Impeachment Week 11: Laughing at the Trump Tragicomedy

President Donald Trump, as he promised, is making history. It isn’t the way he wanted to make history, but nonetheless you cannot deny facts—unless you’re Trump.

With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement Thursday that the House of Representatives will prefer impeachment charges against the president, Trump could go down in history as the first president impeached and removed from office, or perhaps the first president to be impeached and run for re-election. He could resign, but where’s the fun in that? Nixon already went there.

Should Trump be impeached and continue his re-election bid, whoever wins the Democratic nomination should avoid a public debate with him prior to the election at any cost. Trump has rewritten the rules of debate so that such endeavors more closely resemble a WWE smackdown or a weird version of Fight Club than a discussion on policy. And while such efforts can be amusing in a grotesque fashion, it is much more amusing, not to mention informative, to watch Trump engage in a solitary battle with his id and super ego. Since he does nothing but lie, any debate with him is pointless. He will declare himself the victor no matter the actual outcome. His mindless minions will nod, clap and wet themselves while the rest of us shake our heads and wonder for perhaps the thousandth time in a week what it takes for them to see the light.

At this point in the game, Trump still stands a good chance of re-election. Gerrymandering has helped to ensure the Senate remains firmly Republican; thus a Senate impeachment trial presided over by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court likely will not end with Trump’s removal from office. The lack of active voters across the country gives Trump’s followers a louder voice, while voter-suppression efforts help guarantee the disenfranchised who do not like Trump do not vote. And Russian interference might keep it close enough that Trump could squeeze out another victory.

So it’s pointless to debate whether or not Trump is good for the country. His actions speak for themselves: He encouraged a foreign leader, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to announce an investigation into a political rival while withholding foreign aid that Ukraine needed to continue fighting a war with Russia.

You can call it quid pro quo, bribery or duck soup and it matters little. The lowbrow pressure Trump scraped his knuckles committing is heinous, self-serving and without precedent. He effectively admitted to his political crime in his released memo of the conversation, though he continues to claim it was a “perfect” telephone call and there was no quid pro quo. Mick Mulvaney, the president’s acting chief of staff, simply told us to get over it.

Administration lackeys aside, Trump could not persist without the support of his loyal sycophants among the electorate. Do they suffer from psychosis? Are they, as others have suggested, members of a strange cult? Are they merely emasculated white males who idolize Trump because of the predilection for vulgar bombast he uses to assert his dominance—kind of like a dog that pees on a tree to mark his territory? Or are they, like the loyalist members of Congress, complicit in his chicanery?

This week I put a simple question out there on social media to his supporters. “What do you like about Donald Trump?” Policy decisions aside, Trump displays behavior that most parents don’t tolerate in their children. My proximity to him is without a doubt the cause for my alarm. He lies to me every time I ask him a question. The people he hires lie to me. They lie about me. Trump threatens the existence of a free press. Many of his appointees have fled or have been indicted, convicted, fired and humiliated. He claims the Mueller investigation is a hoax, though his administration sanctioned a dozen Russians indicted as a result of that investigation.

Still, those who support the president also persist. They hold on with the tenacity of a man who has a rabid boar by the tail—afraid of what may happen if he holds on and too scared to let go for fear of what would happen if he did.

Some of Trump’s supporters love his defense of Israel. Some claim he’s spearheading a vibrant economy. Others claim that he is “unconventional” and “a maverick” but keeps his campaign promises, like building the wall. Some supporters I questioned pointed to the two Supreme Court justices Trump has appointed, as well as the many federal judicial slots he has filled. Some told me they love how he handles the NATO nations, demanding that they pay their fair share, or the tariff wars he has waged with China. Some simply claim he “woke up America from its slumber.”

But tucked away in the many comments I received was this gem offered by several, including a stalwart Maryland Republican: “He is still a negative in many ways and it would be nice if the Democrats had an acceptable choice for many Trump voters that are willing to vote for a capable moderate leader.”

So even the faithful are getting weary.

Nothing drives that home more than Trump’s less-than-triumphant return from his recent trip to London. Traditionally, when times have been tough for presidents, a quick exit from the Oval Office via Marine One, followed by a trip somewhere, anywhere, overseas, has helped to ease domestic pressure while giving the President a chance to stride across the international stage looking presidential.

That didn’t happen for Trump this week. In a viral moment, world leaders at the NATO meeting in London got caught mocking him behind his back. Trump also got into a war of words with Emmanuel Macron of France, who told him to get serious at one point in their conversation. Then Trump called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “two-faced” after the aforementioned viral video broke.

Defeated and dejected, Trump slinked out of town tweeting furiously about his success, only to return to Washington, where Pelosi announced the House is going to prepare formal impeachment charges. Trump thus leaves the Thanksgiving season and cruises toward the Christmas Holiday as embattled as any modern president.

“I like him,” one Trump supporter told me. “But I wish he’d quit tweeting and insulting everyone.”

Trump doesn’t agree. He continues to rant that House hearings haven’t changed any minds. The prevailing administration theory is Trump will be exonerated in the Senate and, while it is a divisive issue, impeachment will ultimately aid Trump’s bid for re-election.

But Trump divorced himself from reality the moment he declared his inaugural crowds were the largest in history. He killed any chance of learning from his mistakes when he stopped White House press briefings. He is now threatening to alienate the swing voters who gave him a chance in 2016 because they couldn’t stand Hillary Clinton. He will be left with a minority of voters who, so far, have followed him down his rabbit hole.

The world at the end of 2019 is not the same world that elected Donald Trump three years ago. He continues to operate under the same rules of chaos he instituted in the last election with the hope of the same outcome in 2020. He has not adapted, and without taking into account the negative influence he has had across the world, Trump could be destined for another historic moment: the worst defeat of an incumbent in American history.

Several wildcards could keep that from happening. They include, but are not limited to further Russian incursion into the 2020 elections and, perhaps more important, who gets the Democratic nomination. A progressive like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders could drive the swing voters back into the arms of Trump. A centrist like Pete Buttigieg or former Vice President Joe Biden would seem to be in order, but the first is seen by some conservatives and potential swing voters as too young or too short or, factoring in bigots both blatant subconscious, too gay. Biden is seen as senile.

That’s why Trump may make history in another fashion: He could be the first impeached president to be re-elected in our country’s history.

If that’s the case, he then could be the first president to be impeached more than once in our country’s history. As unlikely and as crazy as that sounds, remember until Donald Trump came along most of what has occurred in the White House during the last three years was considered unthinkable. Crazy is what Donald Trump does.