I agree that this would be a step in the right direction, but I’m afraid it’s not going to happen. My fear is that we are about to see Trump turn into a cornered animal as the Mueller investigation, the emoluments lawsuit, and legitimate congressional oversight begin to close in on him. I don’t think there’s a line he won’t cross or an institution he won’t burn to the ground to hit back.
Plus I don’t think he’s capable of doing useful work.
I just want to comment that the Republicans still control the House until January. That’s plenty of time to do damage.
Wait until Trump starts talking about all the stolen house seats due to illegal voting. We will see but I don’t hold out too much hope. I guess they will get Trump’s tax return and go on from there.
BTW, the way Mueller is protected is that if Trump fires him, the congressional investigation committee will hire him immediately. That cannot do Trump any good.
Don’t be too sure that the demographic changes will help the Dems. The Reps have gotten better and better at preventing the wrong people from voting with full approval of the increasingly partisan courts.
The House could simply appoint him as an Independent Counsel a la Ken Starr and they almost certainly would (although Republicans could try to block that in the Senate.) That would make the optics of the Justice Department canning him look very bad. The White House isn’t stupid (I know, I know, we like to think so, but Republicans play this game way better than Democrats, unfortunately.) so they likely aren’t going to can him just to have him rehired the next week doing the same job.
Never has a prediction been proven wrong so quickly. :smack: Trump just fired AG Sessions, and why else do so except as a first step towards firing Mueller? In other words, there’s a loooong couple of months between now and a House that would appoint Mueller an independent counsel, while Mueller can be fired in a day.
His reelection campaign started on Nov 9, 2016.
My only guess is that they think the Senate will block an IC and it will force the House Intelligence Committee into being the investigative instrument. It’s a bold move, but I guess that’s how Trump rolls.
And even when he’s out stumping for someone else, he manages to make that all about him as well.
Yeah, yeah, I know. But there’s a real difference when the actual election time gets close. You all know that.
The Senate will absolutely block an IC but the House Intelligence Committee doesn’t need the Senate to reopen the investigation that Devin Nunes declared closed and then move on all those subpoenas he refused to pursue. Adam Schiff will see that gets done. If Mueller gets fired, the HIC can immediately appoint him as their own investigator. They could subpoena Mueller to tell him what he knows. Plus all the various sealed indictments Mueller has set up will still be active in the justice system.
Donald will undoubtedly work around to firing Mueller. It won’t save him. That’s even more true today with the Dems in charge than it was yesterday.
The caravan conspiracy theory worked. It bought Trump 3+ bonus seats in the Senate.
We’re heading out of “No collusion with Russia!” territory and diving straight into the realm of “Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia”.
I’m hoping for a miracle of some form, but I’d say that we’re basically fucked.
The only question left at this point is: What does Trump actually want to do as President? He’s ascertained that conmanship works just fine and the Republican party will back whatever horse is winning if it keeps them in power.
I’d probably expect his next step would be to gut the DOJ, bring in someone completely unethical as AG - Eric Prince? - and start arresting Democratic congressmen. And realize, as I say that, that I’m listing that as the light end of the foreseeable scope of futures. I don’t see Trump attempting to do less than that. He basically has to, to keep his legal problems from ever arriving on target and he now has good reason to think that he can get away with it.
Well I’m sad to say my prediction didn’t take long to come true. Rosenstein no longer overseeing Russia probe.
I guess anybody with half a brain was expecting Trump to ram through his shenanigans before the next House is seated, but doing it the day after election day seems especially… obvious?
I’m just glad we’re getting on with the constitutional crisis, the suspense was frankly a bit much to bear. I hope the reality of an unmuzzled, irate Jeff Sessions will be as damaging to Trump as one might imagine.
Thanks, everyone, for this range of answers. Considering Trump’s actions since the OP, I’m leaning toward the answer to the question being “not by a long shot.”
It’s going to be an ugly couple of months with this lame duck Republican House. Once the Dems take over, I do expect we’ll see serious investigations into Trumpfoolery, which will no doubt amp up the overall ugliness.
At the same time, maybe the Dems can take advantage of Trump’s pathology for approval. Someone mentioned a massive infrastructure initiative. Are there other good ideas we might be able to get the doofus-in-chief behind by convincing him they’ll make him more popular?
Reports this morning that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized after breaking three ribs in a fall. You tell me if the worst is over.
FML can we just have one day to kick back and take a breath. Goddamn.
Even without the fall (and I do hope she’s okay - I like RBG), the odds against her making it a full 4-year term were 50/50 at best. This probably takes those odds a bit south of that now. But consider what damage Trump and the GOP are already inflicting on the lower courts - that’s something that doesn’t get much attention, but a good chunk of the district courts are going to be loaded with conservatives.
What he said.
a broken hip would be much worse. A lot of elderly people get in a bad health spiral after a broken hip and die within a year. It’s not known why a hip break leads to other health problems but it’s common that it does.
A broken hip keeps the patient fully or partially bedridden longer than other fractures, even if it can be repaired with a replacement. As a generally healthy and vigorous veteran of a hip replacement at age 64 (five years ago) I can attest that the recovery keeps one debilitated to a greater or lesser degree for months – and at RBG’s age that has serious consequences for overall health.
Broken hip is not as long a recovery as a hip replacement. My father broke his hip and he was doing OK after a few weeks and he was 87 when it happened.
As if they were NOT doing that already? Seriously??