Within three days of taking office, Trump may have already sown the seeds for his own downfall. At the end of this piece, we’ll get to the one question that could end his presidency well before the end of his four-year term. But lest you get your hopes up, let me tell you in advance that this is not necessarily good news.
Anyway, first some background:
Trump is utterly, absolutely, even boringly predictable. He’s like a two-year old who’s never heard the word “no,” except that he’s a 78-year-old psychopathic narcissistic sadist… who’s also a fucking idiot. (According to his niece, Trump even had to pay someone else to take his college entrance exam for him.)
Trump’s delicate ego has to be massaged at every opportunity, and he will bend heaven and earth to be “right” about everything. This means he’ll never take no for an answer. The Supreme Court ruling on absolute immunity has given him dictatorial powers and he’ll use them to the hilt. And even if the Supreme Court should rule against him on his executive order denying birthright citizenship, Trump will do exactly what he wants to anyway. Who will stop him?
Trump has already declared a national emergency at the southern border. This is undoubtedly preparatory to Trump invoking the Insurrection Act, which will give him the power to use the US military against American citizens. So the next thing you should expect is a purge of any high-level military who might resist Trump’s bid for a military takeover. And then there won’t be anything to do except to watch the Republican Party fall into line behind him.
This is already a done deal. So if you’ve been anxiously watching the news in the hopes of small victories somewhere – anywhere – you may as well stop wasting your time.
Before we get to the one question that could end Trump’s presidency, though, I’d like to use this opportunity to describe how Trump is already responsible for the needless deaths of almost 500,000 Americans, and how the media let him get away with it. They say that past performance is the best predictor of future events, so forewarned is forearmed, right?
COVID
Trump was well aware of the coronavirus by January 22, 2020, at which point he said “We have it totally under control. It’s just one person coming in from China.” Then, on January 30, Trump was advised by Peter Navarro, his Trade Advisor, that the lack of a vaccine, cure or immune protection could imperil the lives of “millions of Americans.”
At that time, the fastest that a vaccine had been developed was four years. That was for the mumps vaccine, and that was in the 1960s.
“Would the president of the United States knowingly condemn thousands of Americans to death just to win reelection?”
The presidential election was less than a year away. So Trump knew there was no way anyone could come up with a cure in time. Trump also knew that a pandemic would devastate the economy, which would tank his reelection chances. So Trump decided to do something that was unimaginable:
Trump would set his administration to doing whatever they could do to get the virus over with by Election Day. This would mean spreading the virus as quickly and as widely as possible, no matter how many Americans it would kill.
The strategy was so utterly monstrous that no media outlets dared to call it out for what it was. After all, would the president of the United States knowingly condemn thousands of Americans to death just to win reelection? But this is Donald Trump. For anyone who was really paying attention, the strategy was just as obvious as it was monstrous. And it’s now all been confirmed.
The Trump administration knew a “herd immunity” approach could kill millions. But they saw it as the only way to get the pandemic over with in time to win the election. So they did it anyway.
First came the claims of false cures, like hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine, azithromycin, remdesivir and ivermectin, a medication to deworm horses. Nothing to worry about; everything was going to be just fine.
By March 24th, the administration was already encouraging spread of the virus by urging people to “pack the churches” (a prime venue for spread of the virus), with Trump saying he wanted the country and economy “raring to go by Easter.” A week later, with 273,880 cases, Trump was still insisting that the virus would “go away.”
And then, on April 23 came the infamous press conference where Trump suggested injecting bleach. At least five states reported increased calls to poison control, but there was even more dangerous misinformation to come.
By July, seeing his reelection chances slipping away, Trump was clearly in a state of panic. In a then-secret memo, Trump’s Health and Human services advisor Paul Alexander called for millions of Americans to be infected in adopting the “herd immunity” approach. Alexander also argued that colleges should stay open to allow Covid-19 infections to spread.
By August, the Trump administration knew there was a vaccine on the way, with an estimated 100 million doses available by January, 2021. So the clear course of action would have been for Americans to hang tight, mask up, limit contact with others and do whatever they could to avoid infection until then.
But is that what Trump told Americans to do? Take a guess.
Advising Americans to “ride it out” would have been the right thing to do; it would have saved many thousands of lives. But doing so would also have likely delayed any economic recovery, and thus, Trump’s reelection chances.
So instead, Trump launched into a campaign of vaccine skepticism. And it had a major impact. As of October 2021, 92% of Democrats had received the COVID vaccine, versus only 56% of Republicans. COVID death rates were 15% higher among Republicans than Democrats, meaning that Trump’s disinformation on vaccines alone caused over 170,000 unnecessary deaths.
You could try to make the argument that Trump’s initial errors on COVID were missteps, under difficult circumstances. But you can’t say that about Trump’s disinformation on vaccines. He knew vaccines worked; in fact, he was one of the first to get vaccinated. Had there been a vaccine available before Election Day, Trump would have moved heaven and earth to get everybody vaccinated and back out to the mall to go shopping.
Trump’s spread of disinformation was deliberate. It was entirely political. He knew exactly what he was doing and why… and now tens of thousands of Americans are dead because of it.
That makes Trump a mass-murderer. Of Americans. Thousands of us.
And he got away with it.
This is all fact. But will you see the media report it? Don’t hold your breath.
But Trump’s not done. Not by a long shot. The Republican Party followed Trump down the rabbit hole of vaccine skepticism and it’s now feeding on itself. The groundless suspicion has now spread to other vaccines, and it’s doing so in a pattern that splits along party lines.
Figure 1. Average post-pandemic NVAs for influenza (flu), HPV, MMR, chickenpox (pox), and COVID-19 (Covid) vaccines for liberal (blue) and conservative (red) participants. Error bars represent one standard error of the mean.
We’re now looking at the likely appointment of infamous vaccine skeptic RFK Jr. as Heath and Human Services Secretary. As of this writing, RFK’s advisors are hoping to be able to eliminate childhood vaccines entirely. So there’s no telling how many more thousands will die unnecessarily as Republicans continue to double-down on a lie Trump cooked up to try to win the 2020 election.
Trump has already withdrawn from the World Health Organization, which will make the US much more vulnerable to global pandemics and other disease threats. So in addition to the almost half-million unnecessary COVID deaths we can lay at Trump’s feet, there will almost certainly be many thousands more. So the number is now over 450,000… and counting.
This is what a psychopath will do to attempt to preserve his own infallibility. No matter how many people have to die, Trump is never wrong. About anything. Ever.
This is the monster who now has control over the entire US government. Trump will not change.
But aside from an unforeseen circumstance like illness or Trump stepping down for some reason, there is one thing that might – just might – bring his term to a premature end. And it comes down to just one simple question:
The Question that Can Derail Trump
The question is:
Will you run for a third term?
Trump is totally self-involved and self-obsessed. I think it highly unlikely that Trump will reject the possibility of a third term out of hand. And I think that’s what could be his downfall.
But that’s not necessarily good news. Follow me here.
There are only two ways Trump could stay in power after his term:
- A Constitutional amendment, or
- A military takeover
A Constitutional amendment is an impossibility (trust me) and I think that allowing Trump to violate the presidential two-term limit is a bridge too far even for this radical Supreme Court. So that leaves the Insurrection Act and a military takeover as his only real option to remain in the White House. (As I mentioned above, the wheels are already in motion here.)
I do believe Trump will try to stay in power, but I don’t believe the Republican Party will stand for four years of non-stop speculation about whether or not Trump will make the final Hitlerian leap. Not when they have a perfectly obedient toady-in-waiting in the person of J.D. Vance.
The right wing is about one thing and one thing only: the elimination of government, save only to protect their own wealth and power. That is the very definition of a fascist state, and the fascists now have all the tools at their disposal to turn their dream into reality.
All Trump can do now is fuck it up. Which, left to his own devices, he will. He’s an unstable, unpredictable idiot who won’t do what he’s told. Whatever you want to say about Putin, Musk or Thiel, et. al., they didn’t get to where they are today by letting unstable idiots run the show.
So I say that Trump is toast. And I say that it’s only a matter of time. Constant media speculation about a third term will take the spotlight away from hyenas like Republican Senators Hawley and Cruz, who have got their eyes on the prize.
Trump’s obsession with personal vengeance does nothing for Putin, Musk, or Republicans in general, so the smart move would be to jettison him. The right-wingers may be heartless and cruel, but they’re not stupid. And besides, as I’ve said elsewhere, if Trump doesn’t go willingly, Putin will be happy to make him a nice cup of polonium tea.
Asking Trump repeatedly about a third term might be a way to accelerate Trump’s exit. Not that the end result would likely be much better, though. Make no mistake about it, a Vance administration will be just as ruthless as Trump’s would be, and more efficient to boot.
But the press should keep asking the question anyway. Knocking the king off his throne is, after all, the American thing to do and perhaps Trump’s abdication might reawaken some “of “Spirit of ’76,” if any still exists, that is.
And if all that ends up coming to pass, what I’m curious about is this: who will be the next Vice-President? “Legs” Hawley? “Cancun” Cruz? Or how about Donald Trump Jr.? Hmm….
