Now and then, usually by accident, Donald Trump tells the truth. He is indeed “all alone”. Both parties defy his wishes for The Wall. Conservatives are recoiling from his contemptible behavior. His recklessness endangers the economy. His myth is collapsing.
Perfect.
He’s good at nothing else, but Donald Trump is a master myth-teller. He’s looking for that moment in this story where he can’t win, but he can achieve something better, and far more practical: martyrdom. So he has to be considering the plot-twist that gives him what he needs, resignation from the presidency.
If Trump walks away from the Oval Office now, the GOP can close ranks behind him. They can say that the Mueller investigation, serving no purpose, can be shut down without indictments. Trump can pull the cloak back over his criminal empire and return to business as usual. Moreover, he can declare the spiritual victory that his Lost Cause soldiers recognize and love—the moral win over the low quotidian forces of the Left, the noble Godly sacrifice they revere in their Davises and Lees and Jacksons. Trump can liberate himself from real responsibility and accountability, hand the job over to Pence and a GOP back in lockstep, and spend his time exploiting the love of his followers, raised by this sacrifice from mere political support to religious devotion. He can abandon the little presidency and make himself a demigod for the Republican Base, a power broker for the Republican Party, and the final authority on their actions, all as a private citizen without accountability. The GOP, then, can keep pursuing the agenda it wants in the judiciary, the Cabinet agencies, and the Senate, and come back strong in 2020.
Anybody who seeks Trump’s immediate removal from office is making a serious mistake. Trump’s departure would look ignominious to most Americans who still respect the law and the presidency, but millions of them don’t. Those people are nihilists, like Trump. They support him because he lies not despite it. The’d rather see the whole government, and the very idea of government, collapse, than see it work. They want Trump to damage it all beyond repair, and nothing but Trump’s spectacular criminality, vulgarity, recklessness, and egomania stops that from happening.
We have to see that Trump is exactly the leader we need at the head of the Right. A slightly more moderate, more competent, more subtle version of Trump is what America would get if Trump is out, which is to say, a much more damaging version of the disaster we have now.
Napoleon is usually the one credited with this maxim of war. We all need to understand it right now, and keep it close for as long as we need it--“Never interfere with your enemy when he is making a mistake.” The enemy isn’t Trump. It’s Trumpism. The last thing we’d like is the first thing we need: Trump firmly and immovably in the Oval Office for as long as it takes to defeat the brutal destructive forces that put him there. That means we need unity on the Left, commitment to justice for the Trump empire, relentless energy in restoring fairness in the vote, imagination from our elected officials, and most of all, cold patience from ourselves.