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What do Democrats, the Dominant Media, the Gang of 500, Big Tech, the Lincoln Project, and a handful of Now-Never Trumper Republicans think should happen to Donald Trump and those who have supported him?
For Trump himself: removed from office (by any means necessary); cut off from holding public office again (by any means necessary); denied access to social media accounts, paid speeches, book deals, banking services, hosting golf tournaments, new real estate deals, and a place in polite society now and in post-presidential life.
For elected officials who backed Trump: expulsion or formal censure; no access to fellow members, book deals, or campaign contributions; no place in polite society until the end of time.
For Trump administration political appointees: no future jobs or place in polite society.
For Trump grassroots supporters: what?
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There will almost certainly be a bipartisan vote to impeach the president on Wednesday. There will almost certainly NOT be a Senate trial to remove him from office and a vote to bar him from future office before January 20.
Of all the things that the president doesn’t fully comprehend (although the first lady might…) is just how much his post-presidential opportunities are going to now be extremely limited because of what happened last week.
One of many, many examples of what is known (with more coming):
Deutsche Bank AG and Signature Bank, two of Donald Trump’s favored banks, are pulling away from the billionaire president in the wake of last week’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The German lender has decided not to conduct any further business with Trump and his company, said two people with knowledge of the matter, asking not to be identified because the deliberations were confidential. Trump owes the Frankfurt-based lender more than $300 million.
Mr. Trump also likely doesn’t understand that the branding and moral crisis being experienced by congressional Republicans and party officials means that his stranglehold on the GOP is DOA.
From the now regular leaks from Team Kevin McCarthy about how the Leader is standing up to the president, to the open defiance from Mike Pence and some Republican members of Congress, to the wowza rejection by Bill Belichick, to the quote I am about to share with you – from all that, you can see more clearly than the president does that his relationship to the elites in his adopted political home are majorly changed:
Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist who served as a top adviser for Chris Christie in his 2016 run for president, said the violence at the Capitol represented a breaking point for his party’s relationship with Mr. Trump.
“Now the two camps are, who is a Trump sycophant and who is not,” Mr. DuHaime said. “That spells doom until we can get past Trump.” (New York Times)
The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Baker is representative of a certain type of center-right point of view and condemnation:
Now is the time when conservatives especially need to look beyond the frustrations of what often seems like an unlevel moral playing field and acknowledge an unequivocal, unqualified truth: The president’s behavior last week was uniquely and unforgivably iniquitous. And the decay goes deeper. It cannot be excused by citing counterparts on the left….
[T]here’s no doubt that his repeated false claims about the election provided the fuel for the metaphorical arsonists whose work he inspired.
Meanwhile, Bret Stephens makes the case that Republicans can only save the party by removing the president from office via impeachment and conviction.
The breaking point is, however, apparently not as great with the grassroots as it is with the elites.
From the New York Times:
Mr. Trump won 74.2 million voters, a Republican record, even in defeat in 2020. Some party leaders fret that as of now, they cannot win with Mr. Trump, and they cannot win without him. Right-wing voters have signaled that they will abandon the party if it turns on Mr. Trump, and more traditional Republicans will sour if it sticks by him.
Hillary Clinton takes her Chappaqua pen to the Washington Post op-ed page to basically argue that Trump supporters are white supremacists who need to be identified, studied, revealed, investigated, and pursued to the gates of heck.
Speaking of, and writing about, Secretary Clinton is the Journal’s William McGurn, who breaks a bit of code about the challenges here for the congressional Democrats and, especially, Joe Biden:
In [Biden’s] victory speech he said it was time to “stop treating our opponents as enemies.” He’s right, but it will take leadership to make these words real for millions of Trump voters who feel, with reason, that the hatred and contempt directed at Mr. Trump is also meant for them.
Hillary Clinton admitted this when she infamously labeled these voters “deplorables.” But funny thing about that: In her original remarks, she made clear she was consigning only half of Mr. Trump’s supporters to her “basket of deplorables.”
The other half, she said, are “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures.” She went on to advise that “those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
She was willing to consider at least half of Mr. Trump’s supporters worthy of understanding and empathy. Today, this would make Mrs. Clinton the moderate.
I know there are tens of millions of Americans who think that all of the 74 million people who voted for Donald Trump are ignorant, racist scum who should not be courted or addressed in any way animated by grace or a desire to let them be part of polite company.
As I’ve made clear, this attitude does not seem to be in the nation’s interest or Joe Biden’s interest.
To state the obvious, those who are attempting to bring Donald Trump and his elite supporters to their sense of justice are making it harder to integrate 74 million Americans into the post-Trump world.
That might be the choice they wish to make (it might even be the right choice), but they should recognize they are making a choice.
In the short term, this is about the potential violence I was skeptical would ever occur. I was wrong.
In the medium term, this is about how — and whether — we can keep the Republic.
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ESSENTIAL READING
* The Washington Post tick tocks greater than anyone has ever tick tocked just how shocking the president’s behavior was on January 6.
It includes what might be the most important paragraph for the Trump Administration time capsule:
“He was hard to reach, and you know why? Because it was live TV,” said one close Trump adviser. “If it’s TiVo, he just hits pause and takes the calls. If it’s live TV, he watches it, and he was just watching it all unfold.”
* The Washington Post tick tocks greater than anyone has ever tick tocked the downward spiral of the Trump-Pence relationship, including this:
“Do the courageous thing, Mike,” Trump said in one meeting, according to a person present.
“It will be bad for you and for the country if you don’t,” Trump said at another time, according to an official describing the meeting.
* If you are writing the screenplay about the Trump Final Days, make sure you include the scene in the Capitol during the siege during which Republican House members refused to wear masks and thus created both a potential super spreader event and unlimited anger on the part of their Democratic colleagues.
Read in full the statement of the Gentlelady from Washington State:
United States Representative Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) received a positive COVID-19 test result tonight after being locked down in a secured room at the U.S Capitol where numerous Republican lawmakers recklessly refused to wear masks in the moments after the January 6 attack. Dr. Brian Monahan, the Attending Physician of the United States Congress, advised representatives and Congressional staff on Sunday that those in the secured room could have, “been exposed to another occupant with coronavirus infection.” The duration in the room was multiple hours and several Republicans not only cruelly refused to wear a mask but mocked colleagues and staff who offered them one.
“Too many Republicans have refused to take this pandemic and virus seriously, and in doing so, they endanger everyone around them. Only hours after President Trump incited a deadly assault on our Capitol, our country, and our democracy, many Republicans still refused to take the bare minimum COVID-19 precaution and simply wear a damn mask in a crowded room during a pandemic — creating a superspreader event on top of a domestic terrorist attack,” said Congresswoman Jayapal.
* Plenty of United States senators have gone through rough patches before, but never anything quite like what Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley now face.
Their home state papers take some admirable initial cuts at defining the state of play but there is a lot more going on now – and plenty more to come – with both of these endangered species.
Dallas Morning News on Cruz.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Hawley.
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