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.
Whoa Buddy. As I keep saying, this weekend is make or break. If Trump can make it through this weekend without the Ukraine story getting any unusual traction, then he’s in the clear for his second term. And, honestly, I don’t see him having any reason to be concerned. This scandal not only is playing out like all his other scandals, the attention the press is giving to the Joe Biden – Hunter Biden big lie is actually a net gain for him.
So, as of right now, Trump is probably feeling pretty content. He was all smiles at last night’s state dinner. Rudy went on CNN this week, did his usual schick of putting the facts out there in a way that makes people shrug when it’s all confirmed.
So far, so good.
But just for fun, let’s imagine something about this scandal is different. Let’s suppose it shifts gears and it become existential. Let me be clear — this is never going to happen. Trump is now America’s Caligula. So this is more a matter of venting on my part that any belief that any of this might happen.
The first sign we might get that Trump is taking this seriously is he will shift gears on Iran pretty dramatically. He will pull out the stops to start a war with Iran. He has to time it just right so people are humming Lee Greenwood when they go to the polls in 2020. Another tacit he might use is begin an aggressive investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden. He’s established that he believes they did something. And such an investigation in itself is news and The New York Times will cover it extensively, even if the whole thing is politically motivated bullshit. Doesn’t matter. It’s all about the big lie and branding.
That’s just Trump clearing his throat. His more diabolical move would be to dox the whistleblower and “joke” that someone should do something about it. Shades of, “Won’t anyone rid me of this meddlesome priest.”
So the guy gets murdered by an angry mob of MAGA people. Sure, Twitter is upset for a day, but Nancy Pelosi won’t impeach Trump because it makes the moderate members of her caucus nervous. At this point, she is the only obstacle to impeachment.
But should impeachment take on a life of its own, Trump’s already deranged behavior will take a turn for the worst in a very dark way. Remember, he does often rage tweet. So, if he’s in actual risk of being impeached — even if the Senate will never convict him — he’s likely to say and do some pretty astonishing things.
And should he be convicted, he will never leave the Oval Office. It will be a 9/11-sized event. But that will never, never, never, NEVER happen.
This is what’s going to happen unless something I can’t predict happens.
Nancy Pelosi, concerned about the moderate members of her caucus, refuses to budge on impeaching Trump.
Trump sees this as the final confirmation that he can do whatever he wants. He kicks off his re-election campaign on Twitter by talking about Joe and Hunter Biden non-stop. The New York Times begins to write story after story about this situation, leaving the lingering suspicion that Biden or his son — or both — are about to be indicted.
Trump’s reckless and illegal extortion of Ukraine will fade. But the Joe Biden “scandal” will only grow. Trump will direct Bill Barr to look into the situation at some point in early 2020. Probably just about the time Biden successfully secures the nomination. Or no later than when he makes his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention.
In the lead up to November’s election, there are a series of leaks from the Justice Department about the investigation into Joe Biden. The October surprise is Hunter Biden is indicted. (If Trump’s feeling really bold, he’ll indict Biden himself.)
We have a replay of 2016, with Biden winning the popular vote and Trump winning the Electoral College. If Trump doesn’t win the Electoral College, he doxxes them all on Twitter or a plutocrat bribes them. They throw the election to Trump. Given that nothing is impeachable, we spend a few months fighting over how American democracy is dead. Maybe there are riots in a few Blue States.
But nothing’s impeachable, so he weaponizes the existing ICE camp infrastructure. He “disappears” thousands of people. Trump pardons a few dozen people. The battle between Don Jr. and Ivanka to succeed Trump reaches a boiling point.
House Trump now begins The Thousand Year Trump. Taxes are cut to such an extent that we have to gut social programs to prevent bankruptcy. Gradually because of all the young, hack MAGA judges on the Federal bench freedom of assembly and speech are gradually worn away.
After the mass murder at Sandy Hook there was a lot of outrage. For a day or so, it appeared as though there might be some sort of common sense gun control enacted in the United States. As we know, of course, the NRA stepped in and it was over.
That’s the only comparison I can make to the most recent scandal involving Trump and Ukraine. Really, if you can’t impeach Trump over this, then impeachment is a dead letter. It’s over. Not only will we never impeach Trump, he’s made it clear that he will grow ever more embolden if he doesn’t sense there are any consequences.
That’s the real existential threat of all of this. That Trump would have initiated a call with the president of Ukraine took exort him into investigating Joe Biden the day after Bob Mueller testified to Congress is all the proof you need that need that Trump is not only a lawless tyrant but that he’s going to get worse.
I honestly don’t know what to tell you. The forces aligned that keep impeachment from happening don’t appear to be weakening. Nancy Pelosi continues to play six dimensional chess in a strange obsession with protecting the more modern members of her caucus. That the entire country itself faces an existential threat does not appear to concern her.
So, really, we will know in a few days if this scandal is Trump’s Sandy Hook or if it’s something different for once. He definitely seems to be using the Stormy Daniels playbook. He has no reason to think this is any different than the last six mind blowing scandals he’s been involved in.
While I generally think Trump’s won and will consolidate his power in the coming days, I would note that if he does feel this is an existential threat that he will provoke a crisis in the United States not seen since 9/11. It will be an American Brexit.
Everyday we don’t impeach Trump is a day he gains power.
I’m not suggesting I have any type of panacea when to Trump’s skullduggery, but I do have some observations about how he’s going to handle the Ukraine whistleblower situation.
Ok, first off, this weekend is critical. If nothing new happens between now and, say, Sunday afternoon, then Trump’s in the clear as best I can tell. He then does the following things:
Wrap the entire complain against him in Executive Privilege. At the same time he sends Rudy out every once in a while to babble manically about what’s going on. Rudy will occasionally “slip up” and tell the truth. Everyone laughs at this, but the facts of what happen will be out there. We spend months and months in the courts trying to get the complaint. In the meantime, Trump attacks the credibility of the whistleblower on Twitter day after day.
By the time the case gets to the Supreme Court, even if the complaint is released and we know what happend, the average person will have moved on. They won’t quite know what happened. And, besides, the case has lost its sexiness. We all know what happened, so what.
And given that the 2020 campaign will be in full swing, people will just assume Trump will “self-impeach.” When he doesn’t we all realize maybe we should have done something about Trump before. But by that point it will be too late.
We will have moved on to something else. Trump “jokes” about never leaving office. And then he never does. Lulz!
And, let me note, this is if things go the traditional route. If this particular case gets any existential momentum, Trump’s probably going to get the whistleblower murdered through one of his “jokes.”
How do you combat that? It’s pretty tough. In fact, really, the conditions are there for Trump to use the whole thing to his advantage because everytime it comes up, he’ll rant about Joe Biden’s son. So, ultimately, from a branding point of view, most people will be more concerned about THAT and not what Trump did. Trump gets what he wants:
Biden, like Hillary Clinton in 2016, will have an air of corruption about him. Trump can start a war if need be to wag the dog. He can work actively with the Russians to hack the election. (I mean, he’s faced no consequences to date, what’s to stop him?) And, really, he always has the ability to attack individual Electors post-election if he loses in any way.
If I was a Democratic strategist, I would suggest Radical Resistance. If you want to save America, you’re going to have to, on an ideological level, radicalize. Trump plays dirty, you play dirty. Shut the government down until you get the complaint. Throw money and resources at impeachment.
But the clock is ticking. Speed is of an essence. If the impeachment hearings don’t start by the end of September, what’s the point. Once October rolls around, people are thinking about the holidays. You won’t really be able to start up again until just about the same time the first 2020 primaries start. And by that point the Stormy Daniels Playbook will have worked.
The shock of the initial story will have long faded. People won’t care. “Everyone does it, right?” they’ll say. “And, besides, Joe Biden colluded with the Ukrainians for the benefit of his son, right? Or something like that. I can’t remember. “
If we’re honest with ourselves Radical Resistance’s moment is long past. There’s just not the political will on the part of House Democrats to play dirty. They’re pretty much complicit in Trump’s tyranny. I wish I had more answers, but I don’t.
I don’t often get angry enough to yell at my Congressional representatives. But when it became obvious that the Inspector General wasn’t going to follow the letter of the law when it came to the whistleblower situation, I lost it. I popped a gasket. I called all the offices of my Congressional delegation.
I was so mad, in fact, that I also called the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That did not go very well. I tried to yell at an actual human being, but they just put me on hold after I started talking.
Anyway, I would like to note something. It definitely seems as though because Speaker Pelosi wants to make sure polls indicate the populace supports impeachment, she’s pretty much carrying water for Trump’s re-election campaign. As I understand it, the current thinking in the upper echelons of House Leadership is they can’t impeach Trump because if he loses, then MAGA will blame them for it. They also can’t impeach him because given that the Senate will never convict him, they don’t want to give Trump vindication and something to run on.
In a sense, this is simply the pussy ass bitch version of the Republicans’ political thinking about Trump. Republicans won’t do anything about Trump because they find tax cuts and young hack MAGA judges on the Federal bench so absolutely intoxicating that they are willing to ride the MAGA pony to the bottom.
Meanwhile, I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Democrats. When the final history of the United States is finally written — sooner rather than later, I’m afraid — the sheer callow, feckless nature of House Democrats during the Trump Era will be at least a chapter. They are so wrapped up in policy and throwing money at people in different ways that they are apparently completely oblivious to something very basic — Trump is a lawless tyrant.
They are so busy drinking lattes and smelling their own farts that they don’t realize this is a war. Under no scenario will Trump not do everything in his power to paint himself as a victim. Democrats are fighting the last war. The problem is, if they don’t get their act together, they may not have a next war to fight.
As of right now, impeachment is a dead letter. Not that it won’t come back the moment there’s a Republican House and a Democratic President. It will and with a vengeance. I don’t really think that will ever happen because, well, we have The Thousand Year Trump now. House Trump will rule the country for the next 20 years — if not more. Their power should theoretically wane about the time the youngest of the Baby Boomers die and the Browning of America kicks in. But even that is simply theory. More likely at some point Tiffany Trump will tweet “I am the state” and that will be that.
That Speaker Pelosi would put crass political considerations ahead of the fate of the nation is just as bad as the abject lack of backbone displayed by Republicans. And, honestly, I don’t see anything changing. The same playbook used by Trump and Rudy with Stormy Daniels and the Mueller Report will be used here and that’s it. It’s just another big scandal in the Trump Era that fades into oblivion until the next, even bigger scandal.
I would say one of the biggest surprises to learn on a practical level about seriously writing a novel is how outside events shape the narrative. This especially the case since I want this novel to be my “Apocalypse Now” of the Trump Era. Instead of explicating the entirety of the Vietnam War in a movie, I’m doing so about life under Trump in a novel.
Two other movies that are important to me are Network and Being There. Network because it is both timeless and very timely. You could release Network today and would still be a success. I like how it explains the modern world in an entertaining fashion. I am not in anyway proposing I’m that good a writer, but it is at the forefront of my mind as I write.
Being There is really important to me because it’s a snapshot of post-Watergate America in the late 70s. If I wanted to explain to a teen what 1979 was like, I would show them Being There. So, even though my novel is completely different than Being There, there is a spiritual connection.
Anyway, the point is, I started this novel thinking it would be a snapshot — in a general way — of life leading up to the release of The Mueller Report. Well, given how long it takes — at least me — to write a novel as well as the unknowns of post-production, it’s definitely looking like this is going to be both more ambitious and more general. Instead of just the first two years of the Trump Era, the novel is meant to encompass the entirety of it in a general sense.
If I am successful with my vision for this novel, you’ll be able to read it over a three day weekend in 20201 and it not even really register that it was generated by my abject rage against MAGA (and extremism in general.) It should be just an interesting novel that’s very accessible and zips by. Only if I were to point it out to you will you notice the allegorical nature of the work.
But that’s down the road. For the time being, I’m hard at work on the first draft. It just takes physical time to write between 165,000 and 185,000 words. For the time being I have the proper momentum to keep going. It definitely doesn’t hurt that the very thing I’m so angry about that I want to write a novel about it — the Trump Era — definitely doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Coming soon to a TV — and maybe Senate well — near you!
The Bullshit Defense Fuck you, you libtard. Doesn’t matter if he did it. You kill babies. MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!
The Biden Is A Criminal Defense Fuck you. Investigate Biden and Obama’s Netflix Deal! Lock her up! Benghazi!
The Deep State Defense George Soros paid Obama to pay the Deep State to listen into on Trump. It doesn’t matter what he did, the REAL crime is that the Deep State is trying to bring Our President, The Chosen One, down. And…by the way..fuck you.
The Disgruntled Partisan Defense Doesn’t matter what Trump did, this is obviously some disgruntled holdover from the Obama administration. Fuck you.
The Obama Did The Same Thing Defense This is one I could see Emmet Flood using. We get to watch Obama say, “I’ll have more flexibility after the election” on a hot mic for 11 hours. This is bullshit because what he wasn’t illegal and it was simply traditional diplomacy. But that doesn’t matter. Flood will simply want to give political cover to Republican Senators to acquit.
The “He Was Joking” Defense Oh, you know Trump, what a kidder!
The Master Negotiator Defense Trump’s a master negotiator. He was just freestyling, like very stable geniuses do.
The Doofus Defense He didn’t know what he was doing was wrong.
There are two absolutes in American politics right now.
One is Trump will never resign. The other is the Senate will never convict Trump.
So, really, any talk of impeaching Trump is moot. It would be little more than a slap on the wrist. Trump will see his inevitable aquittle as an exoneration and use it as the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.
Given that populist autocrats never lose, we are safe in assuming that Trump will “win” re-election somehow. He will use his second term to consolidate power. The United States will no-so-gradually (or quietly) drift into a Russian-style authoritarian “managed democracy” and that will be that.
But, for the sake of entertainment, let’s suppose somehow the impossible happens. Let’s suppose somehow miraculously Trump leaves office between now, and, say, the Feb-March timeframe.
We’re going to assume that Pence becomes president. Any talk that Pence is also involved in the current imbriglio, while likely true, simply at this point is too insane to speculate on.
The first issue is a pardon. Most likely, President Pence would made inane, general statements on this issue for the duration of the campaign. But, of course, he would pardon Trump at some point early in his first full term. His hope would be it would help “united” and “heal” the nation. But his real goal would be do to it so early that by the time he ran for re-election in 2024, it would be a long time ago and wouldn’t matter.
Another issue is the 2020 race. Pence is a much more conventional politician than Trump. Is only discernible weakness is he’s so fucking conservative that he is unlikely to get a lot of moderate swing voters. But he, much like Trump, wouldn’t really care about that. He just needs to tip the right swing states just enough to win their electoral votes. (Sorry California.)
One enormous issue that I can’t figure out is if our democratic norms would snap back into place or if things have been so fucked up that there’s no going back. Probably it would be some sort of muddled in between. That is until, of course, Tom Cotton becomes president with the same agenda as Trump only in a much more focus manner.
The Democratic 2020 field is not prepared to run against a President Pence. It would totally throw the entire thing for a loop. The absolute worst case scenario — and thus the most likely — is just about the time Democrats pick a challenger to Trump, Trump somehow leaves office.
Anyway, this is never going to happen. Never. NEVER. Trump is an elected dictator and the only question at this point is if he will ever leave office willingly, Constitution be damned.
The United States has been in a chronic political crisis since Trump was elected. And what’s going on right now seems like more of the same. There’s just no indication that this recent scandal isn’t going to play itself out like all the rest.
The political clock is ticking. We’re well past the moment in time when its feasible to impeach Trump, much less convict him. That The Mueller Report came out four months ago and we’re exactly where we were then when it comes to impeachment tells you all you need to know. Trump is successfully running down the clock.
All he needs to do is punt this problem into 2020 and he wins. Once he punts it to 2020, he can punt it to his second term. He gets at least a two year pardon once he’s re-elected. He will have more than enough time to considolate power by that point. His biggest decision in 2022 will be picking between Don Jr. and Ivanka as his successor.
Nothing gives me any hope that anything we learn about this whistle blower will matter. And, really, given what I’ve seen about the matter, it’s more likely Bill Barr will arrest the guy for treason and that will be that. Nancy Pelosi will stamp her feet and talk about “self-impeachment.”
I like to do scenarios and there no scenario where the bad guys don’t win. If we’ve gotten this far in the process, that’s it. The House Democratic leadership has made its decision. They don’t want to impeach Trump. They’re going to hang all their political hopes on him losing in 2020. He is most definitely NOT going to lose in 2020.
The only vague feeling of hope I have about all of this is presidential second terms tend to be far worse than second terms. That’s it. That’s all I got. Not until there’s a demostrable event that is different than past such incidents will I think anything will come of this.
And, really, given that Trump is simply an avatar for some pretty fucked up things going on in America, even if we were to miraculously get rid of him in the short term, a lot of very smart, young and passionate would-be tyrants have learned all they need to know from Trump.
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