Robert Reich: Trump Won’t Go Quietly

Many of the “insiders” I talk with are convinced that Michael Cohen’s virtual naming of President Donald Trump as a criminal co-conspirator, combined with other bombshells Cohen can set off, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s likely findings of Trump’s collusion with the Russians, his longstanding business fraud and obstruction of justice, will all spell the end. Democrats will take back the House, begin an impeachment, pile up overwhelming evidence of impeachable offenses, and put enough pressure on Republican senators to convict him and send him packing.

I think this is way too optimistic. No president in history has been convicted by the Senate of impeachment. Regardless of what happens to the House, Republicans will almost certainly remain in control of the Senate after November, anyway, and so far they’ve displayed the integrity of lizards. Fox News and the rest of the right-wing sleaze media will continue to distort and cover up – convincing 35 to 40 percent of America that Trump is the victim.

And Trump himself will never voluntarily resign. He’ll lie and claim a conspiracy to unseat him. Most Americans already knew he’s a crook and a liar. After all, he’s spent his whole career engineering scams and riding above the law. But he’s a superb conman, an entertainer-demagogue capable of sowing so much confusion and instigating so much hate and paranoia that he has already survived outrages that would have broken any other loathsome presidency – Helsinki, Charlottesville, firings and coverups, racist slurs and clear corruption.

We’ll be lucky if he loses in 2020. And even if he loses, we’ll be fortunate if he concedes without being literally carried out of the Oval Office amid the stirrings of civil insurgency.

Bottom line: It’s not over. All of us who care about the fate of this nation and the world will continue to be in the fight of our lives.