While Republicans have dreamed forever about achieving permanent minority rule, it wasn’t until Donald Trump arrived that they found a way to pull it off. Trump compromises everyone. He makes everyone around him complicit. That’s really his one talent.
Take Russia out of the equation and Trump never becomes POTUS. Everything flows from that fact. Trump’s power doesn’t flow from him, it flows from all the people who can blackmail him — because those are the same people blackmailing the rest of the GOP. The machine relies on Trump to be the organizing principle around which all the other corruption revolves. But, what if Trump suddenly disappeared.
Donald Trump is not a healthy man. We can see it and hear it. I bet up close you can smell it too. It’s the outrageous story twist that still hasn’t happened. But it very well could. At some point, it absolutely will: Trump will die or become incapacitated. What happens then?
If it happens before the election, all hell will break loose. How can it not? Suddenly all those people afraid of Trump coming after them if they tell the truth will have nothing to fear. Trump’s family may vow to pick up the mantle but each and every one of them is about to have their own legal problems. The Republican Party won’t suddenly come to Jesus and realize the error of its ways. They, too, will have legal problems.
Without Trump, Bill Barr’s efforts become harder to defend. Mike Pence calling those shots wont have the same impact that Trump calling them does. No one’s beholden to Mike Pence; in fact, Mike Pence is as beholden as pretty much anyone.
With Trump out of the picture, more secrets will pour from the shadows but without Trump’s presence to reassure his villainous co-conspirators that nothing will happen to them. Aside from Trump, who among the Republicans can in any way assure the rest of them they they’ll get away with this?
No one. Because no one can assure them.
If Trump were to succumb before the election, the entire Republican election effort will fall apart. Who would his followers glom onto instead? Mike Pence? Ha! Ted Cruz? Not even Ted’s family likes Ted. Nikki Haley? Do not hold your breath. The answer is no one.
If Trump were to cheat his way into “re-election” then succumb after his second stolen election, pretty much the same thing would happen. Trump is the corrupt heart at the corrupt core of Republicanism. Without Trump, all those corrupt Republicans will turn on each other like sharks in a feeding frenzy. They’re all criminals after all. They know what everyone else holds over them — and they hate them for it.
Without Trump mitigating all that mistrust? The mistrust will explode. The Republicans will turn on each other with bloodthirsty abandon. Take it to the bank. They’re Republicans. It’s what they do.
The end of Donald Trump will be the end of the Republican coup d’etat and, shortly thereafter, the Republican Party itself.
Extinction couldn’t happen to a better bunch of pirates.