Trump is not going to give up his leadership of the Republican Party. Unlike all past presidents after leaving office, he will still insist on being the most important person in the room. With this reality, how can anyone in the party take control, announce a run for the White House in 2024 or for that matter, get Trump to shut up? The Republican Party is now, the Trump Party.
However.
If I am Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, how do I get rid of Trump without offending his base? I believe the answer is probably in the Southern District of New York. If no one in the party comes to the Don’s defense when he is brought up on charges, it will be those liberal Democrats in New York who take him down, not someone like Nikki Haley. All Nikki has to do is, perhaps, work behind the scenes to maybe help the SDNY a little, or go on Fox and act surprised and disappointed when asked about the unfolding developments in the case. It is my hunch, that high ranking Republicans know they have a problem and if this retired grocery clerk can figure a way out, they are discussing the same thing.
At the very least, someone or some group sits down with the Don and offer the author (??) of The Art of the Deal the following deal: Shut up, fade into the distance, become as un-newsworthy as O.J. Simpson, play golf, and if you keep your mouth shut, we’ll see what we can do about this SDNY thing (or this Deutsche Bank thing, or this other thing), and if you don’t, none of us are going to get in the way of the courts. And buy the way, it would be a shame to see Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric in jail as well, we’re just sayin…..
The first step is to remove him from office.
My guess is that Bill Barr’s DoJ has already cranked up the shredders. I suspect that DoJ has been sitting on a literal mountain of evidence against ALL the people you mentioned as well as Mr. Trump and his family, evidence that they’ve been doing all in their power to keep buried. When was the last time you heard anything about Igor Frumin, Lev Parnas, or Dmitri Firtash? We know they were funneling hundreds of millions of dirty Russian money into GOP circles. That operation surely did not stop when Bill Barr squashed the investigation.
I think we’re seeing the end-game of a strategic play that Vladimir Putin began a very long time ago. Only time will tell whether Mr. Putin has any intention of withdrawing his assets, or whether he’ll let them “twist slowly in the wind”.
My guess is that Donald Trump and his family end up in Russia or a Russian protectorate. The rest are done for when all the evidence is revealed.
His name escapes me at the moment, but Art of the Deal definitely had a ghostwriter who has actually been pretty outspoken against Trump during the presidency.
The author’s name is Tony Schwarz and he was just on MSNBC.
Trump’s grip on the GOP is strong. The people you name—Pompeo, Haley, Rubio—do not represent the Trump wing of the party.
Trump will be in the position to anoint a successor to his faction, or even run in 2024. The dark forces he has invoked will not go away even if Trump retires to Mara Lago (or to prison). Nikki Haley et al. will have to contend with those forces, or come to terms with them.
I am all for some bloodletting there, but in the unlikely event that “the libs” take down Trump, it will martyr him the minds of Republicans.
The “libs” should not take down Donald Trump.
He should be investigated, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated by a politically neutral DoJ enforcing the rule of law.
Since he and his co-conspirators know full well the fate that awaits them, we can expect them to take extreme measures between now and when the new politically neutral AG takes office.
America must learn how to deal with those who choose to make a martyr of him. Germany learned how to do it, as did South Africa.
I think the biggest reason that the polls were wrong, both in the margin of the Biden victory and also with the Senate races, is that Trump actually gained voters this year. Not enough to top Biden, but enough to save the bacon of Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Joni Ernst, Steve Daines, and Lindsey Graham. Enough to flip some house seats the Democrats did not expect to lose, the experts actually thought they’d be padding their majority.
So there’s a lot of voters, the millions of newly registered Trump voters, who came out of the woodwork just to vote for this guy. Cotton, Hawley, Cruz, any of the Trump wannabes lack his charisma and personality which attracts these people. Maybe one of the kids or Tucker Carlson can, but I don’t see them having the same base. Trump was a unique force in American politics, and while Trumpism will continue without him, it might not be as effective without its best spokesmen.
Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini could not have governed without the support of Germans and Italians. We’ve all seen the newsreels of the huge crowds saluting Hitler. Even though those newsreels were carefully produced propaganda pieces, the reality was that Hitler was enormously popular.
It is true that there are millions of newly registered Trump voters. It would be surprising if that didn’t happen, since the media network that most Americans rely on for their information has been a propaganda arm of Donald Trump for the past four years. Television is a hugely influential medium that is perfectly suited for Donald Trump’s lies and gaslighting.
I think that America, and especially too many Democrats in America, must give up the fantasy that the sheer act of asking (or forcing) an entire population to vote results in a better outcome. This is the reason that I have never supported the various proposals to make voter registration automatic or to make voting compulsory.
A successful democracy absolutely requires a literate electorate, and it absolutely requires an electorate that is able and willing to make logic, reason, and objective fact more important than passion, belief, and brute force. This is also the basis of my objection to identity politics. Voting is a privilege, and it requires FAR more than just marking a box or pulling a level.
America is being racked by barely-controlled — or out of control — forces of tribalism, superstition, and religious cultism. The constraints of our Constitution, especially when applied in the bizarre fashion of literal originalism, assume facts about the electorate that were far more true in the 18th century than they are in the 21st century. Our political system doesn’t work when a majority of the electorate actively opposes fact, science, truth, and logic.
I agree that Donald Trump is the first genuine authoritarian demagogue that America has put in power. I do not think he’ll be the last.
I do not share your optimism that Trumpism might not be as effective without Donald Trump. I think it is likely, even probable, that another demagogue will emerge who is just as shameless, just as vicious, and just as egotistical as Donald Trump. If that next dictator brings the political skills of Ronald Reagan to the table, he or she will be MUCH more difficult to stop.
I think the fact that seventy million Americans voted for Donald Trump and even more voted for Trumpist candidates for the House and Senate is THE fundamental problem with American democracy today.
I think this is a cultural, rather than political, problem. Whatever it is that America has been doing since 1980 (because that is the election where this nightmare began) is not working.
I wish I knew how to change it. I do not.
“Voting is a privilege. . . “
This is about as pernicious as it gets.
There you go again, Bob.
He didn’t have to be quite so harsh, but this time I think I know what he’s getting at. Voting is a right rather than a privilege, but maybe the better way to phrase it would have been to point out that with rights come responsibilities – in this case the responsibility to educate oneself about the choices.
There is no dichotomy between “privilege” and “right”. There are hundreds of millions of people around the world who do not have the ability to meaningfully select the government that controls their lives. Voting is also a duty of every citizen, just as important as jury duty.
There is absolutely NOTHING “pernicious” about asserting that voting is a PRIVILEGE that far too many Americans take for granted.
An electorate that is illiterate, brainwashed by propaganda, unwilling to be informed by fact, logic and reason, and dominated by tribalism, superstition, and raw prejudice is NOT capable of setting policy for a first-world nation in the 21st century.
About 70 million Americans voted to keep Donald Trump in power, even after four years of his fascist and authoritarian gaslighting. That is a problem.
That is a problem that will NOT be solved by magical intervention. It will not be solved by the magical intervention of any deity, and it will not be solved by the magical intervention of universal voting.
It is a problem that is the direct result of four decades of GOP lies, deceit, and venal corruption. It will take about as long to undo, and will only be undone by truth, fact, science, and discipline.
I fully support efforts to make voting easy, accurate, and convenient. I fully oppose every effort to suppress voting. Every civilized American should view the 70 million votes in favor of Donald Trump as a wakeup call. That is representative of a large and apparently growing portion of the American public that is deplorable and dangerous.
We need to fix our culture — changes in the voting patterns will follow.
The solution to right-wing gaslighting is NOT leftwing gaslighting.
OK, but then you leave the biggest question on the table – HOW THE HELL DOES SUCH A DESPICABLE PERSON WHO HAS SHOWN US HIS STYLE FOR FOUR YEARS ACTUALLY GAIN VOTES?!