Depends on the issue. Pence is a lot less likely to start any trade wars or actual wars.
When it comes to social stuff he’ll be a fucking nightmare, but the republic can survive that easily.
For the record, I think it unlikely tRump resigns and even more unlikely he’s impeached, but let’s employ a bit of fan fiction … because why not.
Trump resigns and Pence is President. I get that nothing matters to Republican voters and they they are impervious to facts and logic (after all, 75% of Republican voters think it’s at least somewhat likely Obama ‘wire tapped’ Trump), but Pence would effectively be a lame duck. There is simply no precedent for a President quitting within months of getting elected and it would be difficult for Pence to keep the stench of scandal off him. And besides, a large chunk of the “tRump coalition” would simply not vote in upcoming elections.
But with the more likely event tRump remains, he’s toxic. We’re three months in - what does this look like next year or in 2018? Maybe the Great Mattering will begin.
(Or not, I don’t know.)
Civil liberties and the environment would like to have word with you 
What does this mean, in practice? Why can’t a Pence administration still get legislation through Republican controlled Senate and Congress?
I mean he’d just be rubber stamping GOP bills like Trump, the difference would be basically nothing, though the stink of scandal could impede the GOP quite a bit.
This right here. We’ve already seen the HFC in action and so called moderate R’s bailed on the tRumpcare bill. The latter would be running scared so they would be hesitant to go along with the zanier things the HFC wants.
Which is not to say bad things won’t stop, it just might slow from a flood to a steady rain.
I suppose the only question is what’s worse for the GOP: this slow, steady drip and stench of scandal from the Trump administration, or a full fledged ‘President resigns!’ affair, after which things probably get more onto an even keel.
Personally I think the former, but obviously the GOP still believes the latter.
It’s times like this when reddit shines. The megathread on this has some fantastic summaries. First up, the Flynn timeline from /u/ZDAXOPDR:
[quote]Put it on the board!
Flynn: a timeline
April 2014 - Flynn is fired as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (“abusive with staff, didn’t listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc.” according to Colin Powell) (source).
October 2014 - Retaining his top-level national security clearance, Flynn founds Flynn Intel Group, a consulting firm, and starts performing intelligence work for foreign clients.
Late Summer 2015 - Flynn begins advising the Trump campaign (source).
August 2015 - Flynn receives a $15,000 speaking fee from Volga-Dnepr Airlines, a Russian airfreight company that the United Nations had suspended from its list of approved vendors after a corruption scandal involving an indicted Russian United Nations official (source).
October 2015 - Flynn receives an additional $15,000 speaking fee from the subsidiary of a Russian company specializing in “uncovering Western government spyware,” Kaspersky Lab. Ruslan Stoyanov, head of Kaspersky’s computer incidents investigation unit is later arrested in Russia, for treason, in December 2016 (source).
December 2015 - Seated directly at Vladimir Putin’s right hand, Flynn appears at a gala hosted by Kremlin-controlled Russia Today (RT). He receives more than $45,000 for participating in he event. The event occurred in Russia, and his travel and accommodations were covered (source).
February 2016 - Flynn increases his role with the Trump campaign and is later vetted as a possible Trump VP pick (source).
July 2016 - Flynn leads crowds at the Republican National Convention in chants of “Lock her up!”, saying “if I did a tenth of what she did, I would be in jail today!” (source).
August 9, 2016 - Flynn signs a contract on with Inovo, a Dutch firm owned by Ekim Alptekin, the chairman of the Turkish-American Business Council. The council is run by an appointee of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Flynn is assigned to investigate Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and was blamed by Erdogan for helping instigate a failed coup (source).
Flynn ultimately receives $530,000 before the contract terminated in November 2016.
August 17, 2016 - Flynn begins attending classified intelligence briefings with candidate Trump (source).
September 2016 - Flynn meets with Turkey’s ministers of foreign affairs and energy, Erdogan’s son-in-law, and other officials at an undisclosed New York hotel, in a meeting arranged by Alptekin. Among other topics, Flynn discusses a plan for “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk [Gulen] away” without going through the legal extradition process (source 1, 2).
November 8, 2016 - Flynn publishes a lengthy op-ed entitled “Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support”. He states that “We need to see the world from Turkey’s perspective” and brands Gulen as “a radical Islamist”. Flynn did not disclose to the publisher that he was being paid by Inovo (source).
November 18, 2016 - Flynn accepts president-elect Trump’s offer of the position of National Security Advisor.
Nov./Dec. 2016 - Flynn allegedly meets with Austrian far-right Freedom Party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, at Trump Tower. Strache announces weeks later that his party has signed a cooperation agreement with Vladimir Putin’s ruling party. The Trump transition team later denied that the meeting occurred (source).
December 2016 - Flynn secretly discusses relief from U.S. sanctions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak on the same day the Obama administration announced retaliatory measures in response to interference in the presidential campaign by the Russian government (source).
Flynn later lies to the FBI about the discussions in an interview in January 2017 (source).
January 20, 2017 - Flynn officially becomes Trump’s National Security Advisor.
January 22, 2017 - The Wall Street Journal reports that Flynn is under investigation by U.S. counterintelligence agents for his communications with Russian officials (source).
February 2017 - Flynn is forced out of his role as NSA after The Washington Post reports that Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had warned the Trump White House in late January that Flynn had not been truthful about his contacts with Russia related to sanctions and that he was vulnerable to blackmail by Russian intelligence (source).
March 2017 - Flynn files papers acknowledging that he worked as a foreign agent in 2016 representing the interests of the Turkish government in a dispute with the United States (source).
Flynn tells the FBI and congressional officials investigating the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia that he is willing to be interviewed in exchange for a grant of immunity from prosecution (source).[/quote]
Then a summary of JUST YESTERDAY from /u/wil_daven_:
[quote]
Just to recap Here is a list of things that have happened, JUST TODAY
This has just been an Amaze-balls day in political news.
Ivanka takes official White House role/title
NYT article claims 2 WH staffers helped Nunes
Trump tweets calling NYT “Fake News” and bashing the House Freedom Caucus and basically all Dems.
4+ hours of fascinating SIC testimony Session 1 Session 2
Clint Watts: “Follow the trail of money and dead Russians”
Dr. Rid
SIC hearing confirms Rubio’s primary campaign was hacked
Rubio confirms HE was hacked recently
SIC hearing states "GOP Primary results could have been much different
Nunes and Schiff meet.
Really odd Spicer presser. Something clearly bothering him…
White House sends letter to IC’s offering to share info
Schiff presser announcing Comey/Rogers closed hearing now on and that “This (Weird WH/Nunes BS) will NOT distract us from Russia investigation”.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff resigns
Flynn rumored to offer testimony in exchange for immunity.
Flynn’s lawyers confirm, by saying “He has a story to tell”
Ashley Feinberg from Gizmodo find’s Comey’s secret Twitter account, and then he Low-Key confirms it!
Oh, wait… Did we say TWO WH staffers helped Nunes? JK, WaPo reporting it was at least 3
Paul Ryan claims he won’t need Dems for “New AHCA”
Rand Paul on CNN basically saying Trump/Russia is NBD
I’m sure I’m missing something(s)
Holy shit this day is amazing
EDIT to Add:
Pence has to break a tie vote, essentially defunding Planned Parenthood.
Pence can’t be alone with women
Is the White House ‘Spying’ on the FBI? How else did they have info to give Nunes? (thanks Rachel Maddow)
Scott Pruitt under review for lying under oath during Senate confirmation hearings for EPA Sec. regarding his emails
The term ‘Climate Change’ banned at the Energy Dept.
Jester Actual tweeting: #FLASH A previously reliable source says they have 2 further sources stating Trump is “considering his options, including resignation”.
Trump resignation WILL happen soon. He knows they have him on tape, will resign on condition of Pence pardon.
Reports surfacing that Flynn will plead 5th if called to testify without immunity. Per Carol Lee, WSJ
Former chairman of RNC Steele told WWR at lunch that Trump will not finish his term; advises clients to bolster ties w/VP Pence
Unconfirmed reports of a “Mandatory Emergency Staff Meeting” at White House I’ve only seen one reddit comment about this so far. I don’t think it’s accurate…
An ind journalist I have worked with-who has been reliable-says they have 2 sources that say Trump is considering options-incl resignation.
P.S. For anyone worried about Pence taking over… I don’t think he’ll be sticking around if this goes South
I have to get up and go to work in 5 hours (5:30am edt). Talk amongst yourselves.[/quote]
I wish the links carried through, either way, both of those link out to the stories.
If Pence takes over, the only way he’ll survive is to completely purge all WH staff and anybody associated with Trump or his campaign. That still probably won’t be enough.
The brush trump is wielding to tar everyone around him is at least the size of his ego - fucking huge. I can’t see how Pence could survive, except for reneging on a promised pardon after Trump’s resignation and hanging him out to dry to distance himself.
But, we are getting ahead of ourselves with wild speculation.
This seems like a sensible analysis of the Flynn immunity thing.
I suspect that Flynn’s lawyer is really targeting Congress. He is hoping that one of the Congressional committees will take the bait and grant him immunity in exchange for his testimony. If that happened, it would be extremely difficult to prosecute Flynn after he testified. Remember Oliver North? North testified to Congress under a grant of “use immunity,” and even though Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh took stringent measures to wall off his prosecution staff from any information about North’s immunized testimony, the D.C. Circuit overturned North’s conviction, finding that Walsh could not establish that the witnesses who testified against North had not been tainted by exposure to North’s widely publicized testimony. Flynn’s lawyer appears to be hoping for the same result here: Flynn gets immunity, his testimony in Congress gets aired and reported everywhere, and it becomes virtually impossible for prosecutors to bring a case against him.
It is not going to work. The Justice Department will tell Congress that a grant of immunity at this stage could compromise its ongoing criminal investigation. Already, statements from the Congressional committees suggest no interest in granting immunity to Flynn. Flynn’s lawyer appears to have hoped that publicity, pressure or politics might cause one of the Congressional committees to jump. Flynn’s lawyer may have concluded that at a minimum the public offer would help change the atmospherics around his client, which could help him at a future stage. But the ploy feels desperate, indicating that Flynn may not have much to offer. And the very fact that Flynn’s lawyer is making a play for immunity at this stage suggests that he has some fear that his client faces real criminal exposure.
Why Did Russia Hack the Voter Rolls?
Why did Russia hack the voter rolls, when they did not attempt to hack the vote itself?
One possibility:
The voter rolls are said to fit into this because of “microtargeting”. Using email, Facebook and Twitter, political advertising can be tailored very precisely: individual messaging for individual voters.
“You are stealing the stuff and pushing it back into the US body politic,” said the former official, “you know where to target that stuff when you’re pushing it back.”
This would take co-operation with the Trump campaign, it is claimed.
And who made billions off of developing microtargeting as a marketing technique? Robert Mercer, the richer-than-God donor pulling the financial strings behind the Trump campaign (despite Trump’s bragging about self-funding.)
What role did Mercer and his company play in all this? Was coordination happening not just between the Russians and the campaign, but the Russians and Mercer? Here’s hoping someone starts shining a bright, hot spotlight at this.
(Being richer than God, there’s zero chance of Mercer facing any serious repercussions… But I’d settle for him breaking a sweat.)
Man it just keeps getting deeper.
Josh Marshal from TPM:
[details=Summary]Look at Cohen-Watnick’s background. Cohen-Watnick is a 30 year old Mike Flynn protege from the Defense Intelligence Agency who was brought in by Flynn to serve as the NSC’s senior director for intelligence programs. H.R. McMaster tried to remove Cohen-Watnick after McMaster replaced Flynn as National Security Advisor. In that goal, McMaster apparently had the strong support of Mike Pompeo, the Director of Central Intelligence. But Cohen-Watnick appealed his ouster to Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. Bannon and Kushner went to Trump and Trump decided that Cohen-Watnick should stay in his position, which he did.
White House factional politics are not in themselves necessarily of great interest. But having two aides with no national security experience overrule the National Security Advisor on a key NSC personnel decision is rather remarkable - even more so when the person in question apparently has the job only due to the influence of the former national security advisor who resigned in disgrace and now appears to be the target of multiple criminal and counter-intelligence probes.
That set of facts in itself raises a lot of alarm bells. Did Flynn’s influence still extend into the White House’s inner circle early this month, weeks after he was fired? Is Cohen-Watnick that important a loyalist that Bannon and Kushner would refuse to see him dismissed? What he doing work at their behest? For whatever reason, this Cohen-Watnick is a pretty important guy to the most important players in the Trump world.
…
But Bart Gellman, who has a very granular understanding of the modalities and rules tied to handling this kind of material, suggests an additional possibility: that Cohen-Watnick et al. had this material because they were using their privileged access to the nation’s top secrets to keep tabs on the FBI’s investigation of Trump and his top associates. Yes, read that last sentence again, I’ll wait.
Got it? Let’s continue.
The mix of events here is so bizarre and convoluted that it’s hard to know what to make of it. To be clear, Gellman isn’t suggesting his latter theory is proven. I think he would call it an informed speculation or logical surmise. But I would argue that the precise ins and outs of the drama are less relevant than this: Cohen-Watnick is a protege of Michael Flynn. He appears to be plugged into the DC Islamophobe network, anti-CIA, etc., as is Flynn. The President took extraordinary steps to protect him as recently as a couple weeks ago. Whether the President did this based on his own knowledge of the situation or simply because Bannon and Kushner asked him to isn’t clear. It also may not matter. Cohen-Watnick went to extraordinary, at least highly improper and likely illegal steps, to engage in political pushback on the President’s behalf. There is at least some circumstantial evidence that he was doing this to monitor or subvert the FBI’s investigation of the President and his top associates. Whether political pushback or obstruction, it is unlikely Cohen-Watnick would take such perilous steps on his own. Remember, Director of Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council. A simple review of the calendar makes all but certain Cohen-Watnick was up to this funny business at the same time Bannon and Kushner intervened to save his job - and his almost unrivaled access to all US intelligence.[/details]
Now the Guardian is getting in on the act.
Edit: General Misha. Good grief. That’s surely not accurate?
Occam’s Razor, really. Why go through the trouble of hacking voting machines or tallying software and risk discovery, when you can just shotgun a bunch of crappy social media and the public will fall all over themselves eating it up? Look at us now. We know Russia screwed with our media and meddled and as a nation we can’t even get our shit together enough to do anything about it.
At the end of the day Russia can just shrug and say, “Hey, we didn’t force anyone to vote for Trump.”
Ryan Lizza (of the New Yorker) has been pointing out that Flynn’s lawyer is… not exactly a Trump supporter.
Cool. I wonder when Fox News will do that he same.
Man, one of these days I am going to need to read a detailed post mortem on all this because I just cannot keep up with this shit in the moment. I get the feelain’t there’s some kind of inflection point coming that will bring it all together and maybe create a cohesive whole, whatever that ends up being.
Of course I guess it could all just fade back into nothing, with a shrug and “guess there was nothing to it after all”, which would be about the biggest blue balls I can imagine.
Not sure if it will ever quite come together, since there’s a fair bit of Keystone Cops level incompetence in the mix. Nunes, for example, is trying to play some 3D chess but he’s barely capable of sorting out how to play snakes and ladders.
It’ll make a good Coen Brothers movie.