Just how many House Republicans is Donald Trump taking down with him?
Just how poorly did Wednesday’s House hearing on the Durham probe go for Donald Trump and the Republicans? By the end of it, even John Durham seemed to be wishing he could sneak out a back door, find a time machine, and go back and never get involved with the debacle to begin with.
The Durham probe only happened to begin with because Bill Barr was trying to find a way to pacify Trump into believing he’d somehow magically be avenged. After Durham came up empty with zero prosecutions resulting in convictions, House Republicans only held Wednesday’s embarrassing hearing because they knew that Trump would want to see it.
Sure enough, Trump spent all day Wednesday (and into the night) making post after post on social media, claiming that the Durham hearing somehow vindicated him. Trump is seemingly the only person on earth who thought the Durham hearing went well for him. Then again, Trump is the only person on earth who thought his recent Fox News interview went well for him. He’s that far through the looking glass.
This all points to why House Republicans are still giving in to Donald Trump when he demands that something like the Durham hearing happen. Trump is about to go through multiple criminal trials. He’s going to prison. His life as he knows it is over. And once that sinks in for him, he might be inclined to spitefully take his most loyal Republican sidekicks down with him. So here they are, keeping him pacified on his way down, by giving him the ineffective nonsensical hearings that he alone is certain are somehow helping his future prospects.
It’s all such a ridiculous exercise. And yet this is what the Republican Party signed up for when it refused to kick Donald Trump to the curb back in 2016. Trump is going down, and the Republicans are scared to death he’ll take them down with him. The kicker is that, with Trump now so delusionally senile that he actually thinks things like this hearing are helping him, the Republicans have to worry that Trump might end up taking them down out of pure confusion.
