I don’t think it’s too early to start envisioning the last days of Donald Trump’s presidency. The Senate Republicans are morally depraved and gutless, but even they must have some limit. In the following scene, the president is interviewing America’s last available lawyers as he desperately seeks to avoid being removed from office and financially ruined:
Victoria Toensing: Hey, quit your blubberin’. When I get through with this baby you won’t even recognize it.
Joseph diGenova: Trump, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You f***ed up. You trusted Giuliani! Hey, make the best of it! Maybe we can help.
Trump: [crying] That’s easy for you to say! What am I going to tell Fred?!
Joseph diGenova: Your father? He’s dead, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll swear you were doing a great job taking care of his company, but you parked it out back last night and this morning, it was gone. Victoria takes care of the wreck. We report it to the police. The insurance company buys you a new company.
Trump: Will that work?
Joseph diGenova: Hey, it’s gotta work better than the truth.
Sen. Lindsey Graham: My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.
In all seriousness, things took a turn yesterday when Mick Mulvaney concocted the worst cover story in the history of mankind. As I wrote for my subscribers, it went something like this:
Somehow, the president has been convinced that CrowdStrike is a Ukrainian company, founded by a Ukrainian, financed by a different rich Ukrainian and that they have secretly shipped a solitary server to Ukraine that holds evidence that Ukraine was responsible for hacking the DNC.
None of this is true, but this did not prevent Trump from putting his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in charge of an effort to prove that these things are true. To accomplish this, Giuliani, who is not a government employee and holds no security clearance, was put in charge of America’s foreign policy in Ukraine. State Department employees were forced to do his bidding and an esteemed ambassador was defamed and then unceremoniously recalled from Kiev because she wasn’t a team-player.
This is supposed to be a defense for the president. It’s all okay because it wasn’t about winning the 2020 election.
Except, that’s also a lie.
That was the worst of Mulvaney’s explanation, but he went further by admitting that Trump held up military aid to Ukraine in an effort to extort the new administration in Kiev. People were kind of stunned that Mulvaney copped to the most egregious and highest of the crimes and misdemeanors that have been alleged, but the president initially said he was happy with his chief of staff’s comments. Now he is privately saying otherwise. As for Mulvaney, he had to try to put the toothpaste back in the tube, but we all know how that works out in the end.
Mike Allen at Axios characterized matters rather succinctly:
The Trump administration is testing a novel strategy for dealing with controversy and possible illegalities: Pretend you have nothing to hide by blurting it out loud.
President Trump and his aides and allies seem to think that by being unapologetic and admitting things that would have touched off blazing scandals just a few years ago, they can move the goalposts of what’s acceptable to Republicans and the public.
I’ve mentioned it a few times before but America elected a Birther as president. Everything we’re seeing flows from that. Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson wrote a book called Everything Trump Touches Dies, and it’s absolutely true. Trump is currently trying to revive his Doral resort which has seen a steep decline in sales by having it host next year’s G-7 conference. This is another in a growing list of slam-dunk impeachable offenses.
https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1184890038137561093
Trump has tried telling us in various ways that the car isn’t wrecked, but he’ll never be able to produce an undamaged car to prove it. Mulvaney marched an alternative strategy but it didn’t help.
“Did [Trump] also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server?” he said. “Absolutely, no question about that. But that’s it, and that’s why we held up the money.”
The reference to the hacked Democratic National Committee’s email server elevated a Trump-backed conspiracy theory that Ukraine was involved in election interference in 2016, something U.S. intelligence officials have repeatedly attributed to Russia.
In admitting that Trump had linked politics with his Ukraine policy, Mulvaney said that critics were simply overreacting.
“I have news for everybody: Get over it,” he said. “There is going to be political influence in foreign policy.”
In other words, it’s our own fault for loaning the country to Trump and if we don’t like seeing its quarter-panels smashed, we can go screw ourselves.
There’s no way this should be allowed to continue. As retired Admiral William McRaven writes in the New York Times, “it is time for a new person in the Oval Office — Republican, Democrat or independent — the sooner, the better. The fate of our Republic depends upon it.”
Agreed. But after the past decade, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think what it is. Here’s the best I’ve come up with:
Polling already shows Collins (ME), Gardner (CO), and McSally(AZ) as doubtful for reelection next fall. Recent polling shows Tillis (NC) and Ernst (IA) slipping, which places Republican control of the Senate at risk.
If those trends continue or accelerate, and some of the next tier of typically safe Republican seats (both GA seats, McConnell-KY, Cornyn-TX) start to look like they’re slipping away, that could get the attention of half (or more) of the Senate Republican caucus.
Then, if it looks like their best chance of retaining power is to dump Trump and run with Pence at the top of the ticket, maybe they all hold hands together and jump (fast!) into the impeachment/conviction pool.
Pence gets marketed as a boring, straight-arrow, reliable Republican; the party gets rebranded as sticking up for law-and-order, defending the Constitution even at the expense of their own leader (country over party!), and try to make the fact that Pence is up to his eyeballs in all of Trump’s corruption disappear.
Thoughts? Other ideas/scenarios?
I think it’s gonna be every man for himself in the senate Repub caucus, because their own survival has to trump even their party retaining the majority. It’s just not clear that there is a universal strategy for 2020 survival in every Red state at this point.
As for Pence, (leaving aside his loathsome politics) he’s such a cardboard nothing that it’s hard to see even Repubs thinking he could conceivably be their savior in 2020. What’s his slogan? “Trumpism without corruption!”? Sort of like the problem the Soviet Union had after the death of Stalin. Not to mention that Mike Dunce is seen by every non-cultist as simply a paler, more boring version of Trump. The Gerald Ford problem, times ten, haha.
Yeah, Pence has numerous problems. But it’s kind of like the two guys camping in the woods who wake up to an approaching bear and when one guy starts putting on his boots, and the other says, “You can’t outrun a bear.” The first guy doesn’t have to outrun the bear; he just has to outrun the second guy.
Right now, Pence and Trump are the only two guys set up to run a nationwide race (unless you think the Republican party is going to turn to the likes of Mark Sanford or Bill Weld). Plus, “Trumpism without corruption*!” probably polls pretty well with Republican voters.
*Pence, like anyone who’s been close to Trump, is not “without corruption”.
Pence is already neck deep in Ukraine. I dont think the GOP can wipe the slate clean, relatively speaking, by dumping Trump and rebranding as the pious party behind Pence. Plus, what happens if Trump is convicted? Now he’s fair game for criminal.prosecution and I can see a deal with Trump to leave may hinge on a pardon from interim president Pence. If he follows through on that he’ll be just as damaged as Ford was when he pardoned Nixon. Bottom line, the come back to a measure of respectability, even by GOP standards, is going take more than this one cycle.
I’ll believe Republican politicians will turn on Trump when it happens. There’s no shame anymore, particularly among Republicans. Anything and everything can be justified. Almost no one is willing to walk away from a profitable gig for the benefit of the country or society. No one’s held to account because there’s no fundamental sense of right and wrong.
Place yourself in the shoes of a Republican politician. Go along with Trump and try to get reelected in a general election or turn on Trump and face the prospect of being primaried? Try to split the difference and please no one? For the last 15 years, Republicans have invested heavily in ensuring party loyalty by going after those who stray. Most would sooner resign than take on their own party. And that’s what we’ve been seeing.
Without a larger context that prevents people from acting out of self interest, this is what one would expect. Each for himself/herself as the ship takes on water. Politicians aren’t going to reverse this on their own. The only thing that can change it is a mass exodus from the Republican column at the polls. Wholesale slaughter will eventually force surviving Republicans to behave like human beings. That’s what it will take. California provides a glimpse of hope. Perhaps the nation will follow their example.
Mike Allen at Axios has absolutely put his finger on it. The only detail he gets wrong is that this is not a “novel” strategy. This is Trump 101 standard playbook and it has been all along. It’s not only Mulvaney. Trump does it. Giuliani does it. Barr does it. They all do it — every time they say, “There’s nothing wrong with … ” And yes, they are high on their own supply, they do think they’re right. This is a particularly brazen form of “pushing the envelope.” “We run this joint, whatever we say goes.” Actually, this gimmick has worked very well, especially for the Fox audience, and it has worked on the cautious MSM that are afraid of appearing too “shrill” by calling it out.
The only reason it suddenly seems “novel” is that things have come to such a pass that the envelope is being pushed farther and faster than it can go. Enough people are wise to them and they are being called out by the media on a continuous basis.
But yes, Allen is right. This is the explanation of an otherwise puzzling phenomenon. The game is essentially over, but the Trumpists literally don’t realize it yet because for them it’s the only game in town.
“There is no way Trump should survive this scandal”
In a serious, democratic, constitutional nation/republic, no. But as a result of the “conservative” movement, we don’t have anything resembling that.
Der Trumper is safe as long as he retains his 35-40% dead-ender cultist base. And those Deplorables are just too invested in the satisfaction of Latino harassment and border sadism to care about brazen National Trumpalist lawbreaking and endemic corruption. The reactionary cogs will digest without comment every legal, constitutional and political outrage by Der Trumper. They think they are “saving the country” by prioritizing Trumper’s white supremacy, even as they vehemently deny such a notion even enters their brains (now echoing with fatality-level cognitive dissonance, ha-ha!)
Elected Repubs obviously don’t care one whit about the (serial) abuse of office offenses, they’ll save that outrage for if/when a Dem prez tries to play the same game on them. They do care about the grousing of the Pentagon as Trumper negotiates total victory for Erdogan and orders the US military to “assist” the Kurds in carrying out their own ethnic cleansing–thanks kindly! The danger to the US Empire and its militarism conceivably could provoke “conservatives” to act against the unqualified Boob-in-Chief, but constitutional and legal violations however numerous and overt—never. Repubs and their plutocrat funders are way too far down the road of being their own racketeer-influenced corrupt organization for those niceties!
The Ukraine blackmail caper should be the end of him. How he survives this is beyond me. Add to that his willingness to off the Kurds to ethnic cleansing and his disastrous “strategy” in Syria for what many have died for should also be seen as a high crime and misdemeanor. See Romney’s indictment. Then there are those ten obstruction charges from the Mueller report and the SDNY unindicted co conspirator for campaign finance law, just a small issue of paying off his mistresses. Lindsey the Tough should love that one. The man cannot control himself. He lies all the time about everything and if he is caught first tries to convince us we should get over it and failing that, walk it all back. And should we need another one throw in his G7 contract to himself.
Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson wrote a book called Everything Trump Touches Dies, ….
You do remember that Rick Wilson helped bring us Trump, right? Remember the Max Cleland morphing into OBL ad? He was the one behind it. I’m sure you know that and it pisses me off that he gets thousands of RT’s for his every utterance on Twitter, a great majority of them from gullible liberals. The same goes for Bill Kristol.