What’s been going on this week, much like what happened last Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol, was not too hard to predict. Trump is melting, much like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.
What’s strange is that Trump isn’t the first president to suffer this, it’s just that his case is more severe. In the last days of Richard Nixon’s presidency, Nixon was reportedly frequently drunk, talking to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and at one point was down on his knees with Henry Kissinger praying. Neither were devout, by the way.
Both Nixon and Trump knew they were in over their heads, but reacted in somewhat different ways. In Trump’s case, he has never had to confront his obviously extreme case of malignant narcissism. It’s new to him and he’s taking it very badly. Moreover, the crutches he has depended on to maintain his psyche have been taken away from him: no more Twitter.
So, like with Nixon, Trump is going down hard. He’s unlikely to hit the booze because he’s a teetotaler, but he is reportedly raging and wholly unfocused on his job. The military is ignoring him and it seems to be taking orders from Vice President Pence. Trump has made no plans for a farewell address, which seems out of character for him. It’s hard for me to believe he won’t, but we’ll see.
Mostly, like Nixon, Trump is feeling very much alone with most of his staffers deserting him. He’s being abandoned both metaphorically and literally. And according to reports he trusts no one, not even Pence to pardon him if he were to resign early. This is not too hard to understand since he had never really trusted anyone; he’s always trusted only to his own instincts. And now those have proven catastrophically and undeniably wrong. His cognitive dissonance right now must be off the charts.
In fact, Trump has plenty of company. The 30,000 or so of his supporters that stormed the Capitol last week show there are plenty of people who share his ideas and delusions. Time is proving just how dangerous the attack on the Capitol was, and just how lucky we were that it didn’t turn out a lot worse. The one thing the attackers had going against them was that they weren’t very well organized. There is so much voluminous evidence of their crimes though that it’s only a matter of time before most of them are tracked down and prosecuted.
There is plenty of concern that more attacks are in the offing. But at least at the Capitol it seems unlikely. The National Guard has pretty much occupied the Capitol. Unlike on January 6th, there’s virtually no way a crowd is going to be able to get anywhere near the Capitol. The whole national mall is being shut down as a security precaution. The Joint Chiefs have made it clear that Biden will be inaugurated and they’ll have at least 20,000 troops, plus Capitol and D.C. police to make sure it happens. Any insurrectionist stupid enough to try to confront them is likely to find themselves with a bullet through their head.
It remains to be seen what if any threats happen in and around state capitals. Most states have sufficient National Guard troops to handle anything that comes up. Hopefully most governors will have learned from January 6 and deploy them heavily as a precaution.
As for Trump, his psychological crisis may be a blessing. Not only is he being largely ignored by staff, he seems to be too unfocused to take steps a more rational president in his predicament would take. I suspect he blames his own supporters for failing him on January 6th, thus it is looking less likely that he will try to pardon them en masse. Based on reporting, he does seem to understand that trying to pardon himself is at best a legally dubious proposition. Since he thinks mostly only about himself, in his confused state he may forget or simply decide to issue no more pardons. Here’s hoping.
So, it’s good for our nation if Trump spends his last days sulking, lost and feeling impotent. It’s good if his exit from the presidency looks small and ignoble. I still expect he will slink out of the White House, likely the night before or in the early hours of the 20th. For a showman, I suspect this is one exit he will want done discreetly and away from the cameras.
Where will he go? Mar-a-Lago, if I were to guess, at least in the short term. Scotland won’t have him. If he ultimately flees to Russia it would be fine by me if he stayed there. That would be a punishment as deserving as any we could give him here in a court of law. The less we see and hear of Donald J. Trump after his term expires, the better it will be for our nation. We need to put Trump in the rear-view mirror permanently.
Occam's Razor 