The midterms will decide Trump’s fate

TheAtlantic.com President Trump is reportedly obsessed with special counsel Robert Mueller, said Niall Ferguson and Joshua Zoffer. But the biggest threat to his presidency is not Mueller, but the possibility that Democrats will gain control of the House in 2018. In the past, independent prosecutors charged with investigating the Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton administrations have taken at least 14 months to produce findings. Given what’s at stake, Mueller may take at least that long. And unless he finds a Watergate-like smoking gun implicating Trump himself in Russia’s election interference, congressional Republicans are unlikely to risk angering Trump’s base by impeaching the president. But that political calculus changes if Democrats gain 24 or more House seats in the midterm elections. Democrats would turn committee inquiries about Russia’s election interference into a sensational spectacle to damage Trump “in the court of public opinion,” and they would almost certainly impeach him. If Trump wants to avoid that fate, he’ll need to cut back on attacking critics and “fake news” and focus on “the difficult work of governing.” So far, Republicans have little to show for their control of Washington. If that doesn’t change before 2018, Democrats will deliver Trump’s favorite line to the former reality-TV star: “You’re fired.”