A guy walks into a bar and says, “Trump is an arsehole.”
Another guy says to him, “I resent that.”
“Why? Are you a Trump fan?”
“No,” the second guy said. “I am an arsehole.”
***
In the summer of 1973, John Dean electrified America by using his testimony to lay the Watergate scandals right in the lap of President Richard Nixon. He was the first insider who had actually been in the room with Nixon and knew where all the bodies were buried.
Once Dean testified, the end of the Nixon presidency was pretty much inevitable.
Of course, our politics was more sane then. When Republicans could no longer deny the president was a criminal, they went along with removing him from office.
There are several reasons Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony Thursday probably won’t have as extensive an effect as Dean’s 49 summers ago. For one thing, Donald Trump isn’t in office anymore. For another, politics is a lot less sane.
There was no one in Congress in 1973 to compare with Marjorie Taylor Greene or Ted Cruz., and the Republican Party of Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell won’t let right or wrong interfere with their battle for dominance.
As for Trump himself, he is far more dangerous than Nixon ever was. For all his flaws, and he had many, Nixon believed in the United States and our political system. He certainly cheated within that system, but he never spoke of being a dictator or engaged in psychotic behavior.
If Hutchinson’s testimony is accurate — and it seems to ring true — then Trump is basically insane.
Did he try to grab the steering wheel from his Secret Service driver.? It may not be provable, but I tend to believe it. If someone were to make up a story that would put Trump in a bad light, I cannot imagine someone creating a story of a man in his 70s trying to grab the steering wheel out of whole cloth.
As for going into a rage and throwing food against the walls, it’s something people have seen Trump do all the way back to the 1980s.
This isn’t going to make a difference with the true Trumpanzees. They’re so deep in the Kool-Aid that they assume anything bad they hear about him is a lie. They’re lost causes.
But not all those who vote Republican are true believers. There are voters in this country who go back and forth, and while 2022 has been looking like an awful year for Democrats, this could make a difference.
Returning the Trump crowd to control of Congress comes that much closer to bringing Trump himself back.
And that, in a sane country, ought to be a bridge too far,