Huffington Post columnist Robert Kuttner should right now go over to PredictIt and place the maximum allowed bet of $800 on President Donald Trump not being the 2020 Republican nominee. After all, according to Kuttner's August 6 column, Trump won't be the 2020 Republican nominee. Why? Because Trump's Sunday tweet reiterated what was well known since July 2017 --- that his son Donald Trump, Jr. met with a Russian lawyer to seek information about the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The title of Kuttner's article is chock full of the very desperate hope based on fantasies that he and his fellow liberals share, "Donald Trump Won’t Be The 2020 Republican Nominee":
I will be amazed if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. The water around him is rising fast, and he is likely to be long gone by 2020, either via impeachment or resignation in a deal that spares him prosecution.
Wow! That sounds serious. So what is it that will bring Trump down?
Trump’s Sunday morning tweet admitted that a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving campaign aides and a Kremlin-linked lawyer was designed to “get information on an opponent.”
Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018
The tweet undercut a lie that Donald Trump Jr. told in July 2017 when he said that the meeting had been primarily about the adoption of Russian children. That lie was cooked up in close consultation with Trump senior.
Uh-oh! President Trump better start moving his furniture out of the White House right now. The only thing is, why didn't Kuttner post any tweet by Donald Trump, Jr. from July 2017 about this matter? Could it be because he already tweeted back then what his father tweeted on Sunday?
Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent... went nowhere but had to listen. https://t.co/ccUjL1KDEa
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 10, 2017
Ooops!
Kuttner is not alone in going wild over an admission that Trump made last year as MRC analyst Kristine Marsh wrote today, "Fake 'News!' ABC, NBC Go Wild Over 'Stunning' 'New' Trump 'Admission' ... That He Made Last Year":
Talk about grasping at straws! The big three morning shows went wild this morning hyping a supposedly new claim President Trump made about the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting. On Twitter, Trump admitted that the meeting was aimed at gathering opposition research on Hillary Clinton. Old news, right? Well the morning shows didn’t seem to think so, and ludicrously reported that this was a “stunning” reversal of everything the Trump campaign had said up to this point.
...The problem is this isn't anything new at all. Trump made very similar comments back in July 2017 at a press conference with France’s Emmanuel Macron, that the networks even aired live.
...Again, in a tweet from July 2017, Trump reiterated that it was normal to gather opposition research on your opponent:
Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That's politics!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 17, 2017
However, the ridiculously false premise about Trump revealing something new in his Sunday tweet did not prevent Kuttner from plunging ahead with his GOP doom predictions which are laughably detailed about a fantasy poltical world that exists only in fervid liberal imaginations:
When Trump goes, don’t expect Vice President Mike Pence to be the 2020 nominee either. Pence is a famously inept politician, who was on track to be defeated for re-election as the Republican governor of Indiana — quite a trick.
The hardcore Trump base will be furious if (when) Trump is forced out. If Pence succeeds Trump, there will be a free-for-all, with some candidates running as the true successor to Trump and others trying to reclaim a sane Republican Party.
The latter could include moderates John Kasich, governor of Ohio, who is already positioning himself for a run; Maryland governor Larry Hogan; and Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker. Their claim to success is that they got elected as Republicans in normally Democratic states. Their problem is that the electorate in Republican primaries is far to their right.
The former could include any number of frothing at the mouth members of the House Freedom Caucus, plus of course Pence. So my bet is that the Republican nominee will be someone other than Trump, and will be presiding over a badly fractured party. What a gift to Democrats!
What a gift to psychiatrists fascinated at how such desperate grasping at straws can cause Trump deranged liberals to create for themselves fantasy worlds with no basis in reality.
