The Hill characterized it as the president spending Christmas Eve morning busily handing out lumps of coal to his critics and adversaries, plus those whom he blames for problems he’s caused himself. Truthfully, it has been a sickening and depressing display from someone who should be doing his best to spread yuletide cheer and joy.
But I’m still focused on Trump’s soon-to-be jurors in the United States Senate. For example, there’s crusty Pat Roberts from Kansas who is 82 years old and currently contemplating retirement. He’s a Republican from a very pro-Trump state but he’s in the news today quoting a Democratic president.
While the president’s stance has emboldened some conservative allies, other Republicans have grown exasperated with what they believe is a gambit that has little chance of success.
“This is my fifth shutdown,” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said on CNN. “I’m beyond frustrated.”
“[Former President Lyndon Johnson] said sometimes you just have to hunker down like a jackass in a hail storm and just take it. That’s about where we are,” he added.
When Senator Roberts says that’s where “we” are, he really means that’s where the Republicans in Congress are, because they seem paralyzed. Stock market trading Monday was the worst for any Christmas Eve on record, and that’s just more stinging hail for the jackasses. After all, Trump basically goaded his Treasury Secretary into causing a panic on Wall Street.
Here’s another potential juror for Trump’s impeachment trial.
Lamenting that President Donald Trump doesn’t share the foreign policy views of many Republicans, Sen. Pat Toomey said Sunday on NBC that [Defense Secretary] James Mattis‘ resignation letter “put his finger on“ those differences.
“I think General Mattis has put his finger on where the president has views that are very, very distinct from the vast majority of Republicans and probably Democrats, elected and unelected,” Toomey (R-Pa.) said of Mattis’ letter resigning from his position in Trump’s Cabinet.
“I strongly disagree with this decision to withdraw, prematurely in my view, from Syria.”
Of course, Trump responded to this kind of criticism not by reassuring people like Pat Toomey but by forcing Mattis out by New Year’s Day, a month and a half before schedule. Senator Toomey represents Pennsylvania and will have a hell of a time getting reelected in the best of scenarios, but he clearly doesn’t need convincing about Trump on the merits.
This isn’t a comprehensive list at all. I plan on throwing these kinds of remarks as I see them, because Trump is spoiling his jury pool as quickly and thoroughly as he can.
They are standing around like jackasses in a hail storm right now, but they won’t just take this forever. What they need is Mueller to give them the justification that they’ll need to stand up to the base of the GOP. And that’s coming soon to theater near you.
It’s even worse: Trump forced Mattis out a full two months before his announced departure, 1 January instead of 28 February, replacing him with a grifty defense contractor.
…. replacing him with a grifty defense contractor.
That is a feature, not a bug. He just got the grift in before getting this job. Usually the grift comes after having the big job, or being an Admiral, General or what ever. Look at Petraeus and all the rest. If they don’t work directly for a defense contractor they work for a defense contractor funded “think tank.”
I don’t know. Orrin Hatch was happy to go into retirement as a jackass, so was Paul Ryan. Republicans seem to have a pretty high threshhold for that sort of thing.
. . . jackasses for this little exercise of his, though.
Yes, I made a list based on people who either coming up for re-election in 2020 and might be in trouble anyway, like Toomey, Collins, Daines and Gardner and others that might be just fed up like Moran and Murkowski. I hadn’t thought Pat Roberts might be one of those but if he is thinking of retiring he might just go for it. I also think Lamar! is also a likely yea vote but we are far from 20 GOP senators at this point IMO.
The Jackasses made their peace with Trumpism a long time ago. They might deplore him but they all support him and enable him.
And in any case they don’t care that he’s insane and dangerous and criminal. They are concerned however, that he’s also self-serving and disloyal and perfectly willing to sacrifice all of them on the alter of his ego. And he’s causing problems with Wall Street. Wall Street and the defense industry are the GOP’s donor class. When the big donors get upset because they are losing money, then the Senators get squeezed between their donors and the imbecilic base.
But, Trump has insulated himself from anything Mueller has to say – the MAGAs won’t believe it because Fox News will say “Lies! All lies! We will bury you!”
In that context the only reason why they will move against Trump would be if we slide into a full blown recession and he starts making thing badly worse by his erratic behavior like trying to fire the FED Chairman even though he doesn’t have that power. He can fire him “for cause” but nobody believes that there exists just cause to fire him.
The withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan is not going to go well because there was ZERO planning. All they are doing is withdrawing our forces. That will lead to an immediate revival of all the forces who were opposed to us now that the pressure is off. This happened in Vietnam, and it happened before in Afghanistan and Iraq.
First we screw things up royally and smash everything, thus breaking down all civilian structures that kept things orderly and ushering a time of civil war and chaos. Having done this we side with one of the factions and suppress the others. Then we say “mission accomplished” and withdraw. Then all Hell breaks loose and we end up having to go back in and have a “surge.”
They only called it “surge” because the word “escalation” immediately reminded everybody of Vietnam, so they had to use a new word to describe the same thing with the same inevitable result.
Then they are faced with the problem “how do we get out?” This requires real talent, diplomacy and careful leadership. Trump of course possesses none of these attributes so his withdrawal is like everything else he touches – chaos. And in that chaos things immediately start to blow savagely sideways. Then Trump starts to get blamed, then he lashes out and needs another diversion to divert attention away from his failures or crony indictments, or his cronies implicating him in felonies, or his party losing elections, or feuding with him and saying nasty things “off the record” against him. But, then toadying in public.
Booman writes:
I sincerely hope that you are right.
What a wonderful New Year’s present that would be!!!
AG
Yeah, I hope that’s right too. But Individual 1 knows that his only hope is to fire Mueller, shut down the investigation, and bury the report. His AG nominee auditioned for the job by trashing the special counsel, and the acting AG did the same. Obviously that’s the plan. Yes, the House can winkle everything out over time, but that will have a partisan appearance. We’ll have to see how this plays out, I’m not nearly as certain about it as our host.
I think that the ongoing threat of truly damaging leaks…the real stuff, not just Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, the stuff that will likely be held back unless Trump takes serious offensive action against the investigation…is what has stopped Trump from doing that so far.
He can “bury” a report, but he can’t bury the info in that report. What hap[pens in Vegas may still stay in Vegas, but that idea doesn’t hold water in DC. Not anymore. The leakers of the last few decades have proven that. If Trump plays ball, probably lots of damaging stuff will be buried.
This is the time-honored backroom way…the way it’s been played in DC for hundreds of years.
They’ll tell him what they know and then give him a chance to leave in a huff…maybe even stay until the end of his term.
Or else…
Watch.
AG
P.S. A good pee-tape would do the trick, I think.
Or a secret recording of him taking criminal…perhaps even legally treasonous…actions.
Or real proof that he has been paid off.
The Deep State doesn’t want to totally upset the apple cart; they just want to continue to be in control. They could care less about Trump’s criminality. What they do care about is that he is trying to minimize their power.
All the rest is just posing.
Toomey….that’s fear. He’s got dairy folks who produced stuff for export that now no one wants.
Roberts….that’s the Koch brother tapping on the window of the driver in the clown car.
It’s actually not that great an analogy, and self-serving if not self-pitying on Roberts’ part. “Hunker down like a jackass in a hail storm and just take it” implies the jackasses have no agency and no choice. But of course the jackasses here (the Senators) have all kinds of agency. They just find it easier to do nothing.