Nancy Pelosi’s grandmaster chess game against Donald Trump
Robert Mueller is releasing his report without further indictments. He doesn’t have to. Mueller has referred out numerous cases to other US Attorneys’ offices for indictments. Expect many more prosecutions. Meanwhile, Mueller is still prosecuting Roger Stone, and he still has ongoing cooperation with Rick Gates.
Once the Mueller Report is published, complete with expected redactions for national security purposes, it is almost certainly going to be thoroughly devastating for Donald Trump. The report will prove to be, effectively, Donald Trump’s political and personal epitaph. It will establish beyond question Trump’s criminal collusion with a foreign power to steal the 2016 election.
Nancy Pelosi knows all this already, and that is why she has taken impeachment of Donald Trump off the table for now. Democratic candidates for president in 2020 will use the Mueller report to destroy Donald Trump. If Trump remains the only Republican candidate in 2020 then the Mueller Report will become the handbook, the Bible, that every Democratic candidate running against him can and will use — in debates, in advertisements, in interviews, and that will be a Bible that Donald Trump can’t sign. In effect, Democrats need Donald Trump to remain exactly, precisely where he is until November of 2020, so they can use the Mueller Report to destroy and defeat him utterly.
If the Republicans have any sense, and there is nothing to suggest that they have any, they would be drafting articles of impeachment against Donald Trump even as we speak. A lone Republican Trump candidacy, that is almost predestined to lose in 2020, may very well spell the end of the Republican Party as a separate autonomous entity, at least the party as we recognize it today.
Should the GOP mount a 2020 challenger against Trump, then Trump will probably remain true to his narcissistic roots, refuse to resign, and further splinter his own party, sowing seeds of destruction from within so devastating that the GOP may never recover from it. The only option open to them is to impeach Trump and mount a new candidate.
I generally don’t like to second guess the identity of political inflection points, but Friday the 22nd of March has all the portents of one, and a significant one at that. The only worry we have in the meantime is that Donald Trump is about to become a deeply wounded animal. And a wounded animal with power, particularly one as evil as Trump, can be very dangerous. Nancy Pelosi knows that too. We are fortunate indeed to have so capable a grandmaster playing for our team.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.