Here’s why Donald Trump can’t fire Don McGahn – but he might do it anyway

| 9:10 am EDT August 21, 2018
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Over the weekend the name “Don McGahn” instantly became a household name, as the mainstream media finally confirmed Palmer Report’s ten month old story about McGahn having sold Donald Trump out to Special Counsel Robert Mueller a long time ago. It’s led numerous observers to predict that Trump will now quickly force his White House Counsel out of a job. But there’s a specific reason why Trump can’t fire McGahn without risking swift and severe harm to his own plan to save himself.

After Palmer Report first broke the story of Don McGahn flipping on Donald Trump late last year, we explained in January of this year why McGahn’s job was nonetheless secure. Simply put, while McGahn has been unwilling to help Trump commit obstruction of justice, McGahn is a conservative extremist, and he’s been spearheading Trump’s appointment of numerous unqualified far-right judges. Trump has needed to keep making those appointments stick, because – for all the various other noise floating around – it’s the primary reason GOP leaders like Mitch McConnell have continued to keep Trump in office. Now the issue is more pressing.

Donald Trump’s plan to save himself consists of getting his corrupt nominee Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court. Trump seems to think that this will prompt any Supreme Court ruling to go his way when it comes to issues like him being forced to testify, or him trying to pardon himself and his kids. Because Trump never does his homework, and he mistakenly assumes that every Republican and conservative in politics is going to be personally loyal to him, he’s blissfully unaware that – based on the track records of the other eight Justices – he’d still be unlikely to get a favorable ruling on such matters.

But in Donald Trump’s clueless mind, if he can get Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court, he’ll be able to magically save himself from the Trump-Russia investigation. Don McGahn is his key to getting Kavanaugh confirmed. So if Trump fires McGahn in a rage right now, he knows he’ll be sabotaging his own (fatally flawed) plan to save himself. That said, if you look at Trump’s increasingly psychotic tweets since the McGahn news broke, we wouldn’t be shocked if he fires him out of pure self defeating spite. It’s going to be an interesting week.