John Kelly  has no control over the so-called president’s twitter fingers. Trump’s Monday morning tweet storm was as unhinged as ever.  He insists the Trump base is bigger and stronger than ever, and of course news media are all against him. Greg Sargent writes,
This comes some 24 hours after Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein made big news by telling “Fox News Sunday†that if the special counsel finds evidence of crimes in the course of his probe into Russian sabotage of our election, it may be within the scope of his investigation to pursue them.
In these seemingly disparate developments, it is hard not to discern the potential for a volatile, combustible combination.
Because Trump is undermining our democratic norms and processes in so many ways, it is often easy to focus on each of them in isolation, rather than as part of the same larger story. But, taken together, they point to a possible climax in which Trump, cornered by revelations unearthed by Robert S. Mueller III’s probe and by ongoing media scrutiny, seeks to rally his supporters behind the idea that this outcome represents not the imposition of accountability by functioning civic institutions, but rather an effort to steal the election from him — and from them.
This really could get ugly.
Oh, it’s going to get ugly alright.. Trump will try to pull the house down when things close in around him. He’s not going to go gracefully. And if he thinks Pense will grant him a pardon for a safe exit.. He might want to rethink that idea. Pense has his eyes on the prize, and granting Trump a pardon might severely hinder his ambition to attain that prize.
Pense is doing some aggressive butt licking now, but when things shift in his favor he’ll deny Trump like Peter denied Jesus.
I think that is the plan, Maha. Trump knew he could not release his tax records because even a little investigative journalism would have made ??? apparent. We can speculate what’s there, but Trump’s conduct is a reliable barometer.
If Trump has accepted that he can’t end the investigation, he’s going to try to discredit the conclusions of that investigation regardless of how factual and damning the evidence is. This strategy amounts to Olympic class gaslighting.
About 75% of Republicans still support Trump. Note that Trump tweeted about support this morning. This is the power Trump thinks he has over the GOP to stop impeachment. Trump will threaten to split the GOP into two parties if they threaten to impeach. My guess is that the GOP won’t cave – because the first time they allow Trump to extort the GOP, Trump owns the GOP. I don’t think they will cave in to Trump, but it may be pretty close.
If the GOP does impeach, the GOP will let Trump know that if he doesn’t accept it nicely, the new AG will prosecute – and Trump doesn’t want to die in a cage. Pass the popcorn.
It’s amazing that Trump with 4-5 Vietnam deferments (bone spurs) goes after a guy (Sen Blumenthal) who actually served in the military, the man has no shame? I really wish the media would just ignore Trumps ignorant tweets all together, he’s like a spoiled child he craves attention if they would just ignore him he would lose it for sure!
There will be blood.
It’ll be in the streets, and in homes.
t-RUMPLE-THIN-sKKKin has “primed-the-pump (an original t-RUMP expression, according to his own damn lying, pig-ignorant self)” by telling his t-RUMPlodytes that anything critical of him is “fake news.”
And therefore, no matter how solid, how air-tight any evidence is against him is, his followers will believe it is false.
It is ALL FAKED!
And hence, there will be blood.
The MAGA mobs will join the over-armed white rights nuts, the MRA’s, the Fasciscists, the uber-“Christians” looking for a battle to reverse cultural chang(s), and the neo-Nazi loons, and riot.
They will hope that the police and armed forces members will join them.
And some few might.
But the majority will not, since many of them – regardless of political affiliation – come from multi-cultural backgrounds.
I hope I’m wrong about the violence.
But cornered rats are not known to go “quietely into that good night.”
Instead, I believe they will ‘rage against the dying of their white light.’
I would call this the end of the beginning…of the end. Two grand juries have been impaneled, and rarely does that happen with no indictments resulting. And as the evidence is made public in the wake of those indictments, the GOP will have to decide whether it is complicit in these crimes almost as an accessory after the fact by using the legislative and political processes to hinder the legal process from going forward, or does it want to cut its losses.
Right now 75% of republicans still support Trump, but his approval rating is in the low thirties and trending downward. At some point there will be even more pressure on the GOP with respect to the above situation once Trump no longer holds sufficient numbers of lunatics as leverage over them.
Lastly, being that he is like, a smart person, Trump is steadily burning bridges on the right, with attacks on Mattis, House and Senate members, and even mega donors are starting to trash him.
Given all of this either Trump may not be impeached but ends up mortally wounded, politically, and the GOP, not big on loyalty themselves, are readying Pence in the wings to apply the coup de gras to Trump and put him out of his misery come 2020.
Let it get ugly. If he tries to dig in with however many followers he has left after the indictments roll in, we’ll kick their sorry a$$es, like we did with the Confederates and the Nazis. It doesn’t matter if they’re armed or not; they’re still stupid and there’s only so fast you can turn your tail and retreat in an air-conditioned golf cart. I want to see the whole family and circle of imbeciles in irons breaking rocks.
I think the beginning of the end was when he fired Comey. Trump accelerated and expanded the investigation with that move. I think Jared was the brainchild behind that decision. Well, at least you’ve got to give Jared credit for not trying to lure Comey into some sleazebag motel by waving a prostitute under his nose. A move like that might have worked for his father, but it doesn’t work in all cases.
Two prominent question in my mind are why was Trump so intent on pushing for Flynn to get a pass. And how did either Roger Stone or Carter Paige ( not sure which one was the culprit) come by advanced knowledge of the hacked email dump being released by WikiLeaks without having collusion occur.
It doesn’t matter. Wake up. Nothing matters.
I simply can’t see Trump giving in and resigning. He will have to be forced out and then he will be really angry so no telling what he will do. There is a psychic who is predicting he is going to have a stroke either this month or September. He certainly has the lifestyle for such an event. I think Pence is saying his prayers.
I think Pense probably has a voodoo doll of Trump with a vise-gripâ„¢ pressing in on its chest.