THE PERFECT POLITICAL STORM: Part 2 - The Trump Effect

     

From Worldometer (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):

          DAY  USA  WORLD    Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9     1093     4732         1185        246       82

July    22      1205     7128         1293      1120     572

Aug    12      1504     6556        1242        835     130

Sept     9      1208      6222       1136       1168       82

Oct     21      1225      6849         571        703       85

Nov    25       2304    12025        620        518      118

Dec    30       3880    14748       1224       299      465

Jan     14        4142    15512        1151         189      712

Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398

Mar      2       1989     9490        1726       110      194

April     6        906    11787         4211       631       37

May     4        853     13667        3025      3786     59 

June    1        287    10637         2346      3205      95

 July    7         251      8440        1595        817      411

Aug     4         656    10120        1118         532      423 

Sept   22      2228      9326          839       279     124

Oct      6       2102      8255          543       315       59

Nov    3        1436      7830         186        458       23

Dec     1       1633      8475          266        477       28

Jan     7        2025      6729         148         285     140

Feb     2        2990   12012          946        991      175

Mar     2        1778     7756          335         173       28 

Apr     1          439      4056         290          52       12

May    5          225      2404          151            ?       64 

         12          222      1995           136           9       21

         19          201      1801           115           20      31

         26          217      1528          136           14      49

June   2          216       1413         130          10       31

          9          195      1526         148           24       24 

        15          305      1382         289           11       26 

         23         266      1650        346            ?          7 

         29         326      1608        294           39       19 

         30         228      1517         274           23       29

Summary:  Looking better.

Just when you thought the Supreme Court had done enough damage for a generation, they announced that at the end of this year, or in 2023 at the latest, they will take on a case that could bring victory to Donald Trump for the presidency in 2024.  What?  Read this.  Should you be worried about him?

Yesterday I provided the total package of why I think Democrats will add members to both houses of Congress on November 8.  The primary reason was, I said, the Trump-effect.  While he still could again become President of the USA on 5 November 2024, his influence over the next few months will be why the Republican Party will decline this year.  Here is a full profile as to why.

According to Mary Trump, the daughter of Donald Trump's older brother, her uncle practiced cheating as a way of life.  Regarding acceptance into Wharton from Too Much and Never Enough:  How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, Donald paid Joe Shapiro to take his SAT, and her father talked the admission person, a close friend, to admit his nephew.  Shapiro and Trump became golf buddies.

Cheating on taxes, his family, the American public and the Federal government, he was a sociopath who never accomplished anything worthy.  There is even a Wikipedia entry about Trumps legal affairs.  He as been involved in 3500 legal cases, involving contract disputes, defamation claims and sexual harassment.

From ABC News, the ten most common words describing Trump are:  "incompetent," "arrogant," "strong," "idiot," "egotistical," "ignorant," "great," "racist," "a------" and "narcissistic."  Amazingly enough, they missed LIAR, racist, misogynist, clown, and many more choice terms, like, for example:

...abhorrent, amoral, anti-democratic, arrogant, authoritarian, autocratic, avaricious, backward, base, benighted, bloated, blubbering, blundering, bogus, bombastic, boorish, bullying, bungling, cheap, childish, clownish, clueless, common, confused, conniving, corrupt, cowardly, crass, creepy, cretinous, criminal, crowing, crude, cruel, dangerous, delusional, demagogic, depraved, devious, dim, disgraceful, dishonest, disloyal, disreputable, dissembling, dog-whistling, doltish, dull, elitist, embarrassing, erratic, fascist, foolish, gauche, gluttonous, greedy, grudging, hate-filled, hateful, haughty, heedless, homophobic, humorless, hypocritical, idiotic, ignoble, ignominious, ignorant, immature, inarticulate, indolent, inept, inferior, insane, intemperate, irresponsible, kakistocratic, kleptocratic, laughable, loathsome, loud-mouthed, low-life, lying, mendacious, meretricious, monstrous, moronic, narcissistic, needy, oafish, odious, orange, outrageous, pampered, pandering, perverse, petty, predatory, puffed-up, racist, repulsive, rude, sanctimonious, semi-literate, senile, senseless, sexist, shady, shameless, sheltered, slimy, sluglike, sniveling, squeamish, stupid, swaggering, tacky, thick, thin-skinned, thuggish, toadying, transphobic, trashy, treasonous, twisted, ugly, unappealing, uncultured, uninformed, unprincipled, unread, unrefined, vain, venal, vicious, vile, and vulgar.

In 2017, his first year as President of the United States (PUS), he was already at the top of worst presidents since World War II:

In 2018 Canadians (left) compared Trump to Barack Obama.  About all-time worst U.S. president, in 2019 he was at #2 to James Buchanan.  In 2022, CSPAN upgraded him to only the fourth worst, to #1 James Buchanan, #2 Andrew Johnson and #3 Franklin Pierce.

I got a little carried away with the above, but all that is background for my spontaneous free stream of thought chronology taking Trump from November 2016 to today, borrowing from the House January 6 Committee hearings as necessary.

• Trump did not expect to be victorious in 2016.
• While Vladimir Putin's shenanigans no doubt helped the Donald prevail over Hillary, there just has to be something more in their past for him to play puppet to that despot.

• 
  Clearly, Trump's attitude and mismanagement messed up the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  From avoiding mask-wearing to everything else but accelerating vaccine development.
• His advisors carefully warned him months before the 2020 presidential election that he was destined to lose.  They determined that Democrats tended to use mail-in ballots, while Republicans showed up on voting day, so Trump did everything possible to screw that up for Democrats.
• 
  Just in case, he set in motion a plan to use the U.S. House and state legislatures to control the electoral votes. 
• Went to bed on 3November2020 astonished that he had done it again and was victorious.  A few hours later I too went to bed, and I agonized that Biden was losing to Trump.
• True to predictions, though, the later counted mail-in votes gave a clear victory to Joe Biden.

• 
  So while on one hand Trump might have initially thought he had won, it was clear that he had lost, so he followed through on his early plans for a coup to stay in office.
• Was hoping that the courts would overturn a few states, and in any case felt confident that he would prevail to any judgment going to his Supreme Court.  This did not work, which internally stunned him.
• The killer blow was the letter signed by the 10 former secretaries of defense at the end of 2020, spearheaded by Dick Cheney to President Donald Trump, warning to the Department of Defense not not to participate in the electoral process.

• 
  Fortunately, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had already earlier been embarrassed by the Bible incident of Trump, and was determined not to necessarily follow the required chain of command if the worst happened.  Trump thus knew he could not utilize the military to help overthrow the government.

• 
  So while all the above undermined the plan fashioned by John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, Trump's team nevertheless had already coached the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to attack the U.S. Capitol.  Some signal had to have been worked out earlier to cause mischief.

• 
  Trump's last hope was his lap dog Mike Pence on January 6.  However, in a phone call that morning, Pence showed uncommon resistance.
• So Trump's last ditch plan was to address a rally at the White House where he purposefully sent them to the Capitol to scare Pence.

• 
  Some say things just got out hand, but interesting that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, instigated by Trump, had left the White House at 10AM (Trump's address at the White House occurred at Noon), so by the time Trump ended his call to arms at 1PM, action was already beginning in the Capitol.
• At 2PM protesters broke windows and stormed into the Capitol.

• 
  The Senate went into recess at 2:20PM.
• At 2:24PM Trump tweeted, Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and Constitution.
• The Senate chamber was entered by the mob just before 3PM.

• 
  Trump supporters also began gathering around this time in Sacramento, Salem (a demonstration there went violent), Austin, Denver,  Minneapolis and other municipalities.
• President-elect Biden shortly after 4PM addressed the nation, calling on President Trump to defend the Constitution and end this siege.  
• So what does Trump do?  At 4:17PM he tweets to his supporters inside the Capitol and continued to encourage them.
• At 6:01PM Trump tweets again:

"These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"

• 
  Facebook at 7PM removed Trump from using this platform.
• At 8PM Pence reopened the Senate after an absence of more than 6 hours.
• At 11:32PM the House and Senate resumed the joint session.
• At 3:42AM on January 7 Pence announced Biden's victory as the 46th president.

Will Donald Trump be indicted?  Almost surely, but primarily to maximize his notoriety in the late summer and early fall period.  Biden remains president no mater what happens on 8November2022.  For now, Democrats want to maximize the value to them of Trump weakening the Republican Party.  Of course the Party will remain mostly together, but just losing 10% of their votes and 20% of Independent votes in the general election will insure for a lot more Democratic House seats and several more Senate seats for the 2023 congressional year.

At this time, one Democrat strategy is to convict Trump to further taint him, for there is that matter of continuing our democracy, and the Republican Party cannot possibly be that imbecilic.  However, keep in mind that a convicted felon can still run for president.   All this becomes crucial if the Extreme Court does allow state legislatures to determine who will be the next president, for a Republican will then be inducted as president in January of 2025 because they hold a commanding lead in state legislative chambers (red is Republican):

The breakdown of chamber control after the November 2021 election is as follows:

•  36 chambers
•  62 chambers[1]
•   One chamber with power sharing between the parties

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