What If: When THAT Happens

There's an old joke, no one is sure of the origins other than it came about during the early days of daily newspaper publishing. Thing is, Franklin D. Roosevelt reportedly told this joke a lot during his tenure as President, so it's attributed to him:

A kid starts working Monday at a newsstand, where he meets a businessman who comes up, buys the morning paper, glances at the headline, then tosses the paper down in anger. That businessman keeps coming back all week doing the same: buys the morning paper, looks at the headline, tosses the paper away. On Friday, the kid asks the businessman when he approaches "Hey mister, why do you buy the paper only to throw it away?"

The businessman answers "I'm looking for the obituary."

The kid replies "Well mister, the obituaries are on the back pages."

To which the businessman snarls "Kid, when the son of a bitch I'm waiting for dies, it'll be on the front page!"

It's a joke I think of often, especially in this day and age because, well...

It's not like anyone is openly writing about it, other than the occasional news report of You Know Who showing signs of physical injury or illness, like recently (via Digby):

His doctor just said he was using a cream on his neck without announcing that he has shingles. But that’s almost certainly what he has. I had them in the same place. Combined with the stress and his age, he’s not feeling well at all. That can’t be good for the world.

There's been a lot of talk on social media, about the bruised hands, the increased signs of dementia, the inability to stay awake, etc. But nobody wants to say it too much too loudly (mostly because nobody wants to jinx it), but among a lot of the non-MAGA people this particular thought is now out there: "I can't wait for IT to happen."

Even the McSweeney's site doesn't exactly spell it out, but you don't need to read between the lines:

It’s impossible to say when IT will HAPPEN. But it can’t be too long until IT HAPPENS. Looking at the data (age, high-stress job, cardiac history), it is statistically plausible that IT will HAPPEN in the next thirty-six months.

Eighteen, if you factor in hamburger consumption and all the weird bruising.

Of course, it doesn’t feel right to want IT to HAPPEN. And it’s obviously not okay to try to make IT HAPPEN. That’s not what this is ABOUT, just to make things CLEAR LEGALLY as far as VARIOUS AGENCIES are concerned.

But regardless, IT is going to HAPPEN. So you’re allowed to think about IT...

When IT HAPPENS, it will probably be FEELING. Just a huge, overwhelming sense of FEELING, the kind where you didn’t even realize how starved you were for FEELING. Punctuated with alternating waves of SECOND FEELING, as well as SENSATION.

Plus, a sudden absence of THIRD FEELING, which makes you realize the toll of A CONSTANT BASELINE OF LOW-GRADE THIRD FEELING for ten goddamn TIME PERIODS straight, even though you were still plenty aware of THIRD FEELING, trust me...

For all the spiritual and emotional catharsis the event could be, for all the whispered wishes every time every American to the Left of the John Birchers prays at night... what WOULD really happen when IT happens?

Well, the simplest answer to that is the 25th Amendment will kick in, and Vice President JD Vance will get sworn in as President and take over the reins of the White House. It will be done within minutes, maybe an hour or two just to make sure You Know Who is officially an ex-shitgibbon. 

After that, chaos will prevail as the entire Far Right ecosystem between the wingnut media, the wingnut preachers, the wingnut congresscritters, and a handful of guys named Dave begin to fight each other over the rotting corpse of trump's MAGA empire.

For starters: While Vance is going to be in prime position to claim the mantle of MAGA leadership, he's not exactly well-liked even among the Republican base. He's relatively new to politics and doesn't have the network in place within the party ranks to seize control. Above all, he really doesn't have anyone he can trust to help corral a fracturing coalition that will fracture because others will scheme in the backrooms to undercut Vance and seize the MAGA crown for themselves.

Even within trump's Cabinet, there at least two people - Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth - who could challenge Vance for leadership of that rabid MAGA base. Rubio in particular has sold himself as the future of the Republican Party ever since 2010 when he got elected Senator, and happily marketed by the Beltway punditry as the GOP Savior... only to get undercut by trump's rise to power in 2016. If Rubio has any presidential ambitions still in him, he has to known his window of opportunity is closing soon, and having that unpopular Vance blocking his way isn't going to help him.

Granted, in this scenario Vance will likely purge the Cabinet of anyone he thinks will work against him, which likely kicks Rubio out of State and out of any position to sabotage whatever bankrupt foreign policy our nation has left. That could give Rubio the chance to play spoiler for party leadership on the outside, criticizing any miscues Vance would likely commit in office, and primary challenge Vance for 2028. Thing is, in modern presidential politics it's been rare to challenge an incumbent let alone beat them, so there's no guarantee for Rubio to win that way (the best possibility is that early primarying exposes Vance and he declines to run for re-election like Truman and LBJ. But in that scenario the GOP primaries become wide open for another crazy field of multiple candidates).

Any "What If" guessing about a post-trump aftermath relies on one key question: How will that rabid Far Right MAGA base react to losing their golden idol trump? It depends a lot on whomever among the Republican leadership that voter base would see as the worthy successor... which becomes its own problem. There isn't anyone that the MAGAts seem to respect as a future standard bearer: Not Vance, not Rubio, not either of trump's kids with political ambitions (junior and that other guy). There are other hardline panderers among the GOP ranks that *could* appeal; but some of them - Marjorie Taylor Greene comes to mind - have turned against trump publicly and could be hurting their own standing, or others like Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott or Jim "Sex Scandal" Jordan who have alienated other party leaders to where a schism in Congress is unavoidable.

This is the thing about trump's devoted followers: They are more devoted to HIM than to the Republican Party itself. Given opportunities to change their support to other political figures, they refuse. We saw this in the 2024 primaries even with trump facing a number of criminal and civil charges (and convictions) that normally would make a candidate vulnerable: The likes of Ron DeSantis did his best to "own the libs" the way trump did, only to get rejected hard because the Real Thing was still available and the MAGA base did not want to abandon trump.

I've railed about this before: trump habitually, constantly violated social and political norms and yet kept gaining more voter support. he defied political gravity every time a scandal would have ruined anyone else. Of all of trump's business failings, he is good at one thing: Marketing himself. he wields a horrifying and dark charisma that claimed dominion over a section of the American population - the haters, the fearmongers, the grifters - that no else can reach.

trump is shameless, in a way nearly every other person on the planet isn't. A lot of politicians know how to appeal, how to pander, how to demagogue: None of them can sink themselves to the level of shamelessness trump can, which is why none of them can appeal to that MAGA base the way he does.

Vance tries to do it and gets mocked. DeSantis tried and failed. If Greene or other Far Right figures try to rise up and fill the vacuum of hate, they arguably won't be able to fill that void no matter how vile or vicious they behave. Because they run the risk - through self-awareness, through hesitation or moderation to keep themselves even vaguely human - of succumbing to political gravity where trump never fell.

As for the fracturing nature of the Republican Party itself: trump has made himself so indispensable to the party's organization and survival that there is a genuine possibility the GOP will fracture once he's gone. Again, we could see a civil war between the various trump wannabes rising up to pander to the rabid Far Right base for the 2028 presidency. But we could also witness a Republican Party falling apart between the various factions that are torn between keeping our international prestige high (and stopping Russian / Chinese hegemony from taking our top spot), keeping our business overlords happy (by ending trump's disastrous tariff wars), or pandering to an "America First" mob base that also wants a Christian Nationalist war against the heathens to bring about the End of Days.

A lot of that remains speculation. When - IF - THAT happens, we'll have to see what actually plays out.

Something we should prepare for when THAT happens is the likelihood of trump's devoted base going on the warpath. trump has called often at his rallies for his supporters to act out and attack others. We've seen what happened on January 6th, in spite of the MAGA faithful trying to whitewash / excuse the horrors of that riot. This isn't speculation: there is genuine fear if/when trump dies, his base will react with fire and fury.

We can look to how the Far Right reacted after the assassination of one of their media elites Charlie Kirk. The conservative punditry tried to turn Kirk into a Free Speech saint - ignoring all the hate speech he promoted and the colleges he attempted to censor - and attacked anyone on social media they viewed as dishonoring Kirk's memory. They actively got people fired from jobs for their own free speech rights, and a number of people and institutions were harassed with death threats.

At the same time, that same conservative punditry turned on each other trying to make themselves into Kirk's heir to his conservative empire. The likes of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and Ben Shapiro pulled out the knives to backstab each other to claim the audience and financial base for their own. Owens in particular has gone after Charlie's widow Erika, who's been using the martyrdom to rise to political power on her own. Some of the rancor is over the growing anti-Semitism driving the Far Right rage conflicting with the public necessity of siding with Israel in the Middle East chaos going on right now. But a lot of it is really about who gets to be the next Trump - the role Charlie Kirk was growing into - and profiting from it all when trump himself kicks the bucket.

The unity we see in the modern Republican Party - the Far Right Conservative movement as a whole - really only exists as a money-making machine for those at the top who can profit from the graft, the insider trading, the kickbacks, the marketing of hats and t-shirts, the influence peddling, and open bribes. All of it led by the Grifter-in-Chief trump who's trying to squeeze every nickel he can (pennies are phased out, by the way) before he has to answer to a wrathful deity.

And that's the thing. A lot of the corruption trump is pulling right now - and a lot of the half-baked foreign and domestic policy debacles he keeps inflicting upon himself - shows all the trademarks of a con artist half-aware he's running out of time (look at how desperate trump is to see that hideous ballroom of his finished). His end is coming, and Judgment cometh right soon.

It's going to be a question of surviving the chaos that follows.

Acts of War

This morning has been all abuzz over the firing of Rex Tillerson, Worst Secretary of State (via the Atlantic).

Tillerson was, as is now recognized even by those who put him there, a disaster. As with most spectacular Washington flame-outs, his failures stem not from stupidity or general incompetence, but from a specific set of disabilities... He was a debacle, pure and simple, the worst secretary of state in living memory (and there has been serious competition) not because of ineptitude, but because of the semi-intentional demolition job he was doing on his own department even as he fell out of presidential favor...

But WHY did Tillerson fall out of Presidential favor? Was it just the "trump's a moron" moment of candid talk? Was it that Tillerson wasn't working fast enough to dismantle the entire State Department?

No, Tillerson finally fell out of favor because he did the one thing trump will never allow: Tillerson accused the Russians of being naughty. Back to the Atlantic and to David Frum:

The White House’s account of the Tillerson firing collapsed within minutes... Senior administration officials told outlets including The Washington Post and CNN that Tillerson had been told he would be dismissed on Friday, March 9... Within the hour, the State Department issued a statement insisting that Tillerson “had every intention of remaining” and “did not speak to the President this morning and is unaware of the reason.” (as a side note Frum hadn't mentioned, but trump went and first the State Department aide who contradicted the White House's timeline on the firing)

...A lot turns on that timing. On March 12, Tillerson had backed the British government’s accusation that Russia was culpable for a nerve-agent attack on United Kingdom soil. If Tillerson had been fired March 9, then his words of support for Britain could not explain his firing three days before. But if the White House was lying about the timing, it could be lying about the motive.

And since it now seems all but certain that the White House was lying about the timing, it looks more probable that it was lying about the motive too...

What Frum is getting at: trump fired Tillerson because trump didn't want Russia accused of anything.

The backstory: There was a recent attack on an ex-Russian spy who just happened to be someone who was a likely source for the Steele Dossier, which just happened to catalog a lot of unsavory connections between trump, the Russian mob, and Putin. That attack, using a Russian-type nerve agent, has placed that agent Sergi Skripal and his daughter Yulia at death's door AND caused serious health concerns to the police and local civilians who were in contact with the victims and the possible attack site(s).

As a result, Prime Minister May has directly challenged Russia to answer for the attack within the next two-three days, and openly called on allies - ahem, the U.S. - to join in her condemnation of Russia's violation of British sovereignty.

trump's answer: Nothing. At least this morning, when he gave this tepid response that Frum found insulting:

That suspicion was accelerated by the president’s words to the White House press corps before stepping aboard Marine One:

“As soon as we get the facts straight, if we agree with them, we will condemn Russia or whoever it may be.”

That is not support for Britain. It is the direct opposite.

Britain and the United States share intelligence information fully, freely, and seamlessly. It’s inconceivable that the U.S. government has not already seen all the information that Theresa May saw before she rose in the House of Commons to accuse Russia.

If the U.S. government had a serious concern about the reliability of that information, it would have expressed that concern directly and privately to the U.K. government before May spoke. But the U.S. had no such concern—that’s why the now-fired secretary of state and the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom both endorsed May’s words. When Trump raises doubts about the facts, about American agreement with its British ally, about the accuracy of the British accusation against Russia, Trump is not expressing good-faith uncertainty about imperfect information. Trump is rejecting the consensus view of the U.K. and U.S. intelligence communities about an act of Russian aggression—and, if his past behavior is any indication, preparing the way for his own determination to do nothing...

trump doesn't want to act - much in the same reason he doesn't want to enforce the Congressional sanctions just passed last year, much in the same reason he will never speak ill of Putin - because it is clear now trump owes Russia his entire current status and (presumed) wealth.

All of the financial history being uncovered of trump's business ties, and possible money laundering, and personal subservience to people who may have blackmailed/extorted trump into their puppet. It all explains trump's refusal to pick a side in the growing war between Putin and Western democracies.

Look at what Putin is doing: there is case after case of Russian hacking and social media interference in election after election, and he is not stopping. Putin wants to weaken every NATO nation he can to make way for him to reclaim Russian dominance in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. He wants all sanctions against him and his criminal cronies lifted. He wants to silence all critics using the Stalin Method of "No Man No Problem": the body count has been noticed for years, and the smug SOB just pulled ANOTHER possible assassination on another Russian on British soil this afternoon.

Putin wants to fuck the rest of the world.

And trump is willing to help him do it.

What Putin is doing, and wants to keep doing, violates multiple nations' sovereign rights, and threaten their very existences. He may not be sending in tanks and troops, but he IS attacking these nations through one of the very things that should be held sacrosanct: their right and power to vote for their own leaders.

Putin is at war with the rest of the world. When the hell is the rest of the world going to do something about it?

Because trump's made it clear he's not doing a damn thing to stop Putin.

the damn traitor.

This Was Just Tuesday

So everyone was catching their breath after Monday's Meltdown of trump acolyte Sam "Hold My Beer" Nunberg. I mean, the craziness was all burned out by just that one whacko evening, right?

This was the Tuesday we had today:

• trump himself starts off the day by tweeting "There is no Chaos, only great Energy!" in response to the growing media concern that his administration is about to see a tidal wave of fleeing staffers.
• The Office of Special Counsel found that Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act - at least twice - when she spoke about last year's special election in Alabama. Thing is, any punishment for her action is addressed by trump himself, who may not be in a mood to suspend one of the few loyal staffers he's got left.
• Recent subpoena activity from Mueller's investigation revealed that his team detained a prominent United Arab Emirate advisor George Nader, who had a role in a key meeting between trump partners and Russian agents on the Seychelles Islands in January 2017. Whatever happened in that meeting could go towards proving trump and Russia had "arrangements" involving his presidency.
• Economic advisor Gary Cohn - one of the few administration figures still respected in the Beltway - is resigning over trump's impulsive push for steel and aluminum tariffs that will likely trigger a trade war.
• and the night is ending with reports that Stormy Daniels - the porn star who reportedly had an extramarital affair with trump just as Melania was giving birth to trump's son - is suing trump and trump's go-between (soon-to-be-disbarred lawyer Michael Cohen) to break the Nondisclosure Agreement simply because trump never signed it himself, and Stormy wants to sell a book covering their affair. The cherry on top is finding out trump's fake names he used to hide his involvement (David Dennison? DENNISON?! What the hell was wrong with "Ace Hardsteele"???)

This was just Tuesday.

To every Republican and trump Voter out there:

You were told. You were warned. There were signs everywhere that trump was a chaotic, uncontrollable sleazebucket. trump himself flew up huge red flags about his behavior and intentions.

And you suckers still voted for this. You're still defending this. All because you honestly thought Hillary was going to be WORSE?!

You honestly thought Hillary was going to be more corrupt. Can you honestly point to one thing that Hillary was actually found guilty of that would have suggested she was going to violate every ethical rule in the US Code?

You honestly thought Hillary was going to be a terrible boss. Was there ANY sign that Hillary was going to hire incompetent, unqualified people to key Cabinet and West Wing positions the way trump has? Did you expect Hillary was going to run a White House THIS CHAOTIC and understaffed and stressed out?

You honestly thought having Hillary in the White House was going to make us an international laughing stock? When you consider how trump is now viewed by even our own allies as untrustworthy and ill-informed on global and economic matters?

You all bought into trump because he promised you Heaven. Now you're finding out what every business partner trump had the last 40 years found out: The sonofabitch is a con artist who will bankrupt your ass in order to keep himself wealthy enough to pull his next scam.

You bought this bullshit. But we're all paying the goddamn bill for this.

And this was just Tuesday.

Gods help us.