What do you know? The Washington Post suspects Trump is preparing his base for an insurrection when the myriad investigations now underway determine — Surprise!! Surprise!! — that Trump has committed a long train of crimes against the United States.
Because Trump is undermining our democratic norms and processes in so many ways, it is often easy to focus on each of them in isolation, rather than as part of the same larger story. But, taken together, they point to a possible climax in which Trump, cornered by revelations unearthed by Robert S. Mueller III’s probe and by ongoing media scrutiny, seeks to rally his supporters behind the idea that this outcome represents not the imposition of accountability by functioning civic institutions, but rather an effort to steal the election from him — and from them.
On ABC’s “This Week,” Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway yesterday dismissed the “entire Russia investigation” as a “total fabrication” to “excuse” Hillary Clinton’s loss. This echoed Trump himself, who recently told a rally that the probe is an effort to “cheat” his supporters out of their legitimately elected leadership (i.e., him) with a “fake story” that is “demeaning to our country and demeaning to our Constitution.”
I’ve said repeatedly that Trump won’t leave office quietly.
The only really interesting question is this: Will Trump leave office peacefully, or will he try to stay? I think he’ll try to stay and, aided by Russian skill at manipulating the booboisie, the Cliven Bundys and Robert Spencers and David Dukes and Franklin Grahams and Sean Hannitys and sundry commonplace morons will rally to the White House.
And …
I can easily imagine Trump provoking a Constitutional crisis by challenging the Congress to send armed U.S. Marshals to remove him from office. I can’t imagine him prevailing in such a showdown, but I can imagine him provoking it. I can just as easily imagine him pardoning everybody in his orbit, including himself, declaring his work successful and finished and himself the most accomplished president in the history of the country, and decamping to some corrupt oligarchy where amoral and authoritarian buffoons like him are appreciated.
I say again: We are careering toward an unprecedented Constitutional crisis. When this goes to impeachment — and I am confidant that it will — the government will have to take steps to secure the White House itself.