As the prospect of impeachment escalated Monday, Donald Trump's rhetoric took a particularly dark turn as he fantasized about what might happen to one of his chief political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden.
"If a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did, if a Republican ever said what Joe Biden said, they'd be getting the electric chair by right now," Trump told reporters at the United Nations, pushing his completely unfounded conspiracy theory that the Biden and his son engaged in misconduct.
Just think about that for a second. The electric chair: a fate so violent that all but about 10 states have outlawed it as a means for administering the death penalty. Think about what a nasty and violent fate that would be. Trump's thinking about it—and he quite likes the idea of torturing a political rival in that manner. Because he's a sick, sick man.
But he's also a cornered man. Trump can feel the walls closing in around him the same way he did as the midterm elections approached and the briefings he was receiving about GOP electoral chances grew ever more dire. It was clear that Republicans would surely lose the House, and it was only a matter of margins.
The worse the projections got, the more Trump fixated on one of his favorite punching bags: immigrants. Trump couldn't get through a single press conference or rally without seizing on "the caravan" and how it was an "invasion" of "Gang Members" and "very bad people."
None of that was true. The caravan was full of desperate migrants, mostly women and children and families, fleeing horrific violence in their home countries. But Trump just kept pounding away and blaming Democrats for the havoc he insisted the migrants would wreak on America.
"The Democrats don't care what their extremist immigration agenda will do to your neighborhoods or your hospitals or your schools," Trump said at a rally in Houston. "They don't care that the mass illegal immigration will totally bankrupt our country."
On Election Day, the bet Trump made proved wrong—very wrong. But he was like a caged animal with nowhere else to turn. He didn't have any fresh ideas or policies to tout. He didn't have a vision for where he and Republicans could take the country. The only thing he could do was focus the darkest elements of his mind on something he despises, and that he believes most Americans despise.
So stay tuned as Democrats increasingly turn up the heat on Trump. In the filthy recesses of his mind, where Trump relishes made-up stories about human traffickers duct taping women "around their faces, around their mouths" until "they can't even breathe," Trump will bring a new level of horror to American politics. Watch for it. As he fights for his political survival, Trump will get increasingly wicked and sadistic and vile.