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Frank Rich: GOP Leaders Won't Tolerate Trump's Chaos for Much Longer
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/gop-leaders-wont-tolerate-trumps-chaos-for-much-longer.html?utm_source=fb&utm_campaign=nym&utm_medium=s1&fbclid=IwAR25CW0jnTt5aSSpri5cTZUBJIrPDZ_qunF9yllaWjr4hRKgCOiXt8TDDQIthe national circus 12:40 P.M.
GOP Leaders Won’t Tolerate Trump’s Chaos for Much Longer
By Frank Rich
@frankrichny
They can put up with a lot, but now he’s threatening their donors’ bottom line.
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today, the consequences of Trump’s erratic moves at home and abroad.
With the harsh words of Secretary of Defense James Mattis’s resignation, the unexpected withdrawal from Syria, and the about-face toward a looming government shutdown, some close to President Trump’s Washington feel like we’ve been thrown back into the chaotic early days of the administration, while others worry that “the wheels may be coming off.” Is it right to read this as the beginning of the end?
The beginning of the end of the Trump presidency came and went a long time ago. I have never wavered from my oft-stated convictions that (a) Trump will not finish out his term, and (b), the end will be triggered by a presidential meltdown that forces the Vichy Republicans in Washington to mount an insurrection — if only to save their own asses, not the country. This week was a big step toward that endgame, and surely one of the most remarkable weeks in American history.
We have a president of the United States who is moving to shut down the government at the same moment that he is inviting America’s adversaries to breach its defenses. The withdrawals in Syria and Afghanistan, combined with the exit of the last top administration official who aspired to serve the national interest rather than Trump’s, invites hostile moves against the United States from ISIS, Russia, China, North Korea, and the Taliban. This has even grabbed the cynical Mitch McConnell’s attention: He has declared himself “distressed” by Mattis’s resignation, a major step in rhetorical escalation in a party where Susan Collins’s pathetic periodic expressions of “concern” are what pass for criticism of an outlaw president. Marco Rubio’s words were stronger, a move to protect his viability for another presidential run, but more outrage from more GOP leaders will follow. What will move them is not necessarily Trump’s hara-kiri isolationist agenda but the damage his behavior both abroad and at home is inflicting on the financial markets. The sheer uncertainty of a chaos presidency is pushing the Dow to its worst December since the Great Depression. McConnell and his humiliated departing peer Paul Ryan have tolerated Trump’s racism, misogyny, and nativism, his wreckage of American alliances, his kleptocracy, and his allegiance to Vladimir Putin. They have tolerated as well his con job on the coal miners, steelworkers, and automobile-industry workers of his base. But they’ll be damned if they will stand for a president who threatens the bottom line of the GOP donor class.
snip//
What we are likely to see in the meantime: further indictments of Trump family members and other close associates; a complete halt to governance in Washington whether there’s actually a government shutdown or not; new overt and covert threats to national security; a further effort by Trump to destabilize the Federal Reserve and assault its chairman; and perhaps, at last, an intervention by those Vichy Republicans, in the financial sector as well as in the capital, who see their own necks on the line.
But meanwhile, we have more than two weeks in store of watching an isolated madman rampaging through the gilded rooms of Mar-a-Lago, wreaking whatever damage he can on the country as the walls of justice continue to close in on him. Happy New Year!
46 replies
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They will order their Senators to convict the orange traitor and then the GOP civil war really gets going.
MAGA fascists vs the billionaires. 
