We told you Donald Trump’s downfall had reached the hostage standoff stage
Last night the AP broke the news that Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani have been extorting a Ukrainian gas company in order to line their own pockets. This morning a federal judge ruled that Mazars must turn over Trump’s tax returns to the New York grand jury that’s in the process of criminally indicting him. Now he’s embarking on a bizarre and deadly stunt involving Syria and Turkey that’s causing multiple Republican Senators (including Graham and McConnell) to publicly turn against him.
Last week Palmer Report wrote that we’d reached the “hostage standoff stage” of Donald Trump’s downfall. Trump’s presidency effectively ended when he got caught red handed in the Ukraine scandal and impeachment commenced against him. He’s been cornered. All that was left for Trump to do was take hostages and then decide how long he wanted the resulting standoff to last. He could try to use the hostages as leverage, but in reality, the longer he dragged the whole thing out, the worse the outcome would be for him.
Unfortunately, it turns out to be even more horrifying than we were expecting. When we referred to a “hostage standoff” we were talking about Trump holding the Oval Office hostage, and demanding a favorable resignation plea deal. Instead Trump has decided to take millions of Kurds hostage by putting them directly in harm’s way, and ensuring their deaths if something doesn’t quickly give.
Maybe Donald Trump thinks that threatening to have the Kurds murdered will cause the House to back down on impeachment. Maybe he thinks he can use this hostage situation to negotiate an immunity deal as part of his resignation. Or perhaps, like so many other desperate criminals who take hostages as a last resort, Trump isn’t following any real logic at all. In any case, if the Senate Republicans don’t immediately help the Democrats to oust Trump from office, then the Republicans might as well be murdering the Kurds themselves.
