Crumbling White House could lead Trump to war
Anthony Zurcher, the BBC’s North America correspondent, nailed it in a report on Thurday. “Where Abraham Lincoln had his famous ‘team of rivals’ in his administration, this is something different,” Zurcher wrote. “Trump White House seems more akin to the final scene in (Quentin Tarantino’s film) Reservoir Dogs, where everyone is yelling and pointing a gun at someone else, and there’s a good chance no one is going to come out unscathed.”
Several walking wounded have limped out of the White House since the shooting started — Sean Spicer, Michael Short, Reince Priebus — but nobody would call them unscathed. The latest to take a bullet is Anthony Scaramucci, the new communications director, appointed only 10 days ago.
Things are falling apart in the White House faster than even the keenest observers of Donald Trump’s behaviour would’ve predicted and the important part is not the dysfunction. What matters is that he is cutting his links with the Republican Party.
Trump was never a real Republican. He is ideology-free. If Barack Obama had fallen under a bus and Trump had chosen to run for the presidency in 2008, he could just as easily have sought the Democratic nomination.
Senior Republicans knew this, and they tried quite hard to stop him from winning the Republican nomination last year. After that they were stuck with him, and he did win the White House for them, so they have been in an uncomfortable partnership ever since. That is now coming to an end.
Part of the unwritten deal was that establishment Republicans get senior roles in the Trump White House. Priebus, dismissed last Friday, was the most important. He followed deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh, communications director Mike Dubke, press secretary Sean Spicer and press aide Michael Short.
What’s left are alt-right white nationalists like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, New Yorkers with Democratic leanings like Scaramucci, Jared Kushner, Dina Powell and Gary Cohn, Trump family members (Donald Jr. and Ivanka), ex-businessmen like foreign secretary Rex Tillerson and a trio of generals in high civilian office.
Republicans who think long term are aware the changing demography of the U.S. population is eating away at their core vote. This may be their last chance, with control of both Houses of Congress and (at least in theory) of the presidency, to reshape their image and their policies.
They can’t do that if they don’t control the White House, and the only way they could regain control there is for Trump to go and Vice-President Mike Pence (a real Republican) to take over.
It would be very hard to engineer such a thing without splitting the Republican Party, even if the FBI investigation comes up with damning evidence of Trump’s ties with Russia. Nevertheless, the likelihood of an impeachment is rising from almost zero to something quite a bit higher.
Itwouldbeagamble.TheRepublicans in Congress couldn’t really get Trump out before November 2018, and the turbulence of an impeachment might cost them their control of Congress in the mid-term elections. Ideally, however, it would give the Republicans time to go into the 2020 election with President Pence in charge at the White House and some solid legislative achievements under their belts.
What would Trump do if he faced impeachment? His instinct would be to fight, and he fights mainly by creating diversions. The best diversion is a war, but against whom?
Even Trump would have trouble selling a war against Iran. Americans don’t feel threatened by Iran. But North Korea says and does things provocative enough to let Trump make a (flimsy) case for attacking it.
If he thought his presidency was at stake, he certainly would. Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.