of his life.

There won’t be a conservative revolution.

This.
Is
Not
Going
To
Happen

There’s not going to be a revolution. You may want to fuck your gun, but you’re not going to have a “revolution.” I don’t know why so many fucking idiots in Texas come to this site looking for my dystopian porn about the end of the United States. Fuck you, you idiots.

I will admit that Trump may TRY to stoke civil undress in a big way in the latter days of his administration in a last-ditch effort to stay in power, but, no, there’s not going to be any sort of conservative “revolution” by so-called “patriots” who want lower taxes and “freedom” from fear of being “canceled” when they’re a dick to women or minorities and get caught.

It’s all very frustrating.

When I talk about a “Glorious Revolution” in the United States, I’m NOT TALKING ABOUT A TURNER DIARIES RACE-WAR REVOLUTION YOU FUCKING IDIOTS. I’m talking about Trump, in a spasm of extra-political and extra-legal acts, being overthrown because, well, everyone who isn’t MAGA finally gets tired of his shit an hits the streets, maybe even up to the point of there being a General Strike.

There may be some serious counter-revolution style civil unrest in the United States, but I see that happening more in four years than now. The far Right, while full of abstract hate and rage against “libtards,” simply isn’t well organized yet. They need to marinate in their hate a few more years before they reach SA / SS levels of hate.

If Trump just freaks out at some point between now and January 20th and declares martial law unliterally or starts a war in an effort to “wag the dog” so he can pull a Constitutional fast one on us, he’s not going to be successful. He is going to seriously scare the shit out of us, but he’s not going to be successful. He just isn’t well organized mentally to pull it off.

So, yes, all the elements are there for significant political violence in the United States any moment now. But it will happen in the context of the Mad King being fucking bonkers, not some sort of Right wing revolution where we all sing kumbha over the broiling bodies of liberals. So, fuck you, you fucking cocksucker MAGA shitheads.

Situations Where Republicans May Finally Turn On Trump


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I continue to struggle with the narrative for the Trump endgame. We just aren’t quite there yet. Come January 6th, we may be a lot closer to understanding that endgame. So, these scenarios are some ideas for the post-January 6th world after any Electoral College certification shenanigan are over.

  1. Trump Becomes Transactional On Twitter
    In this case, Trump starts to tell his supporters to do specific things. It could be attacking specific people or places. It could be to ask their Red State legislatures to secede from the Union. Stuff like that
  2. Trump Declares Martial Law
    While this one is really possible, I fear it would be a stretch to say it would be enough to cause Republicans to abandon Trump. They probably would support it, under the right circumstances. But the consequences of Trump doing this as a part of an overall “hard coup” might significantly weaken the Republican Party long-term.
  3. Trump Starts a War
    This is probably a lot more likely than you might think. The most oblivious place to start a war would be Iran, but I still think the DPRK might surprise us all and test an H-Bomb or an ICBM and give Trump the excuse to start a quickie war with them. If Trump bungled a war with the DPRK and got a major American city vaporized, that might cause some political recalculation on the part of some Republicans.
  4. Trump Becomes Extremely Passive-Aggressive on Twitter
    In this scenario, Trump begins to tweet some pretty surreal things about how liberals want him dead or some such. Something that was so bonkers that we all began to worry he might hurt himself — and take all of us with him.
  5. Trump Frogwalks Members of “The Deep State.”
    This happens when he really goes bonkers and demands that Biden, Obama, the staff of Crooked Media, you name it, be arrested. If someone mysteriously ends up dead while in custody, well, that might also rattle a few Republicans support for Trump.
  6. Trump Threatens The End of The World
    In this darkest scenario, Trump out of the blue starts to rant about how powerful he is and questions in a very Thanos style, how is life even worth living anymore for anyone. We probably would, at last, get rid of Trump, but we also might all die.

A Bad Guy Victory


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The bad guys of American history are going to win. Anti-Trump political forces simply aren’t strong enough. When the time comes, we’re going to become an autocratic managed democracy no different than Russian.

But.

For that to happen, some prep work would have to be done. We would have to slip into autocracy in the context of there being some sort of thin veneer of legality to it all so instead of getting upset, the average person just shrugs. As long as freedom of speech isn’t really harmed — outside of maybe changing libel laws — then people will be content.

That’s why Trump is such a wildcard. Under any normal circumstance, he would be the guy to put the bullet in the head of American democracy. But while he may have autocratic impulses, he just doesn’t have to mental acuity necessary to pull it off. He wants to be an autocrat without actually doing any of the hard work necessary to…be an autocrat.

Add to this Trump being not only bonkers but a self-own artist and, well, you have the makings of an extremely unstable situation. Or, put another way, while the macro historical trends definitely indicate the Bad Guys are going to win, there’s a chance that Trump, specifically, is going to so bungle that transition from liberal democracy to autocratic managed democracy that he manages to punt that final transition for a generation.

The reason is — American self-perception. We still have a very strong sense of being in a “free country” and if Trump did something bonkers in a spasm of panic that went against that, then there could be severe consequences, at last, for the people who want to turn the United States into a white Christian ethno state.

But all of this would come at a cost.

It’s very likely Trump would do something really, really insane that would scare the shit out of us all at the time — we just wouldn’t know, exactly, what was going to happen or if any of us were going to make it out alive.

As such, we have a situation where Trump really wants to stay in power for various reasons and yet he’s too incompetent to actually pull it off. He may try, but he’s going to be so brazen and bonkers about it that he will fail. There is, of course, always the chance that should we manage to get past January 6th without a successful coup, that Trump will go transactional on Twitter.

He will begin to demand Red States leave the Union and we may very well have that civil war that so many right wing nutjob cocksuckers seem to crave.

Anyway. What do I know. I’m always wrong.