What is Donald Trump really up to? The best case scenario is that this paranoid, sociopathic liar, totally ignorant of history, government and the Constitution, and incapable of operating the complex levers of American presidential power will flame out – perhaps within first year or so of his first term. In this scenario, Republicans in Congress will recognize their own political peril in the 2018 elections if they seem complicit in his chaotic leadership. So they seize upon impeachment or the 25th Amendment and Mike Pence ultimately becomes president. That won’t please Democrats, but most will go along believing that Pence is less dangerous than Trump.

The worst case scenario is that Trump succeeds in his less than noble ambition to remake his America in the style of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It is not so much that he admires Putin personally — he envies Putin’s almost absolute power. It can be argued that Trump has already begun to expand his power grab, by repeatedly attempting to undermine the credibility of the three institutions which have the capacity to put the brakes on his ambitions – the judiciary, the intelligence community and the news media. It is not simply that he disagrees with the decisions or public comments made by these institution’s members. He and his White House henchmen dispute their very right to challenge his authority.

I hope that given my lifetime as a journalist you won’t think I am being parochial when I express my horror that the president of the United States has declared the major news organizations of this country as “the enemy of the American people.”



James m Joiner
Gardner, Ma
http://anaverageamericanpatriot.blogspot.com