That will be the question in coming days. Donald Trump is all about winning—Cheating? It’s a good thing! No, it’s a great thing!—and DC talking heads, some of them, anyway, are realizing that Donald Trump’s Administration is already a guaranteed disaster, unlike any other in American history. David Brooks, my long-time whipping boy, is turning into my go-to guy for straight talk on Sir Donald. In today’s column, “Republican Fausts”, Brooks considers the plight of Republican politicians who wanted to believe that Trump was, you know, a normal human being, while Trump has spent the last 10 days proving he doesn’t give a shit about anything:
“With most administrations you can agree sometimes and disagree other times. But this one is a danger to the party and the nation in its existential nature. And so sooner or later all will have to choose what side they are on, and live forever after with the choice.”
My only quarrel with Brooks is that he’s hoping Republicans will make this decision based on principle, while in fact it’s clear that they’ll fear Trump, and obey him, as long his base remains united. Like the Southern “moderates” during the struggle over integration back in the fifties and sixties, they’ll forever remain in the background, waiting for the “right time,” which time, sadly, will never come.
While Brooks is acquiring a backbone, other conservatives are losing theirs. Over at Reason, the admirable Matt Welch catches one-time Trump denouncer David French in the act of being a coward in a piece French wrote for the National Review labeled “Trump’s Executive Order on Refugees—Separating Fact from Hysteria”, though French seems to be peddling hysteria, because it certainly isn’t fact. Writes Welch
“French characterizes Trump’s move as “an executive order dominated mainly by moderate refugee restrictions.” Not only does a blanket, never-been-done-before four-month refugee-stoppage—and an equally historic three-month ban of all travel from seven other countries—constitute a “moderate” move by French’s lights, so does Trump’s slashing of the U.S. target for refugee admittance to 50,000 a year, which is less than half of the 110,000 target Barack Obama set for this year, and also well below the 70,000-80,000 goal set every year from 2001-2015.”
Matt has a lot more to say about Trump and French, and, sadly, it’s all too accurate. Meanwhile, over at the Atlantic, Eliot Cohen, generally not my favorite neocon, gives the following prediction, with which I entirely agree:
“Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity—substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment. The sooner Americans get used to these likelihoods, the better.”
