Donald Trump’s Waterloo
Over the weekend, as it became clear just how badly Donald Trump was botching his initial response to the white supremacist terror attack in Charlottesville, I wrote that it could end up becoming his very own Hurricane Katrina (link). His response to the Charlottesville crisis was so tepid and inept and so lacking in leadership that it set him on a steady path toward the exit door. But scratch all that now. This is turning into Donald Trump’s Waterloo.
After Trump reluctantly read a prepared speech yesterday in which he finally and weakly distanced himself from white supremacists, it quickly became clear that he was already regretting that moment of capitulation. Last night he began retweeting racist screeds. By today he was retweeting depictions of violence. It was clear that he was looking to set the whole thing on fire, just so he could say he’d flamed out in his own preferred way. And so sure enough, by the time he gave another nationally televised speech today, his resulting shocking and historic meltdown was fairly predictable.
At one point during today’s speech, Donald Trump defended white supremacists by saying that some of them were good people. At another point today, he compared George Washington – who founded the United States – to Robert E. Lee, who took up arms against the United States. He went back to his original fictional position in which he insisted that the violence is coming equally from white supremacists and those who oppose them. And by the time Donald Trump was finished setting himself on fire today, there was nothing left of his failed presidency but the scattered ashes floating among the stunned silence of the people in the room.
His approval rating, which was already deep into the thirties, will now dip into the twenties as his least enthusiastic supporters decide he’s finally crossed a line that even they can’t live with. I wrote that Trump’s initial reaction to Charlottesville had handed the Republican Congress enough political cover to impeach him, but that the cowards would still wait for another shoe to drop (link). After Trump’s jarring, demented, and traitorous speech today, and the tidal wave of pressure that’ll follow, the GOP will now have to think again. Today was Donald Trump’s Waterloo. This was his last meaningful battle. He lost the office of the presidency today. It’s now just a matter of when and how it’s taken away from him. Regular readers, feel free to support Palmer Report
