If/when the GOP feels like they have more to lose by keeping Trump around than they do by letting him fall. Not a minute before that. Maybe the Mueller report will tip that balance, but I wouldn’t count on any sense of moral or legal responsibility suddenly appearing in Mitch McConnell’s soul.
The founders of the country anticipated a President as venal and dangerous as Trump, but what they couldn’t account for is Congress being willing (eager, even) to ignore and facilitate the corruption.
It’s frustrating but we have to remember that the Mueller investigation has been barreling ahead at an incredible pace compared to pretty much every other special counsel investigation in history. This is basically a combination between a white collar criminal investigation and an organized crime investigation with a side of treason.
“Trump ‘catch and kill’: SDNY won’t prosecute National Enquirer (AMI) because they’re helping investigators”
It took me most of the summary to unpack that headline.
I get it, but he can bow out in less than 2yrs. Jail after the fact? Eh, I guess that will appeal to a sense of “justice”, but it’s like the fire department coming to hose down the smouldering rubble after your house burns down. Glad you’re finally here, but the damage is done.
I think it’s very likely Trump will finish his term. Real action requires either, the DOJ deciding they will/can indict a sitting president or the GOP deciding to remove the president (impeachment in the house is just step 1).
Maybe the DOJ decides to overrule the memo that says they can’t indict, but I find that unlikely. More unlikely is that senate Republicans grow balls and remove Trump post impeachment. Frankly, Trump has shown that the system is not built all that well. If the only means for removing a criminal president is a political process (impeachment/removal) it sets the system up for failure. Especially when the Senate is a representational nightmare (California has the same number of reps as Wyoming after-all).
I think the only thing we can count on right now is that none of us know what the hell is going to happen, and anybody who says “well, X has happened, which means that Y is going to happen and then Z is inevitable” is full of shit and doesn’t want us to remember how many times such predictions fell apart over the last couple years. I lean toward kevin’s position below that I think Trump will probably finish his term out, but I wouldn’t bet a cup of coffee on that.
I think that jail after he’s out of office is extremely unlikely given our reticence to hold former office-holders accountable for anything, but again, who the hell knows?
We know for certain that any other President in modern history would have been utterly politically crippled and more likely thrown out of office for a fraction of what we know about Trump, but all that tells us is that the rules and norms we took for granted no longer really apply. Whether they can ever come back is another question entirely.
And start the short timer for when Fox News announces that he was a secret Democrat all along!
Looks like Trump has a little Pecker problem
LIAR LIAR, HEAD ON FIRE
Trump’s Lawyer and Pecker Implicated in Porn Payoff
The fantasy is disrupted by the fact that Drumpf would never walk the prison yard; hell, he couldn’t walk 250 yards to Bush’s funeral.
I get a strong feeling that the quote attributed to Louis the XV is being played out in 21srt century America–“After me, the Deluge”. The damage Trump and his hangers-on have done to America and the world will continue to pull us down for decades, if not centuries.
LOL. Centuries? Really?
If the actions of our earliest Presidents set precedents that continue to shape our nation in profound ways centuries later then it’s not unreasonable to suppose the actions of a modern-day President could have repercussions for centuries to come.
Everything effects something else somewhere down the line. Butterfly effect and all. Though if one wants to compare Trump to the earliest presidents who actually set up the majority of the first laws - hooo boy - when did y’all suddenly find that much respect for him? He hasn’t done anything like that.
But other than the Supreme Court appointees, nothing he’s done can’t be undone easily. The most egregious acts have probably been EOs, IIRC. I still stand by my point that the holes he’s dug aren’t anywhere deep enough to “pull us down for… centuries.”
I’m thinking more along the lines of assholes like Andrew Jackson, who created precedent not so much by which laws he passed but by which ones he got away with breaking. One needn’t be worthy of respect to change the course of history.
Fair point. But he’s no Andrew Jackson. More of an Andrew Johnson. Other than his buffoonery, I am not sure his legacy is going to be very memorable.
Mitch McConnell has a soul?
