I don’t have any idea where we are going but I have a lot of fear, fear for my friends, my family, my daughter. I’d be down for your prediction just cause I could really use some hope about now. I feel just so fucking beaten down and I am scared things won’t get better. So the scared voice in me says I bet things get worse, but I want your bet to win. I want my daughter to be safe and okay.

My goal is to be accurate with my predictions. A lot hinges on if the Democrats allow the Republican party off the hook for DJT writ large, which would be my greatest concern. The criminal prosecution of DJT is also a prosecution of what the R’s have allowed to become of themselves. I really don’t see a path out for DJT at this point. He needed Putin to not be stuck in a land war to do his job of bolstering Trump from the shadows. It really seems to me like DJTs only realistic strategy at this point is violence, and I’m not sure the white nationalists are committed to Trump (I think they view their project as ‘larger’ than DJT, but here I could be wrong). Its not clear to me that they’ll be willing to step up for Trump in the next two to three months the way he would need them to. It was a very different operational environment in October, November, December 2020. The shear quantity and validity of the charges against Trump are staggering. There is no reasonable way he gets out of this without some kind of force majeure. Now that doesn’t have to be in the form of a violent insurrection. It could come from the Supreme Court as well. Again though, its not clear to me that they are committed to DJT. They’re commitment seems to be to the larger conservative project, for which DJT was very useful, but again, we’ve got to question their commitment to him versus their project. The neoliberal factions of the Republican party carry no paper for Trump, and what would they do?

There are two worst case scenarios we need to deal with a) white nationalists stage another kind of violent insurrection and or b), the Supreme Court some how intervenes and makes some weird, unprecedented kind of ruling saying something like former presidents are above the law forever or something. I want to deal with b) first because it seems less likely. There’s no clear mechanism for this that I understand, but I’m no expert on the courts. My understanding is things go up in the courts, not down. The argument I could see being tried is Trump says "I’m a former president, therefore I’m above the law and the only thing that can decide on me is the Supreme Court. I’m not sure how that would go, but it wont help his co-conspirators. There is no precedent for the prosecution of former presidents.. This would be a hat trick on DJT’s lawyers part, but the issue here is mechanism. Its going to depend on the judges, but because there are so many criminal prosecutions going on at once in so many jurisdictions, its just not going to be possible for them to pull it off that many times.

Now lets talk violent insurrectionists, because that needs to be dealt with and addressed. So far as I read it, individuals have been put on trial, but not their movements. Afaik, nothing materially has changed with the oathkeepers, proud boys, 3%'rs, patriot fronts, or various other paramilitary organizations ability to organize, train, and recruit. My last real investigation into them indicated they were still operational, and growing. Individuals have been gone after for J6, but no organizations have been labeled as terrorist organizations or enemies of the state (although arguably, this should have happened for the PB’s, Oathkeepers, and Patriot Front) specifically as a function of the events of J6. The event did however, put a spotlight on these groups. I hope the gumshoes at the FBI are hot on the case, but they sure af missed the boat on J6, so forgive me if I lack confidence here. The real question, I think, is to ask “Do these groups still see advantage in keeping DJT a player in the scene”.

If the court cases are allowed to proceed as one might assume they should, there is no way out of this for DJT. Its going to require the intervention of a third party, either the Supreme Court (and its not clear to me there is a mechanism for that. Trumps lawyers would have to figure out how to make that happen.), or the white nationalists state another coup. Neither of these seem like realistic options to me. I don’t think white nationalists care enough about Trump to risk the gains they’ve made, and the same for the conservatives on the Supreme Court.

What we haven’t discussed here is the role of the Democrats in all of this, and they do have a job to do. They can’t allow the Republican party to be cleansed or they are fucking-over what could represent the largest political victory in a century. DJT is going down unless someone intervenes. He’s fucked. But it does little if the Democrats don’t attach DJT and all the ills associated with him to the core principals and spirit of the Republican party. If you are going to be afraid of something, this is where to put your fear. Most Democrats just want to get back to shitty boring elections that people don’t pay attention to. Its in many of their interests to just give the R’s a pass on DJT and try to ‘move on’. This would be the biggest political blunder in the last two centuries. The D’s have an opportunity to force the R’s to own the idiotic culture they’ve come up with and set them up in a position to not even be able to win the local Dogcatcher race in 6-8 years. They need to show DJT as an inevitable consequence of Republicanism. Thats work. Its not clear to me the D’s are up to it.

Any ways. I think you can push your fear off for at least an election cycle. Dark Brandon has proven himself far more capable as a politician than any Democrat of the past 60 years (and trust me that I hate having to say that). I think he’s doing a good job of reading the landscape. The real risk was October-January 2020-21, and we made it through.