I was going to write a column saying that “we” (i.e., Democrats) were extraordinarily lucky that President Trump managed to sabotage the Comey dismissal as completely as he did. The original deed was clumsy enough, but adamant denials surely would have put a lid on the matter in a week or so. Only when Donald “explained” that the whole thing was a charade, that every single “fact” in the story was a deliberate lie, did l’affaire Comey rise to the level of something more than a bump in the road. The “point”, so I thought, would be that we can’t expect to be so lucky in the future.
Well, apparently we can, thanks to El Jefe’s latest bombshell, delivered courtesy of what is surely Trump’s bête noire plus noire, the Washington Post. Trump’s latest and greatest, which again involves the Russians—he just can’t stay away from those guys, can he?—is likely to force a few “centrists” to the reluctant conclusion that Trump really is an idiot, entirely unqualified, not simply for the presidency, but for any office of public trust. Because you can’t trust a man with no conscience, and no competence. They want desperately not to believe that that is the case—“You mean I really should have voted for Hillary? That’s crazy!—but it is the case.
Trump’s base, I suspect, won’t be affected much. Trump’s supposed to protect them from Mexican rapists, and so far he’s doing a pretty good job of that. And, as long as the base is loyal, congressional Republicans, who are the only ones with the power to lower the boom on Donald, will continue to be afraid of him. And so the rest of us will have good reason to be afraid as well.
