The Trump Presidency Faces Numerous Possible End Games
Standing behind 2008 presidential hopeful John McCain in the photo at left is his campaign manager and lifelong Republican Steve Schmidt. When interviewed recently, Schmidt spoke lucidly for two solid minutes in response to a general question about what the Trump Presidency has done to our great country:
Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And, I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And, he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And, there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.
When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.
It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale.
And, let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are, because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.
So, denizens of the rest of the world, here we are, with just a little over three months before the election:
About 60% agree with Schmidt, i.e., that the Trump presidency has slowly but steadily crippled the U.S. along any conceivable axis: economically, socially, medically, reputationally, constitutionally, and morally.
Congressional Republicans are playing their cards close to their vests, virtually none making public statements in any way critical of the President, comporting themselves just as they did when Trump’s impeachment went before the Senate and scrupulously stayed away from all television cameras and no evidence was considered, nor any witnesses brought forth.
About 35% completely support Trump; they simply don’t get this.
From here, there are several possibilities:
This could come to a head before the election, either by Trump’s doing something so outrageous that the U.S. Congress is forced to change course and remove him, or by his simply seeing the handwriting on the wall and refusing to run.
If that doesn’t happen, expect to see mass voter suppression and blatant cheating in the election, where the U.S. gets to show the world that it truly has been reduced to the lawlessness of Earth’s many banana republics.
If that doesn’t work for Trump, he’ll leave office on or before Biden’s inauguration on January 20th, 2021, where he’ll face an avalanche of indictment on numerous criminal charges at the federal and state levels. That leaves him two options:
Stay and fight them, which will fulfill his dream of dominating the news cycle for the foreseeable future, or move with his family to a safe spot on the globe, putatively Russia. He certainly needs to get out of Dodge before his passport is revoked, and ultimately imprisoned.
In any of these scenarios, the very best America can hope for is that this disgrace and degradation ends with the prompt and bloodless removal of its 45th president, followed by swift justice, so as to enable a long slog back to international prominence and respect.
I join with Schmidt: few people with any understanding of the workings of the U.S. government and body politic thought this presidency was going to be good, but even fewer could have predicted that it would cause this level of damage so quickly.
