Donald Trump’s Saturday Night Massacre is underway tonight, but it isn’t what you think it is
So far this evening Donald Trump has fired Alexander Vindman, Yevgeny Vindman, and Gordon Sondland – three people who each played a role in helping to get Trump impeached for his crimes. That means this is something of a Saturday Night Massacre, even though it’s a Friday. But this isn’t what it looks like on the surface – and in fact it has nothing to do with Richard Nixon’s original Saturday Night Massacre at all.
When Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre took place, it was when the Watergate scandal was still coming to the surface. It was before the early stages of the impeachment process forced Nixon to resign. The “massacre” was all about Nixon trying to prevent Watergate from taking his presidency down. The massacre was incredibly corrupt, disturbing, and unfortunate – but it was an attempt on Nixon’s part at winning his battle to survive Watergate.
What we’re seeing tonight from Donald Trump is nothing more than petty revenge after the fact. Nixon was trying to save himself with his Saturday Night Massacre. Hitler was trying to consolidate his power with his Night of the Long Knives. Trump is attempting neither. He already survived impeachment, in the sense that he wasn’t removed. Now he’s retaliating against some people who probably couldn’t have hurt him any further even if he’d left them in place. Instead, by firing them in punitive and illegal fashion, he’s potentially making things worse for himself.
The upshot is that Donald Trump gains nothing from these firings, other than getting revenge. These antics won’t magically make Trump more powerful. If anything, this kind of thing tends to motivate even more people in an administration to speak up. Nor will Trump gain a single 2020 vote with these antics. Instead, this could end up costing him the votes of his least enthusiastic supporters outside of his base. What we’re seeing from Trump tonight is nothing but weakness, stupidity, and evidence that he’s not focused on winning in 2020.
