Death by a thousand cuts

If you’ve managed to catch up on yesterday’s whirlwind of news, you’re aware that Donald Trump had (quite possibly by far) his worst day yet. One would-be biggest achievement fell apart. One of his people got caught red handed committing espionage. Another person flipped on one of his people. His biggest adversaries boasted more pain is about to rain down on him. Yet Trump still woke up in the White House today, and that’s led some within the Resistance to worry that nothing is going to take this guy down. Fortunately, that’s not the case.

I can tell you that no specific event, bombshell, revelation, or piece of evidence is going to magically cause a trap door to instantly open up under Donald Trump’s desk. Our political system has been designed from the start to make ousting a criminal president an extraordinarily long and grinding process, because it’s the only way to prevent criminals in other parts of the government from ousting a solid president for underhanded reasons.

I’ve said from Day One that the only way Trump would be ousted before the midterms was if his approval rating fell below the 30% mark. As it turned out, his lowest single poll number was 32%, and his lowest polling average was in the mid thirties. He’s only a couple points above that mark now, meaning he hasn’t actually bounced back, even if the media has tried to spin it that way. But the Republican majority in Congress simply wasn’t going to oust him unless it concluded that ousting him would improve its chances in the midterms. That number was always 30%. It didn’t quite happen. That means we’re stuck doing this, for now, the incremental way.

There was never a moment during Watergate in which a single development magically ousted Richard Nixon – because it doesn’t work that way. It wasn’t as if Woodward and Bernstein published a bombshell article which forced him to resign the next day. Even the Watergates tapes didn’t single handedly force his ouster. Instead, Nixon’s presidency died as a result of death by a thousand cuts. Every new scandal, every new bombshell, every new piece of evidence served to further chip away at his viability, until one day enough of it was gone that the equilibrium had finally shifted against him.

Nixon’s allies among the Republicans and Southern Democrats didn’t suddenly wake up one morning with a conscience and force him out. Instead they woke up one morning and decided that so much of his viability was gone, they had to side against him in order to remain viable themselves. That’s when he was ousted. Even then, Nixon still had an approval rating in the twenties, and his most diehard supporters in Congress were still on his side. But it didn’t matter, because enough had finally and cumulatively piled up. And yes, as Nixon was ever closer to being shoved out the door, he became more erratic.

Donald Trump is far closer to the exit door today than he was twenty-four hours ago. Getting played by Kim Jong-Un was a bodyblow that erased the silly notion that he might somehow be talented at this job despite being a criminal. Roger Stone getting caught committing espionage on the campaign’s behalf is finally proof that not only was there collusion with Russia and other foreign entities, it was of the severely criminal kind.

We all know where this is leading. The Democrats are likely to win the majority in Congress in the November elections, and if so, they’ll begin impeachment proceedings as soon as they officially take control in early January. But of the two presidents who have been impeached, neither was ousted. And when it comes to the one president who was ousted, he wasn’t impeached. The impeachment process will gut Trump like a proverbial fish, laying bare his treasonous theft of the election and his lifetime of serious financial crimes.

It’ll whittle Trump’s remaining viability to zero, and at some point during the impeachment hearing process, just enough Republicans in Congress will decide that they’re not going down with him. Once there are enough votes to reach that supermajority, the laws of politics will force Trump out, long before any conviction and removal vote is cast. At that point most, but not all, Republicans in Congress will still be on Trump’s team – but there won’t be enough of them to stop his ouster.

Donald Trump’s presidency will die from death by a thousand cuts. Yesterday he suffered several major cuts. As has always been the case, no trap door opened up underneath him. But he’s a lot closer to the door than he was yesterday. Anyone claiming otherwise is either too unfamiliar with the realities of politics to understand how this works, or too weary to see it for what it is. Ousting a president is a marathon. Yesterday was a major step in rounding the corner.