Sure but that still leaves a criminal as the most powerful person in the world without consequence. Even if he’s not convicted in the Senate, there’s still the trial and the attention it would garner.
However not a bad plan, actually.
I’d be worried that the media will frame this whole thing as partisan politics, or as evidence of the ‘erosion of civility.’ Probably not something that should dissuade Democrats, but leadership seems unduly sensitive (and obsequious) to the opinion of beltway pundits
Maybe forced was the wrong word. Compelled? I don’t know, man. I’m grasping at straws here, like everyone else. It’s all speculation. No one has the definitive answer. I’m so exhausted and depressed in this timeline. Every tiny bit of good news is like ambrosia.
Yes, although it will depend on whether other felonies come out.
As it stands, while he committed felonies, they are all related to campaign finance stuff which most people seem to not really care about.
If larger issues come up though, he may be impeached. The fact that Ayers wants nothing to do with it, and is bailing on Pence, suggests that may be the case.
Right now Fox is in Trump’s corner, because the company is the defacto GOP speaker-box. If they say public tide turning against Trump, they will follow.
Trump doesn’t pay them, Rupert pays them, and if Trumps continued idiocy harms the bottom line, large companies and media conglomerates will turn against him. Not because he is a heartless racist asshole who committed fraud, but because he has caused stocks to drop, and Rupert’s bank account to drain.
The only reason Trump is popular is because the people with the big checkbooks see him as running government in a way beneficial to them. But this trade war is a big drag right now. Most investor forecasting said that 2018 was going to be a continued year of growh, as there were not any obstacles to economic growth. The fed interest rate hikes were always a concern, (and Trump will blame those) but those were part of the predictions on wall street. The unpredictable part (Donny’s twitter account) has caused major monetary damage to many huge companies.
If he loses the big business backing, it is over. He’ll keep the fossil fuel guys, but he is losing a lot of the rest. And they push the senators and GOP to have Donny take a walk. He can make up whatever reason he wants to retire, and go back to playing golf badly in Florida.
Prediction?
He is out before 2020, he will be asked to resign with promises of pardons for him and his family, Pence will take over because he is not implicated (maybe some, but not enough to cause outrage) and is a reliable GOP rubber stamp. And they work on getting ready for the 2020 election campaign in earnest moving in a new direction to capture back the suburban votes (read: White female) they lost.
I had a discussion last week with my SO about this; she has a stomach of steel and reads T_D and /r Conservative.
Her opinion is that Maga zombies will turn on Fox if Fox turns on trump. I think she’s right.
Either way, should that come to pass that’s a win for the country (and the world.)
Yeah, you can see this anytime someone turns on Trump. They immediately eviscerate that person. I think the Fox zombies outnumber the MAGA variety though. On an unrelated note, I took a peek at T_D yesterday after months of ignoring it and learned that apparently Sunday Gunday is a thing.
Maybe, but it’s hard to point to the person or persons who have turned on Trump and won that scrap. Beyond that, I don’t think Trump will resign if there isn’t a conviction looming in the Senate, and (again) I don’t think there are 20 votes to convict in the Senate.
I’m pretty sure Trump has been costing Fox money for more than a year now - but old Rupe seems to be willing to foot the bill (he was also willing split up his empire to lock in the value of his assets so his kids don’t come after him for blowing their inheritance.)
I’m not expecting a full face turn from Fox on Trump until Trump is out of office or Murdoch dies, whichever comes first.
Possibly, but in my opinion Fox has lost control over their spawn.
trump is the perfect idol for the MAGA crowd - a (willfully) morbidly obese, incompetent and dumb white guy who is also rich - if that guy can be wealthy* and successful*, then anyone can!
I don’t think that Fox will ever “turn” on Trump in any dramatic way. By that I mean that they’ll never say he was bad, or that what he did was bad.
What we might see is a general muting of DEFENSE of Trump on Fox News and their opinion shows. They could simply cover the impeachment and/or resignation with a great deal of bloviating about how Democrats are doing this and that or over-reaching here or there… all the while never condemning or praising Trump.
There are two ways that Fox/Limbaugh/Breitbart et. al., could turn on Trump, if it is decided that is in their best interests.
They could dump him after a certain point claim dementia or the equivalent, saying, “he used to be a true Great American but he’s sick now and doesn’t know what he’s saying or doing” - they could backdate that determination to whatever date is most convenient for their purposes. “He was great until…”
Or, they could declare he was a fake, fraud, not-a-True-Conservative, con-man, liberal plant, whatever - he pretended to cherish True Conservative values but was a fraud the whole time and.
What is tricky about all of this is that there are really two significant elements intertwined in the GOP right now that are not exactly the same: you have the culture ware oriented pwn-the-libs element and a pro-wealth-anti-tax element. The way those two strands of thought interact is hard to understand and make it hard to pin down what the US right wants.
For a time both strands were behind Trump. Now, the pro-wealth strand is ready to bail on Trump but the culture war strand is not. However, the culture-war strand has been susceptible to manipulation in the past so that’s one possibility.
How plausible do you folks think this scenario is:
As it becomes more and more clear that Trump did a bunch of illegal shit, perhaps even through a recommended indictment from Mueller, both Senate Reps and House Dems meet with Trump and make a deal: resign now and we won’t go through an impeachment process and Pence will pardon you, so no Federal prosecution.
This seems like it’d be the most politically expedient “make-it-go-away-now” plan. Nobody has to go on the record supporting impeachment and Trump gets to moonwalk out of Washington giving it the finger, making up any sort of excuse he feels like.
Then he just does whatever he was planning to do when he lost the election - start a TrumpTV network, go golfing, hang out with Putin, whatever.
I would assume this would also involve a pre-approved VP replacement as part of the House/Senate negotiations. Someone like a Mitt Romney would, I imagine, get through.
