(the "2" in the url suggests that this is the second post I've entitled "Normalization of Deviance" which I find amusing and alarming in equal measures).

It's clear, as I have written elsewhere, that Trump senses he has screwed up harder and gotten himself in bigger trouble with this Ukraine thing than at any previous point in his presidency. It very well may work out the same as before – that is to say, with no consequences – but the sheer number of excuses they've floated trial balloons for is noteworthy. "Rick Perry told me to do it" and "I'm being set up by the CIA" are not excuses one trots out when things seem like they're going well. Someone's worried, and it stands to reason that indicates that even worse things will be revealed before long (as always).

The strategy, big picture, is the same strategy Trump has fallen back on repeatedly over the past few years, and we saw it when he answered reporters' questions by openly asking foreign governments to "investigate" Biden. He's already admitted he did it, and mountains of evidence will tumble forth confirming that he did it, so his only play is to talk about it openly to make it seem like the most normal thing in the world. "Everyone does it" and "This is just a normal part of my job" are narratives intended to normalize what he did to the point that he can bank on everyone shrugging at it like speeding or being illegally parked – it's against the law but nobody thinks it's a big deal.

That's the goal. Whether it will work is not yet clear. It has worked before, so it could work again. But there is a real reluctance on the part of a lot of Republicans to get drawn into this one so far. That might change. Right now, though, some of them appear smart enough to realize that every time Trump gets himself into these situations, the information that comes out starts with a trickle of bad news and turns into a river. If they are thinking, hell this sounds pretty bad and it's probably even worse than this, the next couple weeks could be crucial.

There's no confidence that Trump will ever face any consequences – now or ever – as he has spent his whole life avoiding them. It's not your imagination, though. This situation is different, at least in how worried it has the people who are once again going to have to defend and make excuses for this guy. If they get the sense that he won't survive this, the stampede for the exits will be on.


  • If the various "Papers of Record" and the rest of the non-FuckTheNew'sCorpse*, would do their job in accordance with whatever sort of ethics they're SUPPOSED to have, it would certainly help.

    They don't have to say, "He's a criminal and lying sack of shit.". All they have to do is put the welfare of the nation ahead of their desire for access to the OSG** or profit.

    Yes, I know is nice pipe dream.

    * You might know them as FOX

    ** Orange Shit Gibbon

  • He's only running his government the way he would run a business. He said he would do this all along, what's the big deal? If your business requires a service or product and it's too expensive to do in-house or if there is too much red tape, you simply outsource it! It's the American way!

  • It all looks bad. Really bad. To us. Not to them. Here's the problem I think we have. His fans will never abandon him unless he starts to look like a loser. To them. The way they turned on Bush 43. But they are more rabid, more invested than they were in Bush 43. So it will take a real mortal wound to close the deal. Removal from office. The Senate is the path. The only path. The base elected an unelectable man knowing what would have barred any other man from office. So every time I read about what the Senate Republicans will or might do, I ask: Where are they going to get customers? The Senate Republicans now face the same marketing problem the christian right has (because it's the same set of customers). The brand is poison and we can't get new customers. We can't change the brand or we will lose all the existing customers. So I don't expect anything from the Senate. They will try to wait this out. Election coming up and all that. A non electoral resolution depends on Republican Senators deciding to commit suicide.

  • Such a strategy depends on how many voters are comfortable with the noisome cesspit of racism, now that they've had a while to think about it… frightening to think so much depends on the goodness nearly anyone can express, if they can be bothered to do so.

  • Remember throughout the Obama presidency hearing about this or that is "Obama's Katrina". Well this Ukraine thing is truly Trump's Obama's Katrina.

  • Schmitt trigger says:

    Wasn’t Trump who said: “I can shoot someone in Fifth Avenue in broad daylight, and people would still vote for me?”

    Call me a pessimist.
    But not only will Trump not be impeached, but he will also be re elected.

  • EWM–

    As sin. Now Sloppy Joe doesn't just resemble an ambulatory corpse. Maybe he and his dirtbag son can get sinecures with the House of Usher, sorry, the Clinton Foundation.

  • Knox Harrington says:

    The "2" doesn't mean you've written two posts on this, with the same title. Computers, and databases in particular, are zero-indexed, so if it were actually counting the number of posts with that title, it'd be the third, not the second. I suspect it is being appended to the URL because of a peculiarity in the structured query language in your database, which I won't go into because you won't understand it and what you do understand will be super boring. I'd be happy to hack your database if you'd like to know exactly, as it is currently vulnerable to several exploitations that would enable me to.

  • Knox Harrington says:

    Contrary to what the local news reports people who have the skills to hack websites don't actually focus on second-tier political commentary sites. What's more, I'm a "white hat" penetration tester and corporate security professional. I get no joy from wreaking havoc on a small blog that can't afford to defend against sophisticated intruders. I'm trying to think of an analogy you'd get, demo…ah, I got it! It'd be like you having a policy debate with a fourth grader on the pros and cons of estate taxes as a tool to prevent intergenerational laziness.


    or debating one of the dumber trollz.

    Yes, now, I get it.

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