This post will stay pinned at the top of the page for a while. Please scroll down for newer posts. — d
A year of living dangerously, straight ahead
by digby
I know it’s hard to believe that things are going to get worse. But there’s every chance it will. All you have to do is look at what’s happened since the election. I knew it was going to be a turbulent lame duck session but I didn’t think it would go quite this way.
First, the good news is that he hasn’t fired Mueller. But he did fire Jeff Sessions and replaced him temporarily with a henchman whom he has already reportedly pressured about the Cohen investigation (and who likely has told him what he knows about the Mueller investigtion as well.) Now he’s nominated yet another to replace him who auditioned for the job by sending around memos railing against the Mueller investigation. So stay tuned on that one. With his erratic performance on everything else I don’t think we can’t be sure that he’s not going to wake up in the morning and fire Mueller with a tweet and take his chances. He seems to be in a “shoot the moon” kind of mood. (Or maybe it’s just “fuck all you people, I’m doing it.”)
Obviously this shutdown is a trainwreck. We’ve dealt with them before, of course. In fact this is the third one of Trump’s presidency. But because of this one is specifically the result of Trump’s base demanding that he hold his breath until he turns blue over that stupid wall, it’s a bit more dicey than usual. At this point he seems to have decided to keep it closed until the Democrats take over the House so he can pretend it’s all their fault. He’ll be able to call on some primal misogyny that has worked so well for him the past, with pelosi as his foil, so I expect he’s looking forward to it. It’s not going to be pretty.
It’s possible they’ll find a way to resolve this before then if they can convince him somehow that it’s in his best interest, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Then we have the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis (who Trump has now told to get out immediately), on top of the exile of Chief of Staff John Kelly, Rex Tillerson, H.R. McMaster and a whole list of others who left either because their corruption scandals got the best of them or they failed to properly lick Trump’s boots. It’s been a non-stop administration bloodbath with the instability actually getting worse rather than better as time goes by. And the stable genius is the head of the rotting fish of his administration.
And now Trump is about to be hit by a freight train called “The Oversight Express” and he doesn’t have a clue about what’s coming. The Democrats already have dozens of leads on corruption, collusion, and crimes that have been developed in the press over the last two years. But they are going to have to hit the round running in order to develop the case in a coherent form for the American people in time for the next election. The Mueller probe will likely put a lot of meat on that bone as well. (As I argued earlier, impeachment may be the best way to wrap everything up in a neat narrative, whether the Senate does its duty and convicts him or not.)
The president is losing what few moorings he ever had, living in a delusion wrought by the sycophants around him, Fox News and the foolish empty suits in the Freedom Caucus. He thinks his gut is leading him to a great victory in 2020 to validate his genius once and for all. It’s actually been destroying him — slowly at first and eventually all at once.
Unfortunately, he may take us all down with him.
We’ll be keeping a close on all these coming attractions here at Hullabaloo. It’s like one of those 20 car pile-ups on the freeway. You can’t avert your eyes even if you want to. Hopefully our analysis and synthesis will be of some use to you as you go about your lives trying not to feel like you’re going crazy.
If you find what we write here every day to be valuable, I hope you’ll consider putting some change in the Hullabaloo holiday stocking. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to help support this blog for another year, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.
And I wish all of you Very Happy Hollandaise!
cheers — digby
Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405
.