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Richard Nixon wrote the most dangerous time is the aftermath of a crisis when your guard is down. It’s the opposite for Donald Trump. He’s most dangerous when threatened in a crisis; he’s like a caged animal.
That’s where he is today, with plummeting polls, cracks in his MAGA base, an affordability crisis which he denies, a clueless approach to health care, stunning incompetence at the Justice and Defense Departments, embarrassing leaks and a sense that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is playing him.
Trump desperately fears the prospect of Democrats taking over at least one house of Congress, conceivably both. Controlling the agenda for hearings and subpoena powers, whistleblowers will have an avenue to expose maladministration and corruption. Some top Trump officials might even be held accountable.
Predictably he’s lashing out, doubling down on vitriolic rhetoric and extreme policies. When an Afghan refugee killed a National Guard member patrolling in Washington, Trump threatened to ban most migrants and escalated the presence of the National Guard, which is less to do with fighting crime and more about appearing tough.
As usual he blamed Joe Biden for a country overrun with “unvetted” migrants. He failed to mention the Afghan national accused in the Washington shooting was granted asylum this year by the Trump Administration.
The Trump-led Justice Department is bringing more charges against adversaries. A judge threw out the indictments against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letita James, because of gross prosecutorial incompetence. Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly is planning new indictments.
It is, as always, part of the Trump retribution obsession. It’s also a diversion from affordability, especially on health care -- ten years of assailing Obamacare Trump never has kept a promise to propose an alternative -- or matters like FBI chief Kash Patel using a government plane to go see his girlfriend or the multibillion crypto scam.
No one, probably including Trump, is sure whether he plans to actually attack Venezuela. If he does more than a genuine effort to stop the flow of drugs it’ll be a “wag the dog” moment after the film where a fake war is waged to distract from a presidential scandal.
My guess is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a personal and professional embarrassment, is a short-termer; he’s not a major national security player, has little support in the military ranks or on Capitol Hill. He is blaming the killing of two survivors of a missile attack on a boat off Venezuela on the Special Operations commander.
The speculation is that the most likely replacement would be Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a law school classmate and close pal of Vice President Vance.
Curb your enthusiasm even while welcoming Hegseth’s departure. Driscoll terminated the West Point appointment of Jen Easterly, a highly qualified cybersecurity expert in both Republican and Democratic Administrations, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, Rhodes Scholar, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He vetoed the appointment because of complaints from loony conspiracy-peddler, Laura Loomer. If he can’t stand up to Loomer, he’s not going to stand up to Trump or Putin.
The greatest danger may be what actions Trump might take to assure the Democrats don’t win the congressional elections next year. The initial shot was the unprecedented effort and pressure, in between census years, to gerrymander congressional seats in Republican held states. The Democrats are countering and while the GOP probably will end up with an edge, it won’t be sufficient to protect a very thin majority.
Therefore they will resort to other measures restricting voting. Skeptics note that efforts to steal the 2020 Presidential election failed. But when Trump tried that, there was critical inside resistance from the Justice Department, the FBI, the Defense Department, White House counsels, and the Vice President.
Today all those posts are held by Trump loyalists.
For the past several years Republicans have worked to obtain more seats on the thousands of election boards to make it easier to challenge votes. There also will be more pressure on the Postal Service; mail ballots now are used more by Democrats and Trump wants to curtail them.
While I dismiss recurring fears that facing defeat Trump would call off the midterms, he will use the intimidation card, sending in forces under some fabricated emergency, and poll watchers intended to frighten some voters. And they are far more prepared to mount endless legal challenges in Democratic strongholds.
The election is eleven months away. But the Democrats better move quickly to catch up.
There are no surprises here, and I am constantly amazed at anyone who is surprised. Everyone with half a brain knew who this guy was from day one: a malignant, narcissistic, misogynistic, vengeful, amoral, power hungry, liar, huckster, and con man obsessed with his public images, dying for acceptance and adoration, and utterly disdainful of our electoral process, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
Most Republicans leaders saw this, made feeble attempts to take him off the stage in 2016, then, realizing how successfully he conned so many of the electorate, assumed they could use him to advance their own ends of a one-party system.
Now he is hung around their necks, and ours, like Coleridge’s albatross, and like all such self-absorbed autocrats, will lay waste to everything within his reach rather then lose the battle for supremacy.
Fortunately he is also astonishingly incompetent, and as his mental and physical powers decline, he is providing us with an invaluable lesson about the fragility of our Republic. We have only to see it a bit more clearly than far too many of us have been willing to up until now.
BeenAdicKKK IS a caged animal.