Here’s how Donald Trump’s downfall is going to play out
Robert Mueller and the House Democrats have, very smartly, pinned Donald Trump down by making clear to him that – at the least – he’s going to be indicted and arrested the minute he’s no longer president. This is a brilliant plan which should help force Trump to cut a resignation deal in exchange for partial leniency. Unfortunately, it’s also handed the media a rather absurd new scare tactic for getting people worked up so they’ll tune in.
One too many cable news pundits are now painting a rather dire picture. Because Donald Trump now needs to remain in office to avoid getting arrested, he’s going to magically win reelection in 2020. Nevermind that he has an approval rating of 35% and he has multiple felonies hanging around his neck; Trump will get reelected just because. Then he’ll get to stay in office until January 2025, by which time the statute of limitations will have run out on all his crimes, and he’ll magically get away with it all. But this is about as realistic as Trump riding off on a unicorn.
Here’s how this is really going to play out. In the coming days or weeks, Robert Mueller and his prosecutorial allies are going to keep exposing more of Donald Trump’s crimes. Each will be more severe than the last. The current national debate about whether Trump should be ousted for these two poorly-understood felonies will give way to a national debate about whether Trump should be ousted for ten obstruction felonies. That will in turn give way to whether Trump should be ousted for twenty Russia-related felonies, and so on.
This grinding and escalating process, which will be driven home on a daily basis by House committee hearings into each of Trump’s newly exposed crimes, will create an atmosphere in which the majority of Americans – including a number of Republican voters – decide they’d rather just be done with Trump. That will place pressure on just enough Republican Senators to selfishly decide the best move for themselves is to finish Trump off. Once a few GOP Senators say they’re willing to vote for removal, Trump will see that this is headed toward forcible removal – and he’ll have no choice but to resign.
Donald Trump’s resignation deal will include some leniency on federal charges. The degree of leniency will depend on how soon he agrees to resign, and the amount of public pressure for his ouster; these things are all about leverage. Trump will then have to take his chances on state level charges in New York. You and I know that the state will convict him on things like money laundering and sentence him to more years than his natural lifespan, but Trump is probably arrogant enough to think that he can go home to New York and beat the state charges.
It’s not difficult to see where this is all headed. In fact Mueller and the Democrats are telegraphing their strategy with a fair degree of transparency, because part of their plan requires Donald Trump vaguely figuring out that he has no other way out. The trouble is, if the pundits on cable news tell you how this is going to end, you might change the channel and go watch football instead.
Throughout Donald Trump’s long and winding (and far too slow) downfall, the mainstream media has used various tactics to keep you scared enough to remain tuned in. They’ve tried to convince you that Trump was going to fire Robert Mueller at any minute, even though he was never in a position to pull it off, or that he was going to pardon everyone, even though pardons don’t work that way. Now that Trump is finally and fully cornered with only one way out, the media wants us to believe that he’s going to get away with it all by magically getting re-elected. Stay vigilant, but don’t fall for nonsensical ratings-driven scare tactics.
