Martin Longman is the web editor of the Washington Monthly.
He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. Before joining the Monthly, Martin was a county coordinator for ACORN/Project Vote and a political consultant. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I’m not sure it’s just the prospects of financial ruin & prison. I suspect there’s an existential need to go out in flames. In any case he’s really crossed the point of no return. The question is called: who stands for the American Democracy built, enriched and defended by generations of patriots and who stands for Trump?
For Trump, he’s screwed as his financial crimes are at the state level and there’s no way his pardon palooza works for that. His kids are likely to be on a flight to Dubai or somewhere boarding at 11am Jan 20. Ivanka would be going to prison if she stayed. They’re all flight risks imo
Prison? I’m not convinced. We never seem to hold rich and powerful people to account. From McCarthy to Nixon to Reagan to Bush I and Bush II. A few of Nixon’s henchmen served time. No one has since. I think it’s simple narcissism. Trump can’t deal with losing. His whole life has been about avoiding that label and that fate. He’s flailing because he has no space to lose. Assuming he doesn’t find a way to overturn the election and what’s left of our democracy, this will break him. I don’t think any amount of bleating, pouting or chest pounding… Read more »
I believe you are right about this. Trump is indeed terrified of financial ruin and prison. And that is amplified by his most serious narcissism in which he simply cannot accept defeat. Would it really surprise anyone if he had a breakdown in the next several weeks? Still his never ending lies will have an impact on all of us in the years ahead. A terrible time awaits us all. Some significant portion of 74 million Trump voters believe the democrats stole this election.
There are a dozen reasons why Trump is causing as much trouble as possible now. Moment to moment, he reacts to the stimuli he experiences. And that also promotes his con-game. We are given so many phony distractions, that so many of us feel some weird duty to explain and understand, while the conman goes on to complete his con. Trump has a congame going, that is also mixed together with his specific suite of emotional disorders. In the good old days, we had corrupt officials like Agnew. He saw that the system was on the one hand incapable of… Read more »
The bigger mystery is the 74M people. When I came to US in 1980, I was attracted to its politics of reason, logic, and rationality, as opposed to my native country of birth – India, where at that time it was connections and luck of birth! Kennedy had sent Armstrong and others to the moon, Woodward and Bernstein had brought down the most powerful man through gumshoe journalism, Einstein had chosen to make US his country, as had so many other Nobel laureates (in my own institution Caltech there was Max Delbruck). The Hollywood soft power showed a country of… Read more »
Regarding the rough half of the electorate who voted repub, it occurs to me that the repubs have had a hard time securing a clear majority vote in presidential elections for a while now. Gone are the days of a Nixon or Reagan, who could secure well more than a few percent majority. So the repubs turned to other ways of winning. In particular, they obstruct and attempt to invalidate votes. The legal system is a key tool to do this, along with restrictive laws pased by repub state legislatures. Bush/Gore must have really whet their appetites, plus emphasized to… Read more »
And Trump proved in 2016 that he could snag a few normally democratic states and we returned the favor this year. Gonna be fun in four years especially if the Orange One runs again. Dems gotta keep their eye on the electoral ball.
Yep. He is scared to death. I suspect the thing that scares him the most is in own powerlessness. None of his tricks are working. He can’t even bully a southern governor. Very soon after Trump was inaugurated I started saying (to the point of tedium) that the end game would be Pardon, Resign, Flee. Pardon himself and family, unless he can get Pence to promise a more indelible pardon in which case you go to resignation first. Then GTFO of the country. (My money is on the Philippines.) The only surprising thing is that he waited around to lose… Read more »
I’m not sure it’s just the prospects of financial ruin & prison. I suspect there’s an existential need to go out in flames. In any case he’s really crossed the point of no return. The question is called: who stands for the American Democracy built, enriched and defended by generations of patriots and who stands for Trump?
Mike Pence
For Trump, he’s screwed as his financial crimes are at the state level and there’s no way his pardon palooza works for that. His kids are likely to be on a flight to Dubai or somewhere boarding at 11am Jan 20. Ivanka would be going to prison if she stayed. They’re all flight risks imo
Yeah. Probably should be confiscating their passports, pronto.
Prison? I’m not convinced. We never seem to hold rich and powerful people to account. From McCarthy to Nixon to Reagan to Bush I and Bush II. A few of Nixon’s henchmen served time. No one has since. I think it’s simple narcissism. Trump can’t deal with losing. His whole life has been about avoiding that label and that fate. He’s flailing because he has no space to lose. Assuming he doesn’t find a way to overturn the election and what’s left of our democracy, this will break him. I don’t think any amount of bleating, pouting or chest pounding… Read more »
I believe you are right about this. Trump is indeed terrified of financial ruin and prison. And that is amplified by his most serious narcissism in which he simply cannot accept defeat. Would it really surprise anyone if he had a breakdown in the next several weeks? Still his never ending lies will have an impact on all of us in the years ahead. A terrible time awaits us all. Some significant portion of 74 million Trump voters believe the democrats stole this election.
No. In fact, one could argue it’s already taking hold. .
There are a dozen reasons why Trump is causing as much trouble as possible now. Moment to moment, he reacts to the stimuli he experiences. And that also promotes his con-game. We are given so many phony distractions, that so many of us feel some weird duty to explain and understand, while the conman goes on to complete his con. Trump has a congame going, that is also mixed together with his specific suite of emotional disorders. In the good old days, we had corrupt officials like Agnew. He saw that the system was on the one hand incapable of… Read more »
The bigger mystery is the 74M people. When I came to US in 1980, I was attracted to its politics of reason, logic, and rationality, as opposed to my native country of birth – India, where at that time it was connections and luck of birth! Kennedy had sent Armstrong and others to the moon, Woodward and Bernstein had brought down the most powerful man through gumshoe journalism, Einstein had chosen to make US his country, as had so many other Nobel laureates (in my own institution Caltech there was Max Delbruck). The Hollywood soft power showed a country of… Read more »
Regarding the rough half of the electorate who voted repub, it occurs to me that the repubs have had a hard time securing a clear majority vote in presidential elections for a while now. Gone are the days of a Nixon or Reagan, who could secure well more than a few percent majority. So the repubs turned to other ways of winning. In particular, they obstruct and attempt to invalidate votes. The legal system is a key tool to do this, along with restrictive laws pased by repub state legislatures. Bush/Gore must have really whet their appetites, plus emphasized to… Read more »
And Trump proved in 2016 that he could snag a few normally democratic states and we returned the favor this year. Gonna be fun in four years especially if the Orange One runs again. Dems gotta keep their eye on the electoral ball.
Yep. He is scared to death. I suspect the thing that scares him the most is in own powerlessness. None of his tricks are working. He can’t even bully a southern governor. Very soon after Trump was inaugurated I started saying (to the point of tedium) that the end game would be Pardon, Resign, Flee. Pardon himself and family, unless he can get Pence to promise a more indelible pardon in which case you go to resignation first. Then GTFO of the country. (My money is on the Philippines.) The only surprising thing is that he waited around to lose… Read more »