Dec. 10 Open Thread: The Wheels Have Come Off, Trump’s Driving on the Rims

Filed in National, Open Thread by on December 10, 2018

When Richard Nixon’s presidency fell apart, he was at least enough of an old political hack to keep up the outward appearance of a functioning administration. Chalk that up as yet another thing Donald Trump can’t do.

After weeks of publicly courting Nick Ayers, the Karl Rove of his generation, to be his new chief of staff, Trump gave John Kelly the boot — and got turned down by Ayers. An image-obsessed lunatic like Trump realizes that makes him look like a big-time loser, yet he had no Plan B to turn to, perhaps because he didn’t realize he has no producer to clean this up in the editing room.

You’ll notice that even our trolls have stopped pretending Trump didn’t do anything. Their story has shifted to “he didn’t do anything wrong,” with “they all do the same thing” next on the menu.

This leaves the ball squarely in the Senate’s court. They have pretended for two years that everything is normal, this is all just partisan politics, and it’s getting more and more obvious that this is another grand-scale exercise in self-delusion. The same thing happened to Nixon. Once Republicans saw that he was prepared to drag the party down with him, they turned on him. This batch will do the same, because even single-celled creatures practice self-preservation.

Nobody can say how this will end, but it hasn’t stopped them from speculating. Rather than round them all up, just enjoy Thom Hartmann’s what-if column on how we could wind up with President Pelosi.

As the late, great Ralph Moyed used to say, “Fish have to swim, birds have to fly, grifters have to grift.” So it is surprising to find that Trump is running an ongoing grift on his own campaign contributors? It’s true. Trump officially began running for re-election the day he was sworn in, and has solicited money for the effort. People have actually been stupid enough to donate to a guy who pretends to be a billionaire, who turned around and showed how he got his hands on what money he does have: his campaign pays the Trump organization for renting space that it doesn’t actually use. In many quarters, this is known as “fraud.”

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  1. RE Vanella says:

    Sunrise Movement had a huge Green New Deal demostration on the Capitol today. There were arrests.

    Then a march that ended with a speech from one of our own. Kerri Harris…

    https://mobile.twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1072193012468539392

    https://mobile.twitter.com/justicedems/status/1072192749443661826

  2. jason330 says:

    “This leaves the ball squarely in the Senate’s court. They have pretended for two years that everything is normal, this is all just partisan politics, and it’s getting more and more obvious that this is another grand-scale exercise in self-delusion.”

    I don’t know. Republican electeds still live in mortal fear of primaries from the right. Trump is now and will always be their guy.

    When Trump unleashes them (for real) on his enemies nobody in the GOP will want to me in the literal line of fire.

  3. Dave says:

    I hope this dribbles on without impeachment until 2020. Not that I think any impeachment would be successful, but stuff happens. President Trump is proof of that. Otherwise we would be stuck with a President Pence, who would get to run as a “clean’ incumbent which would be a Trump without the obvious baggage.

  4. RE Vanella says:

    You mean this squeaky guy with the charisma of Jeb on Quaaludes? Low energy, Mike? Trumpland loves fucking porn stars and grabbing pussies and just kissing without asking. Will they embrace Pence? No, they will not.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mike-pence-used-campaign-funds-to-pay-his-mortgage–and-it-cost-him-an-election/2016/07/15/90858964-49ed-11e6-bdb9-701687974517_story.html?utm_term=.d250cf3e4929

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/mike-pence-13k-campaign-funds-mortgage-golf-fees-article-1.2714118

    Irrelevant anyway. Chances on Senate conviction are NIL.