There comes a day when something is in the air. You can tell that the end has arrived or draws near. For Trump the turning point came in the last two weeks as one GOP figure after another voiced condemnation of this "moron" who is "leading us into World War III." It wasn't a lot of GOP Congressmen voicing their scorn, but it was enough.
Something had begun to slide downhill. It gained fearful momentum with Trump's Secretary of State calling Trump "a moron". Its paced reached a crescendo today with the farewell speech of Arizona GOP Senator Jeff Flake, a man with the courage to stand up to the little-Hitler bully that Trump is. Flake Speech Transcript: ‘Dangerous State of Affairs’ State
With his customary courage Senator John McCain has reiterated his condemnation of Trump this past week and so has Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. (Corker's is discussed at Opinion | Corker shows how Republicans can dump Trump.) This week too Trump has helped sink himself by verbally attacking a young pregnant woman widowed by her soldier husband's death in Niger. What is particularly ugly about this crude and callous attack is that it was a deliberate play to his base. The widow is a black woman and Trump's troops are racists.
Most fatal of all for Trump is that his Chief of Staff, the previously-venerated four-star general John Kelly, has attacked a spokesperson for the widow and did so by lying (or criminally forgetting) about what she had said in defense of the widow. This war of words certainly cost General Kelly his credibility. (No one comes near Trump without getting sullied.)
More important, Kelly's distortion cost Trump far more than it cost Kelly. With Kelly's emotional and shocking performance, Trump lost his last best hope of holding on to the presidency. Now the more sober of Republican power brokers have got to think about Trump's hand hovering over the nuclear weapon buttons without any restraining hand of General Kelly to stop the four-year-old's temper tantrum from taking us to oblivion. Kelly has destroyed his image of being "the grown-up in the White House" keeping us all safe from the unhinged Trump. In attacking the widow's spokeswoman with lies and distortions, Kelly showed himself to be just another untrustworthy resident of the "adult day-care center" that the White House has become.
As a former GOP Congressman from Florida said in this two week period, "Donald Trump has placed us all in great danger." One thing that can outweigh party loyalty and overcome fear of being out-Trumped in a primary is fear of having oneself and one's family vaporized in a nuclear exchange.
Like the old saying about being faced with hanging in the morning, Trump's hand on the nuclear weapons "focuses the mind wonderfully."
A lot of Republican Senators and Congressman have a lot to think about.
So do we all.
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