It’s likely that responsible Republican office-holders, many of whom didn’t take Donald Trump seriously until they had to, wouldn’t have let him create a disputed election and a constitutional crisis absent clear and compelling evidence that he wasn’t just pulling these allegations out of his prejudices and the files of his sketchy white-nationalist backers. We’ll never really know. But now, after two years of falling into line with Trump and adopting his passions and fevers as their own, is it clear at all that Republican opinion-leaders, from Fox & Friends to the Capitol, would tell Trump to leave office quietly if he lost decisively in 2020 and still claimed he was robbed by swarthy rape-loving “criminal illegals” pouring across the southern border? With the Supreme Court, the U.S. Tax Code and a long-desired rollback of regulatory restrictions on corporate misbehavior in the balance? I don’t know.
This is a possibility that needs to be taken right off the table right now. That means Democrats should waste less time trying to convince Republicans to help them get Trump on a one-way ticket to Palookaville before the 2020 election and more time getting them to agree he should get on the train to retirement immediately afterward if he loses. Yes, maybe he’ll go quietly on his own, but anyone who doubts he’s capable of calling the military in to defend his continued occupation of the White House needs to read his tweets for a few days and reconsider.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member