(Dobbs) Are We Watching Donald Trump Self-Destruct?
The law had to catch up to him. It looks like he's finally losing the race.
Maybe Donald Trump could not, as he once boasted, “shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it.” At least not any more.
His walls are closing in.
So much so that yesterday, in an unpatriotic new low even for him, he decried on his website once again what he continues to claim was the “Massive Fraud” of 2020 and called for “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” so that the “RIGHTFUL WINNER” can be declared.
Let me repeat that: He wants to terminate parts of the Constitution.
The good news is, his preposterous complaints don’t carry the weight they once did. Many Republicans are running away from him, not toward him any more.
He is no longer the shiny new object in the Republican Party. He is no longer the commander of a cult so dedicated, no one dares abandon it. All he is now is a loser.
He lost the White House. He lost the Senate. He lost the huge edge pundits expected his party to pick up in the House.
In his quest to be president yet again, he lost Chris Christie, he lost Rupert Murdoch, he lost Mike Pence. Even Ivanka wasn’t at his campaign announcement.
And he has been losing in court. At an astounding rate.
His dodge to delay the Justice Department’s investigation into the top secret documents he stole away, which could lead to federal charges of obstruction and espionage against the ex-president, lost steam a couple of days ago when a three-judge appeals court (two of them Trump appointees, all of them Republicans) said there was no justification for the “special master” Trump had demanded to slow down the process.
Another federal judge ordered two of Trump’s top White House lawyers to testify further in a grand jury investigation in Washington DC into criminal charges that the ex-president tried to overturn the 2020 election.
His fanatical short-lived National Security advisor Michael Flynn was ordered to testify to the grand jury in Atlanta that’s looking into Trump’s effort to reverse Georgia’s 2020 election results, and his former chief of staff Mark Meadows got the same order three days before that, joining their fellow lackeys Rudy Giuliani and Lindsey Graham, who also fought to avoid testifying but lost.
On top of all that, he had to turn over six years of his tax returns to the Democratic House. In that case, even the Supreme Court on which he thought he could rely for relief declined to rule for him.
He was even just sued in New York City for a long ago forcible rape.
There is no bottom. Just an ever-deepening cycle of disgrace.
Like the conviction for seditious conspiracy of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who Trump has now defended for being “treated unconstitutionally.” Rhodes is the treasonous zealot who called for “combat here on U.S. soil,” the extremist who told Trump after the insurrection in case there was still a chance to overturn the election, “I’m here for you and so are all of my men.” The ex-president can screech and scream all he likes about the treatment of traitors like Rhodes, but his protests won’t keep them from living behind bars for a long, long time.
And that was all in just a little more than this past week.
The walls are closing in on Donald Trump. It has been a long time coming. It is a long time overdue.
And he doesn’t have a clue how to stop it. Following their dinner right before Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago, where our former president hosted a couple of unequivocally anti-semitic bigots— rapper Kanye West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes— both men went on the far right program InfoWars Thursday night, showing their admiration for genocidal war criminals. Fuentes called himself “very pro-Putin, very pro-Russia.” West blurted out, “I like Hitler… we got to stop dissing Nazis all the time.”
And that has led to even more losses for the one-time president as many American Jews, although thankful for Trump’s affirmative treatment of Israel, have said that if he didn’t disavow anti-Semites like these, it would be the last straw. He didn’t.
If you’re known by the company you keep— the likes of Stewart Rhodes, Nick Fuentes, Kanye West— we now know Donald Trump better than ever.
Especially since whenever he has the chance to censure low-lifes like these, he takes a pass.
In fact Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the author of “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present,” told The New York Times, he’ll more likely double down now. “For someone of Trump’s temperament, being humiliated by people turning away from him will only make him more desperate and more inclined to support and associate with the most extremist elements of society. There is no other option for him.”
People say all the time, “I just want Trump to go away.” But that’s a pipe dream. He craves the spotlight the way we crave air. Yes, the media could pull its spotlight off the man and never put it back but for my part, as both a former president and would-be future president who still has a weighty if withering following, the man cannot be ignored.
He is not going to go away.
But he might self-destruct. Yesterday’s demand to dismantle the Constitution sounded like he’s one step closer. One step closer to facing the law, if he shoots someone on 5th Avenue or anything else.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Love reading your concise, informative reality!
Thank you!
Keep up the good work, Greg!
Andy Borowitz in the New Yorker clarified Trump's comments on the Constitution.
Yes, he wants to tear up the Constitution, but not the 5th Ammendment!