From the moment he descended into the basement of Manhattan’s Trump Tower to announce his intention to run for president, Donald Trump has defied political belief.
At any other time, his candidacy would have been dead in the water with his inaugural speech, which accused Mexico of sending drug-takers, criminals and rapists over the border and taking American jobs in return.
A “great, great wall on our Southern border,” which the Mexicans would be impelled to stump up for, would put paid to this problem, he told us. Political commentators slept soundly in their beds that night in the belief that none of this would ever be put to the test by the absurdity of Donald being in the top job come November 2016.
More followed to further entrench them in their expert views. A proposed Muslim ban, climate change denial, a row with a Gold Star family, besmirching a former Miss Universe on Twitter, pussy-gate, musings about how the “Second Amendment people” might tackle the Hillary problem. None of this suggested a man equipped for high office, they told us, and voters would react accordingly.
Any sign this was not the case was dismissed as right-wing bias.
Public dissatisfaction
But now we know that Trump had tapped into a public dissatisfaction like few others who have peddled a similar message before him. The political experts were so busy listening in on the Echo Chamber of their own opinion that they were blind to the affect Donald’s jobs-creating message was having on crowds all over the country, from Florida to Michigan, Arizona to Pennsylvania.
The opinion polls, let it be said, were largely correct (either in correctly predicting the popular vote or factoring in that three million people would vote illegally, depending on who you believe), but America’s electoral college is a rival for the United Kingdom’s first past the post system in failing to deliver the will of the people in percentage terms.
Further on, 100-plus days into the Trump presidency and it would appear that the experts who told us he was incapable of political leadership may have been on to something.
With his firing of FBI chief James Comey and follow-up admittance, in contradiction to the white house line, that it had something to do with “this Russia thing,” the spilling of top secret, Israeli-grown beans to Russian guests, and the possible existence of a memo written by Comey in which the president is alleged to have wondered aloud if he could see to it to let the investigation into Michael Flynn go, which is denied by the White House, Donald Trump is starting to look like one of the hapless project managers on The Apprentice gameshow.
In that his inability to perform the job he has been tasked with.
Wishful thinking
It’s the latter, the hotly-contested memo that is the most serious allegation against him. Chaos and crisis have been a feature of Trump’s four months in office so far but the almost daily call from Liberals and Democrat supporters to impeach him can be dismissed as wishful thinking. Or is it?
Even someone with no knowledge of American law can see that an attempt to impede or influence a federal investigation is worthy of further investigation in itself. If that investigation turfs up definitive proof, the trickle of Republicans who expressed concern about the President’s behaviour on the steps of Congress last night will surely become a flood, or at least a fast-running flow powerful enough to force him from office.
It’s not the first time Republicans have been urged to dump Trump, far from it, but on previous occasions during the protracted Presidential campaign they faced the prospect of handing the keys of the White House to Hillary if they did so. Now they’d get Mike Pence and a year and a half to push their agenda before having to answer to the electorate at the midterm elections in November 2018.
For a steadily increasing number that might not seem nearly as unpalatable as continuing on the chaotic course being set for them by their leader in the White House.
Of course, the experts may be wrong again. Trump's assertion that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't affect his standing with the American public may hold for another day, although whether he'd avoid FBI charges for the offence on those grounds is debatable.
But having arrived in Washington promising to “drain the swamp,” Donald Trump increasingly looks like he’s drowning in it.
