Despite the resounding spankings he received from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and his former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, and the pimp-slap from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, President Donald Trump is just as likely to win re-election in 2020 as he was the day he was first elected.
Never mind that there are two dozen Democratic candidates. Democratic spoiler alert: there will not be a President Hickenlooper elected in 2020. Spoiler No. 2: There will not be a President Buttigieg elected in 2020. Those two names fall into the category of too hard to pronounce, and with all the other difficulties they face, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg both fall into the former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee trap. Voters will not select a candidate whose name makes folks laugh or stammer.
No. Trump and his 50 million or more committed “deplorable” voters will cruise right back into the White House for another term, but watch out if he doesn’t win, this according to Cohen. Cohen testified before Congress Feb. 27 that Trump might stage a coup, or manufacture a national emergency to seize power in case he’s not re-elected.
“Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will not be a peaceful transition of power,” Cohen said.
I’ve long suspected that Dude would declare a national emergency, suspend the Constitution, and set himself up as “President for life.” Demonstrations and chaos will erupt over this Trump policy or another — especially if he goes to war with Iran or Venezuela — and he will just declare a real emergency, like the one he has been rehearsing over his border wall money.
“One of my takeaways from these riveting hearings today is that we are in the midst of a counter-revolution,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African Studies at the University of Houston.
A hopeless liar, Trump thinks he’s the best thing to happen to world governments since the printing press was invented, and his ardent supporters agree with him 100 percent.
“You have to remember even after Nazi Germany was defeated after fascist Italy was defeated, there remained the core of Nazis, a core of fascists that could simply not be convinced that the path that had been taken was the incorrect path,” scholar Bill Fletcher told me in an interview.
Never mind what Cohen said about Trump: “I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist, he is a conman, and he is a cheat.”
Cohen worked for The Donald more than 10 years, during which time Trump pressured him to lie, make hush-money payments, threaten contractors who were owed money by Trump, and even threaten his former schools not to release his grades or test scores. Smart guy.
“Never in a million years did I imagine, when I accepted a job in 2007 to work for Donald Trump, that he would one day run for president, launch a campaign on a platform of hate and intolerance, and actually win. I regret the day I said ‘yes’ to Mr. Trump. I regret all the help and support I gave him along the way,” Cohen testified.
What’s worse is that it could get worse.
“After you’ve heard Michael Cohen describe Donald Trump and literally say the stuff you’ve heard about Donald Trump being a racist is nothing compared to what he really is: like he’s worse,” said John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation. “And that’s essentially what Michael Cohen was saying today.”
So every week we hit rock-bottom with Trump, and then the next week comes along.
“Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great,” Cohen testified. “He had no desire or intention to lead this nation, only to market himself and to build his wealth and power. Mr. Trump would often say, this campaign was going to be the ‘greatest infomercial in political history.’
“He never expected to win the primary. He never expected to win the general election. The campaign — for him — was always a marketing opportunity,” Cohen said.
What was equally revealing about the hearing and Trump’s power over the Republican Party was the GOP strategy during the hearing. All 17 GOP committee members simply challenged Cohen’s credibility rather than defend Trump on his merits. What merits?
“I think what the Republicans are doing is that they are giving their base reasons to shut their ear,” Fletcher said. “They know that anyone that’s objective-minded, is as we saw in the Watergate hearings, is going to be listening and trying to evaluate what’s really happening here. In this case, the aim of the Republicans is to make sure that their base doesn’t lose hope and that their base doesn’t unravel.”
Trump’s base — the Deplorables, as Hillary Clinton called them — stand by him, and in 2020, Trump gets re-elected, no matter what the Mueller investigation or any Congressional investigation discovers.
