'You're fired!' America has already terminated Trump

[nitpicker]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/24/youre-fired-america-has-already-terminated-trump

'You're fired!' America has already terminated Trump

Robert Reich

The Mueller report looms but the president is doomed anyway – no one who screws the people so blatantly can win re-election

Sun 24 Feb 2019 06.00 GMT Last modified on Sun 24 Feb 2019 06.16 GMT

Robert Mueller’s soon-to-be-delivered report will begin months of congressional investigations, subpoenas, court challenges, partisan slugfests, media revelations, and more desperate conspiracy claims by Donald Trump, all against the backdrop of the burning questions: Will he be impeached by the House? Will he be convicted by the Senate? Will he pull a Richard Nixon and resign?

In other words, will America fire Trump? I have news for you. America has already fired him.

When the public fires a president before election day, as it did Jimmy Carter, Nixon and Herbert Hoover, they don’t send him a letter telling him he’s fired. They just make him irrelevant. Politics happens around him, despite him. He’s not literally gone but he might as well be.

It’s happened to Trump. The courts and House Democrats are moving against him. Senate Republicans are quietly subverting him. Even Mitch McConnell told him to end the shutdown.

The Fed is running economic policy. Top-level civil servants are managing day-to-day work of the agencies.

Isolated in the White House, distrustful of aides, at odds with intelligence agencies, distant from his cabinet heads, Trump has no system to make or implement decisions. His tweets don’t create headlines as before. His rallies are ignored. His lies have become old hat.
(snip)

[nitpicker]

1. IMO, some wishful thinking about this

He still retains veto power, if/when enough Senate Repugs bolt to approve legislation. I will believe "politics happens around him" when it actually does occur.

[Fuzzpope]

3. Agreed.

And of all people, Robert Reich should know better than to offer up reducilous pragmatism with no anchor in reality.

Trump's kinetic energy will outlive his presidency, if he's not locked away when he leaves office he's going to snipe and smash and influence from without.

We are nowhere near beyond this shit yet.

Bad dog, Mr Reich. No biscuit.

[DemocracyMouse]

6. Yes, what will we all do if Reich is right?

We'll have to get off the couch and start focusing on fixing things like our shredded Constitution and the collapsing environment.

Trumpworld was so much more fun to hate, wasn't it? Loving the Earth and leaving it to the next generation is real work.

[olegramps]

16. I don't believe this is balance treatment of the situation.

The Republican Party has been pursuing a policy of intense demonization of the Democrats for over forty years. They have convinced their constituency that Democrats are dangerous socialistic, unamerican, immoral enemies of the nation. It will take years of intense counter programing to undue the damage that Reagan did to Democrats. His latest tactic is to spread lie that if the citizens vote Democratic that the nation will result in the condition as Venezuela. Unfortunately millions are going to believe him and equate any social program proposal as de facto proof that result in the collapse of the economy. It doesn't matter that the vast majority of his constituency are solely dependent on Social Security and Medicare to keep them from economic ruin. It is beyond frustration to attempt to reason with people who are so easily misled. People should also consider just what effect will Bernie Sanders will have in his on and off pseudo-membership on the party's success. I see little difference in the policies that he was pursuing in regard to trade agreements and tariffs than those of Trump and his band of laissez-faire anti-regulation economists. These are the policies deregulation that brought on the Great Depression and the recent banking collapse.

It doesn't matter that it is an absolute lie, because Venezuela collapsed because of the communistic policies of Chavez and Maduro who were both live long communists. Their policies have nothing to do with progressive socialization programs that provided our nation with laws that outlawed child labor, established a forty hour work week, universal education, clean water and air, Social Security, etc. etc. etc. The economy of the country was destroyed by the communistic nationalization of industries and agrarian redistribution programs. Both Chavez and Maduro have far for in common with Trump. They, like Trump are nothing more than lying demagogues who duped the people into believing the could restore the economy. Trump if left unimpeded would lead us down the same road of the Chavez and Maduro administrations which have resulted in enriching their cronies who have ripped off ever industry leaving them in bankruptcy.

[empedocles]

2. Yes, but the traitortrump 'shadow' support does and will persist as problems.

Gotti, in prison for about 7 years, finally died in prison. His funeral was marked by an incredible 70+ flower limousines. Eerie.

[LawnKorn]

4. As long as Trump sits in the White House, he is not 'irrelevant'.

He has the power to deploy the armed forces without congressional approval including atomic bombs.

[CrispyQ]

19. This & the lifetime judicial nominations McConnell is pushing through.

I usually agree with Reich for the most part but he's wrong on this one.

[HopeAgain]

5. But terrible scandals continue

Still a lot of damage being wrought, foreign policy being ruined, damage being done,

[ROB-ROX]

7. The GOP Drone Will Continue To Worship Their Leader

The idiots who voted for Old Bone Spurs do not know better. They will support him because they are DRONES, and do as they are told because they lack common ethics and common intelligence. The president may also have a butt load of fake news to support his sinking ship of fools.......

[Fritz Walter]

8. Putin: "Hold my Stoli!"

Vlad’s bots are already hard at work, getting blatantly false and negative talking points out onto our social networks, news media online comment pages and other channels we haven’t begun to realize are vulnerable.

And ‘Individual 1’ and his minions are part of the scheme, shutting down task forces that were set up to combat this cyber-attack.

This isn’t “meddling.” That’s what your mother-in-law does. This isn’t “interference.” That’s what happens to your satellite TV signal during a heavy thunderstorm.

This is an attack, meant to keep the RepubliCONs “relevant.”

[Baitball Blogger]

9. Justice delayed is justice denied.

[Honeycombe8]

10. I don't see that.

He's still immensely popular with the Republican base. His rallies are not ignored. His lies? His supporters have never cared that he lies. That's part of his charm, to them.

McConnell did not tell him not to shut the govt down. He implied he wished the President would do "A" rather than "B." But he didn't tell him to, or say he wouldn't support it, if Trump did.

Republicans still don't pass laws or vote, as a body, against anything Trump wants. They worked to get him his wall, as a matter of fact, after trying to pass a budget w/o it didn't work.

They automatically confirm all his nominees for judges and Justices, to the point that they strongarm their members to do so, or else.
Trump owns the Republicans in Congress.

Trump owned the House investigation process. If Republicans were still in charge there, he still would.

He vetoes sanctions against Russia that Congress imposes. He runs foreign policy. He pursues his tariff plans, despite Congressional Republicans and the American public being against it.

I don't see that he's become irrelevant at all. He has settled in, comfortable with his power and having learned how to use it more effectively. His latest job approval rating is 44%, near his high of 45%. (Obama's was 47% at this point in time in his administration.) The RNC has strengthened their support, as they have made it so that Trump can't be challenged by other Republicans in his re-election campaign (which is already underway).

He is more popular than ever among Republicans. This is the problem. If he weren't, he WOULD have become irrelevant a year ago. Republicans will turn out in droves to vote for his re-election. It's dangerous to underestimate the control he has over the Republican Party. Despite Republicans saying he doesn't represent the party, it seems to me that this IS the Republican Party.

[40RatRod]

13. I agree...

I simply cannot believe people who I respected (past tense) now talk like Trump is the Messiah sent by God. They are not going to change.

[not fooled]

17. Yep

And between the MAGAts turning out, Russian propaganda and other attacks on the election, GOPeePee vote theft aka "supression", billionaire-funded media blitzes and who knows what else (election fraud), plus other machinations, it's entirely plausible that the worst "president" in American history could get re-installed.

This time, Reich misses the mark.

And, IIRC, Carter was leading in the polls and set for re-election until joke candidate raygun's campaign conspired with the mullahs to rig the election by holding the hostages until afterwards.

[PatrickforO]

18. You have a point here. Several good ones, in fact.

But so does Reich. Pelosi and members of the US House recently went to Europe to reassure our allies that we STILL VALUE NATO and intend to honor our alliances in the long run.

I'm not sure how relevant this might be to the national picture, but I post a lot on The Hill, and the right-wing trolls on there have become pretty shrill and irrelevant, and the genuine people are more and more center-left and left. The tenor of the site and the comments just feels different now than it did, say six months or a year ago.

And, anecdotally, we hear more and more stories about how die-hard Republicans have been turning against Trump.

Now, you're quite right that Trump's base is never going to abandon him - the kluxers, the nazis and the holy-roller right-wing evangelicals.

Here's an interesting aside on this base - there is a hardcore group (the Q Anon types) who actually don't think there is anything worth saving in our current society so they have embraced chaos. Funny, these people who are so stridently anti-socialist are consciously taking a page from Lenin, who tried to hasten the downfall of capitalism by sabotaging the western democracies all he could. Now, these clowns are trying to hasten the apocalypse by tearing down the whole thing. I mean, look at the people Trump has appointed - an oil guy who is known for suing the EPA now in charge of the EPA? Then a coal guy? An anti-labor union-buster in charge of USDOL. Betsy for God's sake DeVos in charge of the Department of Education? The guy went in with a wrecking ball.

And, he's been attacking the institutions we trust - the press, national security, the Fed - seriously, Trump and his minions are puppets dancing to Putin's tune, which was composed by a Russian named Alexander Dugin.

But, as I always ask, if you're going to tear down everything, what will you replace it with?

This seems to me to be a battle between the forces that want to preserve the democracies and fix them so they are more progressive, and those that want to tear them down and have chaos. To my mind (and hope!), the institutions are holding and the Trump forces weakening.

[Honeycombe8]

20. Trump has an 89% approval rating among Republicans (Gallup).

https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx That's up from 86% at this time last year. That says it all.

I do hear more inklings of disapproval from establishment Republicans than previously. How widespread that is, I don't know. And those are establishment Republicans.

But there's no mistaking an 89% approval rating. That makes Trump able to continue owning the Republican Party, since Senators and Reps are scared to death of ticking off 89% of Republicans by going against Trump.

This makes Trump stronger, if anything, in my view.

Our only hope is a possible criminal indication against Trump. What could be done, legally, about that, I don't know. But that is the only hope of slowing the Trump train down, that I can see.

Republicans may pinch their noses when they vote, but they will vote for any Republican over a Democrat any day. Of course, if establishment Republicans don't vote at all, that is another hope, I guess.

[IronLionZion]

11. Stranger things have happened

it's a nice thought. We can defeat Trump. He's definitely vulnerable. But we have to work for it and not take anything for granted.

[FailureToCommunicate]

12. Irrelevant? Well, there are a LOT of RW judges being installed.

Starting at the Supreme Court and on down the hierarchy

[PatrickforO]

14. He still has some venom.

My wife and I were amused this morning (or maybe horrified) to hear that Trump is too ignorant to understand the term Memorandum of Understanding, and in the face of a giggling Chinese official, Trump's guy changed the wording to be 'Agreement' as opposed to MOU.

The feelings something like that elicits...well, it's a sort of hysteria I guess. You laugh until you realize this is our president, then the horror sets in and you get angry and perhaps shed tears that America has come to this.

And then you shake your head and say...

Fuck.

[BunnyMcGee]

15. Oh No

I would not write this guy off until he is in a Supermax prison

[Blue Owl]

21. Somehow I'd love to see trump humiliated on national TV

Just like he loves to humiliate is failed apprentices...

[calimary]

22. I fired trump WAAAAAY back when he first opened his yap.

2015. The “post-escalator-ride speech.” I saw that and said “Buh-BYE!”