Ah, but the strawberries….
by Tom Sullivan
Premature maybe, but Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson is already surveying possible replacements for President Donald Trump atop the Republican ticket in 2020. From Trump Loyalists to “True” Conservatives to Collaborationist Critics to Trump Kids to Neocon Revivalists, there isn’t much there to inspire Trump’s con-fed, resentment-stoked base should MAGA hats end up remaindered on eBay.
But it could happen. The Trump train and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment train are on a collision course, and the wheels are already coming off Trump’s. The acting president’s political legs have quickly gone wobbly. His already limited verbal ability has sunk to fourth-to-sixth-grade level. News outlets on Wednesday had to verify with the White House that the street corner-language letter Trump sent to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on October 9 was not a hoax.
Trump’s White House meeting with Pelosi and top congressional Democrats on Wednesday came after a House resolution rebuking Trump for his withdrawing U.S. troops from northern Syria passed 354-60. The meeting went so haywire, a Republican source inside the meeting told CNN Special Correspondent Jamie Gangel afterwards attendees were “shaken” and “shell-shocked.” Trump, the source said, “is not in control of himself. It is all yelling and screaming.”
A Republican source inside the Trump-Pelosi meeting described attendees as “shaken” and “shell-shocked” by the President’s demeanor.
“He is not in control of himself. It is all yelling and screaming.”
—@jamiegangel reports pic.twitter.com/OMxR0o7sTX— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) October 17, 2019
“I am ashamed for the first time in my career,” a member of U.S. Special Forces serving beside Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria told Fox News Oct. 9 after being ordered by Trump to withdraw. Even Fox News reported that.
Friday night, CNN published an open letter of apology to Kurdish soldiers from the unidentified wife of a Special Operations soldier who had fought beside and lived with Kurdish people in northern Iraq. “To read in international newspapers that the United States, my country, has abandoned the Kurds is absolutely heartbreaking,” she writes:
Hasty decisions like this have not only put your people in terrible danger, they make the situation for our soldiers there on the Syrian-Turkish border much more difficult. My husband was with you on that border not long ago and I can’t imagine what our soldiers’ families are feeling right now.
And it’s not just safety. It’s hard to imagine how difficult it is for American soldiers to hear a partner and ally’s calls for help and not be allowed to answer them. It’s also hard to imagine you having to turn to Putin or the Assad regime for support because you could no longer count on Americans to keep their promise.
Tony Schwartz, Trump’s writer for “The Art of the Deal,” explains in the Washington Post this doesn’t get any better:
When Trump was elected, some critics held out hope that he would grow in office, as other presidents have. No one believes that’s possible anymore. After Mick Mulvaney took over as Trump’s third chief of staff last December, he let it be known that his approach would be to “let Trump be Trump.” Mulvaney was simply succumbing to reality. As Trump himself has said, he is essentially the same person today that he was at age 7.
Dr. Bandy Lee, an assistant clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine, edited “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” a collection of essays by mental health professionals on Trump’s mental health “(or lack thereof),” Andrew Feinberg writes in The Independent. Based on conduct reported in the Mueller report, Lee and a group of experts believe Trump “doesn’t have the mental capacity to carry out his duties.”
Former White House Communications Director now a Trump critic, Anthony Scaramucci, believes Trump is “getting worse and worse” each week. “He will not be on the ballot for Republicans in November of 2020,” Scaramucci predicts.
That remains to be seen. But Beltway dwellers aren’t the only ones nervous about Trump’s stability.
My mother avoids any unpleasantness, as many Silents do. She frequently calls it all “dirty politics” whenever the subject is raised. But on Friday, this woman who lived through WWII, Korea, the McCarthy era, Vietnam, and the Cold War raised the subject herself in a phone call. The man whose twitchy thumb is “on the button,” as she said, has her worried. Telling her most U.S. nukes are pointed at Trump’s best friends’ countries was meant to be reassuring. I don’t think it was.
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) suggests Republicans might find it easier to find Trump unwell than to admit he has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.” In one scenario, removing Trump for incapacity via the 25th Amendment could come into play before impeachment runs its course. But there is little chance now that Cabinet members who share culpability in Trump’s perfidies will move against him. They’ll be too busy lawyering up and covering their own retreats to do what’s best for their country.
So, impeachment remains the most likely tool for the mad king’s rebuke, if not his removal. The New York Times Editorial Board provides a short list of impeachable offenses the Senate may have to consider in deciding whether Trump deserves to be removed. Crimes Against Humanity is not one of them.
US officials tell me ALARM BELL RINGING among diplomats in DC that U.S. could one day be held responsible for Crimes Against Humanity for ethnic cleansing of Syrian Kurds by opening the door to it, watching it, encouraging it (Trump's tweets and statements) and not stopping it.— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) October 19, 2019
If his presidency isn’t enough to render the Trump brand forever toxic, that would do it.