This news broke the night before the first serious impeachment vote. This gives all House Republicans more than enough cover to vote against it.
Republicans may have learned the wrong lesson from the Mueller Report. They think this will drain support for impeachment. They think everything will go back to normal and Trump will be politically pardoned AGAIN so he can turn around and to exactly the same shit by Friday afternoon. While this is — I guess – at least a possibility, it seems at least from what I can tell that the impeachment train has, in fact, left the station.
There’s a real danger Trump is both so stupid and so craven that he will tweet out a 21 Century version of, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” He will “accidently” dox the poor guy and he ends up dead. The Republican talking points will be three fold. Trump was “joking,” he can’t be held responsible for the actions of a mentally ill person, and we have to end the impeachment process because people are starting to die.
This may work with The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman for about 24 hours. But I suspect that this won’t hold much water with the average person who is isn’t on Twitter and is too busy paying their mortgage to care about impeachment. Should there be any type of impeachment-related violence then guess who most people will hold responsible — it’s not going to be Nancy Pelosi. Though you know that’s exactly what every Republican is going to scream at the top of their lungs. I guess it might work? But I have at least a modicum of faith in my fellow Americans not to fall for that bullshit.
But, really, the battle lines are now drawn. Either you are so partisan that you think it’s “game over” for impeachment because the whistleblower worked with Joe Biden and Susan Rice as part of his job, or you don’t. Either you believe in the rule of law, or your a Republican MAGA fascist.
We’re entering the political equivalent of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Two Tribes video. This is now a political war for the ages. I still suspect that Trump is going to completely lose his fucking mind in a rather spectacular fashion before all of this is over. But I could be wrong.
So. It appears as though the mouth breathing, knuckle dragging MAGA people have finally gotten their wish — the identity of the whistleblower. I don’t know this for a fact yet, because even though “Real Clear Investigations” claim to have out him, his name isn’t trending yet.
But the issue is — if it’s true, then it gives Trump supporters something to scream about other than the massive number of crimes Trump has committed. All they will do now is try to “kavanagh” him by ranting about his character, or personal political ties, or whatever. They know that as long as the base can “own the moment” in a conversation online, it’s a win for them.
The endgame for MAGA is his death. They want him murdered. They’re so wrapped up in the House Trump cult, that they’re not exactly thinking clearly. Their thirst for blood will overshadow some pretty basic….uhhhh….political considerations? They’re not doing 8 dimensional chest, they’re barely grunting. Any energy they can expend ranting about the nature of the whistleblower is time and energy they don’t have to spend defending the indefensible on Trump’s part.
They want the average person to know more about the whistleblower’s entire life story than what we now have Trump dead-to-rights on. And, so, Trump is likely to survive politically…as long as the whistleblower isn’t murdered in cold blood after a Trump tweet on the subject. Then things get a little bit more dicey for House Trump.
In a sense, the battle lines are now drawn. On one hand, you have 60% of the electorate who are growing more more alarmed by Trump’s vast criminal activity, and on the other hand you will have 40% of the electorate who will seethe with rage against the fact that the whistleblower came for — for any reason — to attest to these crimes.
I don’t know if I should be frightened or just resigned. Honestly, at this point I find myself thinking about how, exactly, I might escape death in an ICE camp at some point in Trump’s second administration.
Sometimes macro political trends are not obvious until after they’re complete. But the current impeach process has sped up some significant macro trends in American political life to the point that one thing is definitely clear: Republicans are fascists.
What I mean by this is they no longer believe in liberal democracy or civil society. Really, the only thing that has to happen at this point is a car bomb go off in Times Square and a MAGA person claim credit for it. Once Republicans go on TV to say that the impeachment process has to end because of the violence, they’re fascist. If their first reaction isn’t “Holy shit, what have we done,” but “People dying means a political victory for us” then, well, that’s all she wrote.
It doesn’t have to be a car bomb. Trump could dox the whistleblower on Twitter and tell MAGA to “teach him a lesson.” The list goes on.
The most unsettling issue of all of this is that it’s an institutional thing. There’s no going back. Republicans are prepared to defend Der Fuhrer for any legal transgression. When you reach that point of political devotion, there are going to be massive consequences no matter what the ultimate endgame of impeachment.
In other words, we all have to take a deep breath and take what’s happening seriously. Republicans are hell bent on an institutional level to turn America into nothing more than a Putin-style “manage democracy.” They will lie. They will cheat. They will encourage and embrace violence. Republicans want a nation where plutocrats pay not taxes, there’s no middle class and pretty big chunks of the Constitution are a dead letter.
The more I think about it, the more I believe Trump’s big second term goal is a Constitutional Convention. He will want to codify American Carnage into the Constitution to prep the way for Kris Kobach, or Tom Cotton or Don Jr to finish the job he started.
I have no hope that there’s anything we can do to prevent this from happening. In the short term, maybe, just maybe, Republicans will overreach and we MIGHT get one sold presidential cycle where we can all breath a sigh of relief. But that’s very, very iffy. More likely, Trump will be acquitted, he will far more brazen about everything and the ICE camps will be weaponized. A rouge Constitutional Convention will completely revamp the document.
There might be a little bit of a death rattle here and there. But the center-Left is simply too unorganized and divided to do anything, in real terms, about what is about to happen.
It appears as though Fascist Republicans settling on a very Putinesque defense of Trump going into the actual official impeachment process. Their messaging into this crucial moment in Trump’s administration is literally the “This is fine” meme. They want the average person to shrug at this egregious abuse of power because “everyone does it” and because Trump did not do something as explicit as the “smoking gun” of the Nixon tapes that, well, lulz.
There are a number of other related defenses involving social media that Trump-friendly people tell themselves to allow a good night sleep, as well. The chief of these being that only because of the excesses of partisan social media is what Trump even a big deal. Other presidents over the years did the same or worse and we just did not know about it or care. This plays into the Stormy Daniels playbook of scandal management quite well.
As I have repeatedly said, a sign that Trump is not, in fact, a political genius is how badly he’s bungling House Trump’s messaging of what he did. If he was smart — which he is not — he would take the L on impeachment itself and hang back for his acquittal in the Senate. All that’s required is a modicum of self-discipline. Don’t get mad. Don’t freak out. And don’t rile people up unnecessarily. Unfortunately for Trump’s allies, he is not known for have any of these traits.
On a strictly political level, House Trump’s, “This is fine,” defense, which aims to frame what Trump did as “bad” but not impeachable is a pretty safe bet. If you essentially tell people in absolute terms that in the end the interpretation of what Trump did should be done through the prism of partisan politics, then, well, Trump survives. There’s no sexxy tape of Trump saying something anything impossible to spin, so lulz. Trump’s acquitted by the Senate and free to turn around and do the exact same thing he was just aquitted for within 24 hours. He will be even more brazen with it, however, because when he inevitably gets caught AGAIN, Republicans will say, “You’re just out to get Trump. Let the people decide.”
And then Trump bribes individual Electors. Or the Russians hack directly into our election systems and change votes. Or Barr indicts Trump’s Democrat opponent in Oct. 2020. We will be nothing more than a Russian-style “managed democracy.” House Trump really will be The Thousand Year Trump and Trump’s vision of American Carnage becomes a reality.
So what could go wrong?
Trump.
While I suppose Gold Boy Jared might be able to stick some thorazine into Trump at some point, Trump is probably going to freak the fuck out at the prospect of even being impeached. He will become transactional with his Twitter offices, telling people what he wants them to do. When people start dying, Republicans will turn around and say, lulz, we can’t impeach Trump because people are starting to get hurt. While the prospect of people essentially dying to save the Dear Leader may make Fox News viewers spooge their pants, for a lot of average Americans who otherwise are raising their kids this would be very, very uncool. They are likely to grow quite alarmed and the pace of impeachment will grow faster, not slower. When the average person is shook awake at what’s happening to their otherwise peaceful nation at the hands of a deranged version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner, Trump’s fire break of public indifference is likely to evaporate.
Or if Trump goes batshit insane in a very public manner, that, too, is another non-political problem that Republicans will have to deal with. And they’ll defend it without blinking an eye. Trump shooting out a dick pic on Twitter. Or spewing racist obscenities during press conferences will get a big old lulz from Republican leaders. Or they’ll just not comment. If there’s any doubt that Republicans are old fashion fascists now, the fact that this scenario is, while worst case, is not really all that hysterical, gives a good indication of how true my assessment is.
So, as of right now, Trump is probably going to get aquitted. If you frame the facts of the case as an absolute partisan issue then there can be no other endgame. And there does seem to be some indication that Trump is finally letting the Adults handle messaging. Having said all that, there are also a lot of unknowns.
All I gotta say, is, for Trump to actually be convicted in the Senate, the bolts are going to have to start popping of American civil society in some rather unexpected and spectacular ways. We’re going to ender a surreal period in our nation’s political history when anything, anything can happen and does happen on a minute-by-minute basis.
The thing about Mueller’s testimony to Congress being such a dud is both sides learned the wrong lesson. House Trump got cocky. They thought they could begin the second, more sinister phase of Trumplandia without anyone doing anything about it. The Trump opposition, meanwhile, began to think Trump was simply a political force of nature that they could never defeat.
But, guess what — Trump is a self-own artist.
It’s darkly humorous how eager Maggie Haberman of The New York Times is to say in a quiet, droll tone how Trump is using his native Leadership Principle abilities to subtly influence various portions of the electorate with his political genius.
This, of course, is complete and total horseshit. Trump’s a barely functioning human being much less some sort of modern day Machiavelli. What Trump is, is very, very lucky. Someone like Trump was bound to pop up at some point between 2016 and 2024, it was just a matter of whom. And, really, I grow ever more concerned about who will be Trump’s fascist successor than I am he himself — not that he’s not an autocrat wannabe. As Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare once quipped, “Trump’s malevolence is only mitigated by his incompetence.” Or something along those lines.
The Real Trump.
In other words, Trump’s nothing more than a deranged version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner. That’s it. That’s all that’s going on. This brings us to some potential gotterdammerung impeachment strategies on the part of House Trump. I see these likely happening for no other reason than Trump is hysterical the thought of simply being impeached. When he faces a trial in the Senate, his mental state is likely to explode, not implode. We may face weeks of a demonstrable insane person running the government until the painfully slow wheels of government get around to convicting Trump — not really on the matter at hand, buth is extremely unstable mental state. (The 25th Amendment is a dead letter for the time being.)
Anyway, one of these potential gotterdammerung impeachment strategies is holding the government hostage. House could shut the government down and simply say, “You don’t get your government back until you end the impeachment process.”
This will, for about 24 hours, dominate the impeachment narrative. Maggie Haberman will coo at Trump’s political genius. The MAGA talking heads of FOX will huzzah. And, honestly, it might work given how fucked up the world is right now.
But it might not.
As it sinks in to the average person what is going on, there’s a decent chance this won’t slow impeachment down at all. It will, in fact, only heighten the sense of urgency and build pressure for conviction. This would go with my general belief that if Trump is convicted, it won’t even be because of the actual politics of what he’s accused of doing — it will be his complete and total mishandling of House Trump’s reacting to the impeachment process.
Another, more ominous, potential gotterdammerung impeachment strategy is Trump becomes transactional in his Twitter offenses. He starts to tell people what he wants them to do, in other words. He doxes the Whistleblower and “jokingly” tells people to “teach him a lesson.” Or a few carbomb’s explode in New York City with pro-Trump people claiming credit. Again, initially, things will be on House Trump’s side because generally a lot of people do not want Trump to be convicted. A lot of very powerful people — on both sides of the political spectrum — have a vested interest in Trumplandia lasting a full eight years.
But…
There’s also a good chance that once the shot wears off, the average American who to date has been pretty blase about impeachment will freak the fuck out. This is yet ANOTHER example of how Trump is not what Maggie Haberman would have you believe — Trump’s political firebreak is apathy. If people start dying in some last-gasp gotterdammerung impeachment strategy on the part of rabid Republicans, there’s a pretty good chance the average moderate American might stop thinking about raising their kids and paying their mortgage long enough to demand Trump be convicted by the Senate as soon as fucking possible.
I would say the most important thing to remember is the country can not withstand this much political turmoil without something really fucking bad happening. I simply can’t case out the endgame right now. And whatever the endgame is, we’re in a new political era. We will no longer be in the post-9/11 Era, we will be in either the American Carnage Era or the Post-Trump Era.
I am not prepared to believe Trump finally faces an existential threat, at least on a political level. Politically, he’s fine. The Republican Party is now the fascist Trump Party and he is likely to be acquitted on the facts before us and go about his merry way. He will bribe individual Electors, get Russia to directly hack into our election systems or he will simply get Bill Barr to indict his opponent in Oct. 2020.
But let’s daydream. What if Trump loses his mind during the process of impeachment or, say, there’s MAGA violence that makes the average person so furious with House Trump that Der Fuhrer finally meets his political match — himself. Who would President Pence pick as his Veep?
This is a far more complicated question than you may at first imagine. Pence wants to use the MAGA base to win two full terms on his own. So, it’s unlikely he would pick someone like Nikki Haley because she’s, well, not a Trump. That leaves Ivanka and Don Jr. The reason why I doubt it would be Don Jr. despite his popularity with the MAGA base is he’s such an outlandish hothead that he would likely use his position as veep to challenge Pence for the 2020 Republican nomination.
That leaves Ivanka.
It’s likely Ivanka would be nominated and confirmed by the Senate at lightning speed the moment Trump was somehow finally physically dragged out of the Oval Office. Pence would see Ivanka as the “safe” member of House Trump that would help him on a number of different levels. Ivanka as his veep would reassure MAGA as to his fidelity to House Trump. He would get to name the first woman — and Jewish — veep in American history.
Really, given how little the veep position really does, Ivanka is pretty much perfect for the job. You could pace out any number of different nightmare scenarios involving unintended consequences to this move, but that’s pushing it. Ivanka is an example of someone who thinks that the are “owed” something simply because of their connection to someone who paved the way. She’s in a curious political position because her bonkers brother is far more appealing to the MAGA base, while she herself is at least superficially someone who might for a heartbeat bring the nation together. The moment it sank in how bad she was on a practical level, the usual political divide we inhabit would kick in again.
Put another way — not even Ivanka could coast to the Republican nomination in any traditional manner. Her only real shot at ever becoming president would be if Pence somehow magically found enough shame to resign in disgrace. I just don’t see that happening. Pence at this point is more likely to do exactly what Trump would do only with a theocratic bent to it.
But I do suggest you keep an eye on Ivanka. If there was some sort of last-ditch effort at having a compacted resignation on Trump’s part (this will never happen) then maybe Ivanka-as-veep might be a bargaining chip desperate Republicans might use to coax a reluctant Trump out of office. Or, maybe they might use her as veep on a more basic level — to simply get Trump physically out of the Oval Office should he miraculously be convicted by the Senate.
As it stands, Republicans’ arguments against impeachment are essentially, “Lalalalalala I can’t hear you!” Because they can’t get any political gain from it, they see it as by definition illegitimate. That’s why they attack the process, no matter what. Because the facts don’t help them, they want to message the base that the entire thing shouldn’t be happening in the first place.
There’s a serious danger that should Republicans feel they’ve exhausted all political options that they will lulz the entire concept of liberal democracy and go full throated fascist on the nation. One of the central tenants of fascism is violence or the threat of violence to further political goals. So I feel it’s well within the realm of the possible for Republicans — specifically Trump through his Twitter feed — to become transactional. They will embrace the idea of violence so they can turn around and say, “We have to stop the impeachment process, people are starting to get hurt.”
They will, of course, wilfully ignore that they were the ones who incited the violence to begin with. All I can say is we have to take this into consideration going forward. We have to stop trying to deny that impeachment is happening. We have to start accepting that Trump did this to himself — and us — and we have to see the process through. This is a political war and there’s no avoiding the damage to our political system at this point. All impeachment is doing in real terms is accelerating some trends have been happening for some time.
Really, the issue now is, will Republicans stage a putsch of some sort if they get desperate enough. Will they collectively — at least in the House — decide they would rather martyr themselves in a last-gasp effort to save the political future of The Dear Leader than risk him being convicted. I draw no joy from this prospect. But given how hysterical Republicans are growing, it definitely seems there’s a greater-than-zero chance this might actually happen.
Or, put another way, we have to accept that on a strictly political level Trump is likely to be acquitted no matter what he is proven to have done. In real terms, it would be a non-political event that may bring House Trump down in the end. He goes bonkers. Or there’s some sort of impeachment-related violence the causes a brief–but powerful– radicalization of otherwise moderate independants.
I honestly have no idea what is going to happen. I just know no matter what the endgame, we’re going to be in a new political era.
One common theme, it seems, when it comes to Republicans and impeachment is anger. Their minds can’t process what is happening. As such, they either shut down or start to get really, really, upset. This is rather unnerving because I’m left wondering what will happen when politics fails them. What happens when Republicans lose the vast majority of independents in the election struggle? What happens when they finally have only the 35% MAGA base to rely on for the re-election prospects?
This has not happened yet. Trump could still pull through using strictly politics and media messaging. That’s very, very possible. Republicans will be so riled up if they win that they’re likely to finally shed all pretense of believing in liberal democracy. If Trump survives impeachment in the Senate, then there’s a real chance that the general trend towards a fascist state will accelerate rapidly and the whole issue of “let the people decide” will be rather moot.
What’s more, the rot within the Republican Party is so astonishing that even Pence may simply use the damage Trump inflicted on the Constitution to turn us into a more theocratic version of American Carnage. That may be why both Barr and Pompeo have definitely been messaging the evangelical base with some of their official acts. As such, I feel we can not automatically assume that Pence will allow a free-and-fair election. He could very well simply keep Barr and Pompeo in place and do exactly what Trump would do with them.
I still think all things being equal, Trump will escape justice Senate Republicans will simply say something along the lines of “Trump is guilty, but it’s too close to the 2020 election — let the people decide.” They will believe that it’s better to win their primary in hopes of having a really weak general opponent than to vote to convict and to sign their political death warrant.
Thus, the only way I can possibly see Trump being convicted will be things that are not political. Trump snapping under the pressure of impeachment. Or there finally being widespread violence on the part of MAGA people. Either one of those would dramatically change the equation. If Republican Senators are forced not to think in political terms but in terms of national security, then they may realize they have no choice but vote to convict.
But, again, this is now a political war. And even if Trump loses that political war, the MAGA base will remain. And there’s a decent chance that a President Pence will fight a pitched battle with Kris Kobach, Tom Cotton and God only knows who else for the sweet, sweet votes of MAGA people.
So, in a sense, our best bet is Nancy Pelosi becomes president — somehow — and she serves as a caretaker president simply to make sure we have a free-and-fair election.
History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. I’m not saying that Trump being jeered will be anywhere near as historically significant as the Disco Sucks riot of 1979, but…it makes for great TV. It’s memorable and easy to understand. It may fade very quickly, or it may linger in the popular imagination.
When the final history of the American Republic is written — and fear it will be a lot sooner than we would like — the end first came the night Richard Hatch won the first season of Survivor. Everyone was in shock. But it also marked the beginning of modern reality TV. Trump was the greatest beneficiary of that night, in hindsight.
Trump is the culmination of several macro trends in American political history. On one had you have the rise of Fox News. On the other you have how detached the average media person is from the practical lives of the average person in a flyover state. This is a side effect of income inequality caused by the Reagan Revolution. You also have the rise of social media. The massive flaw of social media is not only do the most extreme positions of any issue set the tone of debate, but it’s very, very easy for it be weaponized by an outside, hostile force.
Mix all this together and you find yourself where we are now. Fox News and income inequality in tandem caused a lot of Red State people to feel not only disenfranchised, but alienated from the media narrative that Blue State people were seeing. All of this accelerated in Obama’s second term as the lingering damage of the Great Recession began to sink in. Add to this just plain old racism being for political gain by — you guessed it, Donald Trump — and you end up in the situation we’re in.
In 2016, roughly half the electorate was primed for someone like Trump. This is when social media and the Russians kicked in.
So we find ourselves in a situation where many Red State voters actually are quite happy with the prospect of authoritarian rule. They can’t even grasp what the benefits of liberal democracy would be in the first place. And, so, here we are. It definitely appears as though there’s a good chance that impeachment in itself will be the final death blow to the American Republic. But I don’t say this as some sort of indictment of the process that may bring House Trump down politically.
What I mean, rather, is we’re finally seeing the fruits of a decades-long agenda on the part of Republicans. Even if Trump is politically vanquished, the Republican Party is now finally so radicalized that Pence could very well simply do exactly what Trump was going to do but with a more theocratic spin to it. And don’t get your hopes up if there’s a Pelosi presidency. Even that would be a delay to this process.
There are half a dozen would-be Trump successor on deck in the Republican Party ranks, from Kris Kobach to Tom Cotton to The Kooch. It’s a bit surreal to someone in LA or NYC the lengths that Republicans will to defend someone as demonstrably bonkers and corrupt as Trump. But that says more about the rot at the heart of our political system than anything else.
So, buckle up. My prediction is very soon we’ll have some sort of theocratic fascist “manage democracy”in the United States that will last at least 20 years. At some point at the moment when the youngest of the Baby Boomers begin to croke and the browning of America kicks in, there may be some sort of shift in politics. But for the foreseeable future, Trump’s American Carnage is definitely on track to become a hold hard reality.
I could imagine a few scenarios where this doesn’t happen quite the way I imagine. If Republicans really, really, REALLY overplayed their hand during the impeachment process and there was mass violence by people opposed to impeachment, then I think we might get enough of a delay in the march towards fascism for the browning of America to kick in. But that’s such a remote possibility that I just don’t see that being applicable. Even then, there’s a chance that Republicans would use the very violence THEY INCITED to do the very things I propose they want to do in the first place. So, in a sense, we’re in a no-win situation.
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