A review of the last week in the Turdpol Kakistocracy:
- May 9, Tuesday: President Trump fires FBI Director James Comey. The administration claims the firing is over the Director’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
- May 10, Wednesday: Trump meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the Unites States Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office and reveals highly classified intel to the Russians.
- May 11, Thursday: Trump has an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt where he torpedoes all the spin over the Comey firing coming from his own aides, and reveals that he fired Comey because of the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
- May 12, Friday: Trump threatens Comey on Twitter, warning him not to leak anything to the press.
- May 15, Monday: News breaks about Trump revealing the classified intel to the Russians.
- May 16, Tuesday: Reporting reveals that James Comey kept memos of his interactions with President Trump. One memo describes a meeting in February where Trump asked Comey to end the investigation into disgraced National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia.
- May 17, Wednesday: The Department of Justice appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special prosecutor to continue the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and possible obstruction of justice.
There’s more, but those are the broad strokes. Without a doubt, this past week has been the most damaging to Trump’s presidency in a long string of weeks with not a lot of good news.
This is it. This is the beginning of the end. Even if the Mueller investigation takes years, and is joined by possibly a select committee or independent commission, the process to remove Trump from the presidency has begun.
I imagine that, when historians begin releasing their judgments of this period in American history, it will be plainly obvious in retrospect that the Trump administration was doomed from the moment Trump took the oath of office. Check that, it was doomed from the moment he won the election. Check that, it was doomed from the moment he accepted the GOP nomination in Cleveland. Check that, it was doomed from the moment Trump rode down an escalator in 2015 and announced he was running for president. Check that, it was doomed from the moment Trump first opened his mouth on television. Check that…one gets the idea.
Trump has never, at any point in his life, shown the mettle or competence to be President of the United States. He is a man who showed he was unfit for the job on a constant basis, from way back before there was ever an inkling that he would run, and yet, there he is, profaning the highest office in the land every single day.
Trump has been, and still is, a frightening test of the strength of our republic. His stratospheric narcissism has led him, like water seeking its own level, to threaten the institutions and discard the norms that have allowed us to operate as a single nation for over 240 years. There has not been a greater danger to the future of this country since the Civil War. I say that not as hyperbole or exaggeration. The Trump presidency, had it not been faced with pushback from the more resilient areas of United States government and the dogged work of journalists, would be well into the process of transforming the United States into an amalgamation of the worst aspects of conservative ideology and Russian-style kleptocracy.
That’s how bad this would be getting if Trump were anywhere near competent. He has all the makings of a despot except one: intelligence. He is dumb and too many people are watching. That is what will save us.