By firing FBI Director James Comey, President Donald Trump has given new life to the flagging “Russian interference” Narrative promoted by the Main Stream Media. [The Predictable Catastrophe Of Firing James Comey, by Scott Geer, Daily Caller, May 17, 2017]
Jennifer Rubin [email her], still inexplicably promoted by the Washington Post as a “conservative,” gloats Democrats will retake the House and then proceed to impeach President Trump. [WAPO’s Jennifer Rubin: Dems Will Take The House in 2018 and then push to impeach Trump, by Trent Baker, Breitbart, May 20, 2017] At the very least, President Trump will be mired in continuous investigations. He needs to regain the initiative, as he did at crucial points in the campaign, by reasserting his National Conservative appeal to his base.
What Trump has actually done, or what these investigation into “WhateverGate” is supposed to discover, is completely unknown. The premise that the American intelligence community has proof of Trump’s collusion with Russia but sat on it during the entire campaign, Obama’s last months in office, and during the first months of a supposed foreign agent’s rise to power, is absurd on its face. Comey stated under oath he had not been pressured to end any investigation by President Trump, only to now change his mind now that he’s been fired. [First on CNN: Comey now believers Trump was trying to influence him, source says, by Pamela Brown, Gloria Borger, and Eric Lichtblau, CNN, May 20, 2017]
But the bottom line: it doesn’t matter what Trump did or didn’t do. Impeachment, at its core, is not a legal proceeding, but a political one. It is our System’s equivalent to a Vote of No Confidence in Parliament. If the Democrats take power, they will impeach Trump simply because our current Commander-in-Chief poses an existential threat to the System simply by existing.
If only Trump would actually start acting like an existential threat!
Instead, however, Trump goes out of his way to try to be gracious. He is forever talking about how “honored” he is to be meeting with this or that person and obviously revels in the ceremonies of state. Trump clearly has deep respect for the Presidency and the country. (Trump, like Ronald Reagan, always wears a suit in the Oval Office). He seems to be operating under the presumption that the usual standards of respect and decorum will be applied to him.
The problem: The Main Stream Media has changed the rules Reporters are quite openly trying to take down Trump’s administration. No-one bothers to conceal their political bias. Democrats have made no secret of the fact they regard Trump as illegitimate. [California Democratic Party Leader Leads ‘F*CK Donald Trump’ Chant At Convention, by Adelle Nazarian, Breitbart, May 21, 2017] Trump’s breaking bread with the MSM and the Democrats and treating them as part of the legitimate opposition just makes him appeal hopelessly naïve [Trump to meet with network news anchors in off-the-record lunch, by Callum Paton, Newsweek, May 18, 2017].
The same is true of Trump’s relationship with leaders of his own party. He has governed like an edgier version of George W. Bush, pushing standard Beltway Right policies on taxes and health care. There have been some successes on border security, but the President of the United States is supposed to enforce the law. Trump has not challenged Republican orthodoxy on trade, foreign policy and entitlement programs in the way many of his Rust Belt supporters were hoping. Nor has he abolished DACA, attacked Birthright Citizenship, or even pushed for English as the national language. Instead, he’s tried to be a good Republican leader.
But he’s not getting any loyalty in return. Paul Ryan and his staff openly tried to take Trump out during the later stage of the campaign and they don’t intend to stick their necks out for him now. The Administration is being hamstrung by continuous leaks from within Trump’s own staff, a predictable consequence because he staffed the White House with Beltway Right hacks and #NeverTrump activists rather than committed loyalists [As leaks pile up, it’s evident Trump is under attack from his own staff, by Alex Pfeiffer, Daily Caller, May 19, 2017].
Republican Congressmen are worried Evan McMullin was taping their meetings when he was policy director of the House Republican Conference and is now leaking these transcripts to the press. McMullin went on to become a spoiler candidate whose purpose was to make sure Hillary Clinton won the presidency. [House Republican Leaders Fear Evan McMullin may have spied on them, by Joel Pollak, Breitbart, May 18, 2017]
If the lodestar for conventional Republican policy was Evan McMullin, how can President Trump even work with conventional Republicans, let alone expect loyalty from them?
President Trump didn’t win the nomination of the Republican Party—he conquered the Republican Party. He has sufficient support among the Republican rank-and-file to keep the hacks in line. But if he loses his deep emotional connection to that base, the Republican Congressmen who never wanted him to win anyway are going to abandon him.
The purpose of the Beltway Right, of course, is to lose, and make a few bucks for themselves while they run out the clock on the country. Naturally, Ben Sasse, John McCain and other Republican Senators who support the Invade The World, Invite The World, In Hock To The World grand strategy which has rendered our country a ramshackle embarrassment are eager to run to the Sunday talk shows and grandstand for more wars [Sasse: ‘There’s obviously a lot that’s troubling’ about White House actions since Comey firing, by Pam Key, Breitbart, May 21, 2017].
Of course, there is good news. As Ann Coulter observed, nothing wins Trump’s base back to him like the furious opposition of the media. And Trump’s core supporters appear to be dismissing the MSM’s kvetching and its endless “anonymous sources.” [Trump’s Fans Shrug Off Oval Office Leak, by Ben Schreckinger, Politico, May 16, 2017]
Furthermore, the same journalists and politicians who cheerlead the wholesale replacement of the American people by Third World foreigners can’t believably push a Narrative bemoaning “Russian interference.” The spectacle of Senator Kamala Harris, who rose to her current position because of her efforts to make sure illegal immigrants could continue to fearlessly invade California, now bemoaning foreign influence is self-discrediting. [Dem. Senator: Trump disclosed more to the Russians than Americans, by Max Greenwood, The Hill, May 19, 2017]
Most importantly, Trump has been here before. After the Access Hollywood tapes came out, Republicans ran from Trump and many urged him to end his candidacy. Instead he fought.
Disloyal R's are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary. They come at you from all sides. They don’t know how to win - I will teach them!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
And as Trump’s rueful critics now admit, he staged a spectacular comeback and won [Don’t underestimate Trump, by Ronald Klein, Washington Post, May 18, 2017]. He did it by running against the entire political system and framing the attacks against him as attacks against his supporters by corrupt elites trying to guard their own power. He doubled down on trade, immigration patriotism, and America First.
And it worked—not because Trump was such a great messenger, but because Americans are so eager to follow someone with that Message.
Trump is now in the same position he was in last October: under attack from within the GOP and besieged from without. It’s time to repeat the strategy of confrontation which propelled him to victory to begin with.
Trump’s supporters are hungry for a battle. But they need their president to lead them. They will fight for Trump (literally), but they will not fight for Paul Ryan’s upper class tax cuts.
Americans understand that the Deep State exists and that it wants Trump out, that the GOP Establishment wants to go back to business as usual, and that the Democrats are seizing on Russia because they desperately need to explain away Hillary Clinton’s failure to win the election.
Trump could reframe the entire debate in a moment—if he can just summon the will.
Americans elected a fighter as president, the man who bragged in his books about “screwing his enemies against the wall.” That is the Trump who can win this latest battle.
But if Trump attempts to compromise with enemies and false friends, he’ll end as despised as George W. Bush was by the end of his second term if he’s lucky.
And if Trump is unlucky, he will end as Nixon did.
And if that happens, former president Trump will have no one to blame but himself.
James Kirkpatrick [Email him] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc.
