Donald Trump took his feud with House intelligence chair Adam Schiff to a new level on Monday morning.
In a dubious sequel to a series of Sunday evening tweets demanding Schiff be tried for “treason” for the “crime” of paraphrasing parts of the controversial call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president threatened to have Schiff arrested.
“Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to Congress and the American people”, Trump declared, distorting the situation beyond recognition. “Arrest for Treason?”, he then asked.
This is arguably the closest Trump has come to suggesting that he may unilaterally persecute political rivals and otherwise attempt to stamp out dissent by rounding up opponents and conducting sham trials.
Republicans will now be compelled to spend the next 24 hours going on the record to disavow Trump’s threat.
You can be sure the president’s tweet will be cited in impeachment proceedings, along with his Sunday evening remarks, which again suggested he’s prepared to have government officials executed for giving information to the whistle-blower who penned the complaint at the heart of the Ukraine scandal.
Trump’s spat with Schiff goes back quite a ways.
Schiff played spoiler to Devin Nunes’s tireless efforts to shield the president from the Mueller probe and when the House flipped to Democrats after the midterms (relegating Nunes to second fiddle on the committee), Trump knew there was trouble ahead.
On November 18, he made up a new nickname for Schiff: “Little Adam Schitt”.
The absurdity didn’t stop there.
Four months later, during his first post-Mueller rally, the president maligned Schiff at a raucous event at Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Here is the clip:
Days later, the official Trump-Pence website began selling T-shirts featuring Schiff’s head impaled on a pencil.
This, apparently, is America.
“Republicans will now be compelled to… going on the record to disavow Trump’s threat.” What? C’mon H, surely you’ve been paying enough attention over the past 3 yrs to know THAT’s NOT GONNA HAPPEN.
Oh, maybe a couple here or there will make an effort to sound reasonably ‘adult-like’, but as a HERD, my guess is they’ll hold-the-line as best they can.
Someone summon Kellyanne Conway for her one of precisely two smoke bombs.
1.) What the President is doing is defending himself blah blah blah no collision no obstruction Mueller Report Conspiracy Theory hoax blah blah blah Obama.
2.) What the President is doing is asking the question of whether the blah blah blah American people of doing the job of creating jobs and a record high stock market blah blah pensions blah treason blah blah Hillary Clinton.
With all the wit and strategy of 12 year old Trump thinks putting a question mark at the end of ‘Arrest for Treason’ makes it ok.
People keep saying don’t do this, just vote Trump out in 2020. But that is over a year from now. How do they propose to even stay alive between now and then while they avoid all the mass shootings carried out by Trump’s supporters?
This is sort of that point in time when House of Cards had to deal with its final season — and as the cast and team tried in vain to dream up some sort of plausible series of events, they ended up presenting an amateurish presentation that essentially is un-watchable in its amateurish, stupid and incohesive plot twists. That, hopefully will be the same fate for trump and his entire Godawful gangster family!
My feeling: this sort of raging, hysterical, Fuehrer-like behavior by Trump fires up the most extreme of his supporters, while turning off moderates and independents who are the swing voters. If he thereby incites domestic terrorism, that will intensify the effect.
Here’s a thought experiment for everyone: Name someone you know who did NOT vote for Trump in 2016 who is all in for him in 2020. Bet you can’t. Trump is going to lose, and lose badly, in 2020 — if he even makes it that far.