Will Ann Coulter best Vladimir Putin for control of President Donald J. Trump? Will the strong and strident voice of America’s archconservative harpy prevail over the wily KBG-trained despot who has had five private sessions alone with our vulnerable leader in which to steal the Trumpian mind? Or will they share it—the home-grown, right-wing ectomorph in charge of domestic matters, while the savvy, murderous Russian continues to handle our foreign policy. You might rightly say our lives are in the balance.
Our last two turbulent years as a nation have proven true what savants have been telling us for decades: we are a divided nation, practically down the middle. What they haven’t told us (and they may not know) is how Donald J. Trump, a career criminal, became president of the once United States. (I suspect Putin is better informed on that.)
We keep hearing that we are entering a constitutional crisis under Trump; it goes unresolved and merges into another constitutional crisis, then another, and so on, while the president (whose only gift is survival by any means) lobs grenades into the corrective government machinery. Yes, our beloved Constitution has failed us; it was written expecting men like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Kennedy to lead us, not some mentally disturbed New York street thug.
You may object to my demeaning the Constitution. And ask, what about the Twenty-fifth Amendment? It provides for the president to be removed if he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Yes. All it takes is for the Vice President and “a majority of the executive department,” and two-thirds of House and Senate to vote him out. Good luck with that. VP Mike Pence might go along, but the cabinet officers? As we have learned, they come and go like thieves in the night...and the day, looters and grifters with investigators on their trail. You think they’re going to rat on their benefactor? And in the Senate you’ve got Mitch McConnell tending his sheep; you’d be lucky to get a simple majority there, let alone two-thirds “ayes.”
There’s always that last resort, impeachment. Yes, and we’ll likely be binge watching those dramatic doings fairly soon and viewing less of True Detective and Game of Thrones. But to little purpose. At the end of the House festivities looms again the morally-challenged Mitch and his flock and another negative vote. If he and his fellow Republicans haven’t acquired a conscience by now, there’s no way they’ll get one once the swamp is drained.
What do we do, California? Time to go it alone. Peacefully, of course.