The Sunday Guardian

HILLARY LOYALISTS FRANTIC TO PARALYSE TRUMP PRESIDENCY

Donald Trump’s backers warn that Washington Beltway’s Plan A is to secure his removal or resignatio­n. In case that fails, Plan B is to ensure he withdraws from the 2020 contest.

- MADHAV NALAPAT NEW YORK

Many, if not most, genuine loyalists of the 45th President of the United States are in the world’s most famous metropolis. They are clustered within Manhattan, the location where the worldwide Trump Organisati­on is headquarte­red, and which has been home to four generation­s of what since 20 January 2017 is the First Family of the world’s most powerful country. While some of the few who are personally close to Donald J. Trump outed themselves to the media, the blowback from such exposure (including stealthy efforts to implicate them in the unfolding “Get Trump” campaign) have ensured that genuine, usually long-term, Trump confidants keep a low public profile in these days of incessant persecutio­n of Number 45 (the 45th President of the United States). However, in private, they say with pride in their friend that the manner in which President Trump has remained unbowed in the face of the most vicious attack ever attempted during more than a century on a sitting President, has made their faith in the man grow stronger. Those who know Trump say that he is “no quitter”, and that he has “come safely out of disasters that could have destroyed the career, if not the life, of another man”. They add unanimousl­y that the Trump response to smears and innuendo is to “ignore them and press forward on the course he believes in” and finally succeed, as indeed became clear during the 2016 contest for the US Presidency. Those who know and believe in the man are certain that the Washington Beltway, the US equivalent of India’s Lutyens Zone, will fail in its 24/7 efforts at forcing President Donald John Trump to resign on his own as a consequenc­e of the barrage of abuse and attempted legal jeopardy that the 45th US President has been subjected to since he contested against and bested the Empress of the Beltway, Hillary R. Clinton, on 8 November 2016. According to a key insider, the Beltway’s Trump traducers are by now aware that “there is no sustainabl­e (impeachmen­t) case” against the President. This, plus his stubborn refusal to get cowed down by the hourly fusillade of accusation­s, has resulted in “the focus shifting to getting President Trump to agree to a single full term in office” through declining—well before 2020—to stand for re-election in that year’s contest. In the scenario scripted by the Washington Beltway, “should Trump not do a Nixon and resign, the next best outcome is for

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