“We Need a Way for Trump To Resign”–Ahem
Sorry, but Trump won’t resign. Nobody knows what he’ll do, but facing the truth and acting like a rational human being simply won’t happen.
Look at the behavior we’ve seen, perfectly consistent from the day he took office. If something good happens anywhere on the globe, he takes full and immediate credit for it. He takes bad news, regardless of how directly it implicates him in some form of ineptitude or wrongdoing, and flips it on its head. Sometimes this “flipping” invokes accusing the media and/or the Democrats of inventing fake news designed to damage him; sometimes it’s the “deep state,” working mischievously behind the scenes to have him removed. Sometimes it’s something else. He does whatever it takes, regardless of how patently absurd.
He will lose in November, however, but he’s going nowhere until then. Let’s think about this:
U.S. Military. The armed forces has always considered Trump a grave risk to national security, and though that concern has intensified over time, it seems to have had little if any impact on his standing as president. His base doesn’t understand, or perhaps doesn’t care, that America’s top generals, some of whom have first hand experience working with him, e.g., Kelly and Mattis, consider him incapable of sound decision-making on our country’s behalf, since he’s loyal to nothing and no one other than himself. Yet all that hand-wringing at the Pentagon can’t be good for the president. What they’re doing to get him out of here is invisible to us civilians, but it’s hard to imagine the top brass is completely passive on this front.
Wall Street. The “1%” has harbored deep consternation about Trump’s ignorance and erratic behavior from the start, regarding dozens of things over the last three years, e.g., his inane foreign policy, the trade war that has decimated U.S. farming and manufacturing, and the skyrocketing national debt. Yet none of this appeared to have mattered much until his spiteful dismantling of the pandemic team and his subsequent deceit on the subject cemented into place the spreading of the coronavirus that has so far wiped out tens of trillions of dollars of wealth. Rich people don’t like that, and it’s hard to imagine that all that (remaining) money won’t do what it can to ensure Trump’s defeat in November.
“The Base.” Trump’s approval rating has taken a 5-point dip associated with his handling of the coronavirus. Moreover, a poll released Tuesday shows that only 37 percent of those polled have either “a good amount” or “a great deal” of trust in the information they hear from the president about the coronavirus, while 60 percent say they do “not very much” or “not at all” trust Trump’s words on the subject. The core base of hateful and ignorant people don’t mind being lied to about hundreds of different matters, but when it comes to impoverishment, sickness and death, apparently some of them draw the line. One might speculate that, as the virus takes an ever-deepening financial toll on (formerly) working people, this could turn even uglier for Trump.
Of course, anything can happen between now and November, and it would be foolish to think that Trump is going to go into the final countdown to the election without creating some real drama. It’s impossible to predict what form this could take, given that he’s already done everything conceivable to polarize the nation and galvanize his base. Maybe he’ll pardon a few more white collar felons and war criminals. He might even start a war somewhere, but Americans, even his supporters, have no appetite for that.
The only predictable aspect to this is that something outrageous is very likely to go down, before he ultimately loses the election. And precisely what he’ll do at that point is anyone’s guess.
