Do This If You Really Want to Save Trump From Impeachment
I’m going to give those claiming they want to save President Trump from a potential impeachment the benefit of the doubt, although at times like these I seriously wonder whether such benefit should be extended.
I mean, when someone like myself, who didn’t even vote for Trump, seems more earnest in salvaging his presidency than those who shill for him, I have to wonder if some of these people really care about the country. Or do they just want the show (see that as clicks)?
Because advising Trump to fire independent counsel Robert Mueller is arguably the single dumbest strategic advice I’ve ever heard. Beyond it dragging Trump into a credibility war he cannot possibly win versus a man with an impeccable service record (whom the Trump administration appointed in the first place), it also incentivizes Trump to do more of why he has a historically low approval rating.
It’s the political equivalent of telling a friend trying to kick a meth habit, and struggling through withdrawal, to just take a little tweak to tide him over. (When that “little tweak” is what led him to being a junkie in the first place.)
But there is something Trump can absolutely do to make this all go away — at least in the minds of anyone who would even entertain ever voting for him. And he can do it right now, before Mueller issues a single subpoena or conducts a single deposition.
Trump can take a page out of the playbook of his old friends, the Clintons, when they were besieged by scandal, and simply govern well.
Back then, we caught a president committing a crime on tape. Yet most Americans simply shrugged and said, “Why should I care more than his wife does?” They did so because we were in the midst of a robust economic recovery, primarily fueled by the dot.com boom, when the economy was growing three times the current rate.
In other words, the people didn’t want to rock the boat while things were going well. That is especially so since that Al Gore guy would then take over, and he actually believes that crazy economy-killing environmentalist wacko stuff Bubba only paid lip service to.
Since then, the American people’s overall disdain for their political class has only grown. And their expectations for their politicians have eroded all the more as a result — to the point the character of our leaders is largely irrelevant now. Not even those supposedly Sola Scriptura fundamentalist Christians believe character counts anymore.
I don’t approve of that, and I wish that wasn’t the case. But I also wish I had six-pack abs, too. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in politics, it’s that you can’t change an environment any more than you change the weather forecast. So when the meteorologist tells you winter is coming, you can either howl at the monitor or equip yourself to thrive in that environment.
Instead of encouraging Trump to pursue a course of action that will likely end with him before Speaker Pelosi’s Congress pressing impeachment in 2019, supporters of the president should be urging him to use this cynical environment to his advantage. See, the vast majority of those who voted for Trump knew he wasn’t Mr. Virtue. They did so because the other damaged option, Hillary Clinton, would use government as the means to damage them as well.
This is the reason so many Trump voters aren’t moved by his alleged misbehavior. Most who voted for Trump aren’t in this because of his notorious cult of personality, but “because Hillary.” And when your primary investment in a politician is who they aren’t rather than whom they are, you didn’t really have expectations to begin with.
Thus, if Trump just does what he promised to do – repeal Obamacare, cut taxes, protect the border, and kill lots of terrorists – names like Comey and Mueller will simply pass into the Netherrealm of the comments sections of the lefty blogosphere. The rest of America will simply shrug their shoulders and say, “They’re all crooks anyway, but this one at least leaves me alone and kills the bad guys before they kill us.”
I want Trump’s presidency to be successful, regardless of my reservations, for he makes decisions each day that could determine our kids’ futures. If I wanted my previous NeverTrump stance vindicated, I’d just sit by and say nothing while he chose the road to political perdition, and then pridefully utter, “I told you so.”
However, Trump has done some good things when it comes to judicial appointments (I hope), the regulatory state, and foreign policy I’d like him to continue doing. But the odds he’ll get to do so decline every day his focus isn’t on good governing. (For more from the author of “Do This If You Really Want to Save Trump From Impeachment” please click HERE) http://joemiller.us/2017/06/really-want-save-trump-impeachment/
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