The Donald Trump resignation narrative truly has taken hold

| 6:18 pm EDT April 12, 2018
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After reporter April Ryan asked the White House Press Secretary this week whether Donald Trump was planning to resign as his criminal scandals close in on him, Palmer Report asserted that the resignation question was officially on the table. It doesn’t matter what Trump currently thinks about resignation; what matters is that the question threatened to frame and define his presidency until it became a self fulfilling prophecy. Now we’re seeing evidence that the narrative is indeed taking hold.

After the Trump resignation question was officially put on the table, Esquire ran an article written by the liberal Charles P. Pierce titled “Republicans Must Be Thinking About a President Mike Pence Right Now.” The New York Times ran an op-ed written by the conservative Ross Douthat titled “Why Not Mike Pence?” We could provide a whole lot of reasons for that latter question, but the point is that the prospect of Trump resigning is now finally being discussed for real, by the news outlets that everyone reads.

Again, it doesn’t matter right now whether Donald Trump has any intention of resigning. Some think he’ll follow the pattern of his six bankruptcies, and bail on the presidency the minute he realizes he’s going to lose. Some think he’ll try to stick it out to the bitter end, when he’s impeached and has to be dragged out of the White House by U.S. Marshals. We’ll see. But what matters is that his presidency is now in the process of being defined by the question of whether he’ll resign.

Whether you’re a president or any other public figure, it’s the questions being asked the most loudly and insistently about you that tend to define your reputation or tenure, far more so than the answers to those questions. The last time the resignation question became the defining narrative of a presidency, it backed Richard Nixon into a corner where he couldn’t focus on anything but fending off the question, until we got his eventual answer. However much longer Donald Trump lasts in office, and however he exits, it’s difficult to see him escaping the resignation question for the remainder of his tenure. Support Palmer Report.