Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 6, 2018

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981), November 6th, 2018

AMMAN — With the unprecedented publication by The New York Times of an anonymous op-ed by “a senior official in the Trump Administration” hot on the heels of the release of preview excerpts from legendary journalist Bob Woodward’s upcoming damning exposé on the Trump White House—both showing that top Trump officials are deliberately undermining and ignoring him for, in their view, the good of the nation—something is clear that is not being acknowledged yet, even two months after these events, in the major coverage of these unfolding developments:

The presidency of the United States of America is, and has been pretty much since the beginning of the Trump Administration, operating extraconstitutionally, that is, outside the bounds of the U.S. Constitution. In American history—in the modern era, anyway—the only times we have been in waters this uncharted and this dangerous from a constitutional perspective were the final year-and-a-half of the Woodrow Wilson Administration from 1919-1921 and the very last days of the Richard Nixon Administration in 1974.

In the first instance, after Wilson became essentially medically incapacitated later in 1919, his wife basically secretly took on his duties as president behind the scenes. As Joel Goldstein noted in 2014 in the scholarly journal Politics and the Life Sciences, while “[t]he length of Wilson’s disability has been debated,” he quoted an assessment by historian John Blum that seemed to be broad enough to reflect much of the range of opinion: “for a month the United States had no President; for many months the country had only a shell of a President.”

In the words of Goldstein, the situation clearly demonstrated that in terms of presidential succession under certain conditions, “the Constitution was ambiguous in…numerous material ways.”

Decades later, looking back at this situation was a significant inspiration for the adoption of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, providing a path to transfer presidential authority away from a president who is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” as well as to transfer (vice) presidential authority under other circumstances.

In the second instance, as the curtain was coming down on Nixon’s presidency in the face of coming impeachment amid the Watergate scandal, and even while Nixon was still legally the president, senior officials were prepared to ignore and defy him and did so. The crisis that forced Nixon to resign was largely a result of reporting by the duo of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in large part armed with information from an anonymous senior Nixon Administration official known then as Deep Throat and later revealed to be Mark Felt, then-Associate Director at the FBI, not unlike some of the officials working against Trump today, actions also revealed by Woodward.

*****

A major reason the Twenty-fifth Amendment was adopted was to make sure a clear Constitutional order would continue even in certain rare and/or extreme circumstances.

The Roman Republic had a rarely-held office called the dictator that was only appointed in emergencies and only to fulfill specific mandates and/or last for a specific period of time and generally no longer than six months. It was essentially a way to temporarily put aside the Roman Republic’s normal working order while still preserving the Republic’s overall constitution, allowing both the law to be preserved during emergencies and regular order to be restored after them, with both happening under the same constitution. Marc de Wilde, writing for the journal History of Political Thought, noted that this system worked quite well for some three centuries as, in his view, during that period, “the dictatorship was never abused and turned against the constitution” (though, after a long hiatus, the rare later iterations proved far more problematic).

But the U.S. Constitution does not have the same flexibility. And what is happening now places the current U.S. government outside of the prescribed range of the functioning Constitution.

With the recent revelations, some have called the moves against Trump by his own people a kind of coup (including Woodward); in fact, it is impossible to argue that this is anything but that: the president leads the Executive Branch and is the Commander in Chief, and while, as I noted over a year ago, the system was designed by the Founding Fathers to empower officials under the president to defy him if he was violating the Constitution or the law, if the president gives an order that is not such a violation and he is still defied, the we are operating outside the legal bounds of the U.S. Constitution. While Trump is not medically and physically incapacitated like Wilson was for over a year-and-a-half, the nation is essentially being governed throughout Trump’s presidency like it was, briefly, in the final days of Nixon’s presidency, with senior officials under the president deeming him unstable and unfit to govern and that it may be and was necessary to defy and ignore him.

But the temporary state in which the Constitution was essentially illegally but practically put aside for a few days in 1974—a bad, and scary, enough, state of affairs then—it is terrifying for the health of the nation, the power of the Constitution, the world standing of America, and the staying power of democracy worldwide that the Constitution of the world’s oldest continuous democracy has essentially been put aside for coming up on two years since the beginning of Trump’s presidency because not just so-called “deep state” career bureaucrats, but even the president’s own most senior appointed officials chosen by him and his inner circle (including the author of the Times op-ed) deem him to be a madman unfit and unable to govern, and that it is necessary for the good of the country that they work to usurp his authority, lest he abuse it in such a gross way as to do serious damage to the country. 

Whether ignoring more extreme orders or swiping papers off the president’s desk to prevent his official signature from enacting terrible policies, those around Trump are unconstitutionally governing with some of the president’s constitutional powers along with the president himself but without the president’s knowledge or permission.

In other words, this presidency is by definition both a constitutional crises and inherently extraconstitutional.

Which begs the questions: Who is in charge? Who is making the decisions, how often, and when?  Who answers to whom? How aware is the president of any of this? How well can the president perceive the situation and understand the reality of his own White House? To what degree are America’s allies aware of all this and how is this damaging America’s relationships with them? To what degree are America’s rivals and enemies aware of this and how is this emboldening them and weakening American national security? If a major crisis erupts, if the U.S. is under attack, how would the country be led?

The disturbing and unacceptable truth is that we do not know the answers to any of these questions. We are like a ship unmoored with crew running around furiously to keep the ship from colliding or sinking but with no one at the helm. We have been fortunate—extremely fortunate—that so far, no major crisis has emerged to challenge this far-from-ideal modus operandi.

Some will argue that the officials undermining Trump are way out of bounds. Others will argue that Trump is so terrible that these actions are necessary. The great philosophical question—which will be debated as long as debate exists—is, do you stay true to the Constitution even as superiors destroy it, or do you violate the Constitution to protect it?

There is no easy answer, hence, we are where we are. 

Especially considering that Trump has not, as is also the case with his tax returns, released a recent credible and full medical record, a reality that is necessary to confront is that Trump’s age and physical condition make him an ideal candidate for “executive dysfunction” under conditions discussed by Mark Fisher, David Franklin, and Jerrold Post in the same journal issue as Goldstein’s aforementioned article. “Based on the known neuroanatomic localization of executive function and its well described age-dependent changes,” they write, “a significant proportion of political leaders over the age of 65 are likely subject to executive dysfunction.” Trump is 72 and can barely string together a complete sentence or stay focused in a meeting. Many around him question his mental state, and any honest view of video of a far younger Trump compared with President Trump makes it clear to all but the most fanatical that there has been some sort of mental degeneration in the interim.

However you feel, what is not in dispute is that the Constitution is being ignored and that the longer this continues, the more the American system and American credibility is undermined and the greater the chance that the American ship of state will run into disaster, with no guarantee it will be restored to its former functionality.  If America’s current extraconstitutional republic is not restored to a constitutional one, history will look back on Americans harshly, and justly so.

*****

Ultimately, this is actually all part of a massive “active measures” political warfare campaign by Russia, designed from the beginning to weaken and undermine American institutions from the top down, beginning first and foremost with the U.S. presidency but trickling down to all walks of American political life. To be sure, what I have termed the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar—Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bold and unprecedented campaign to install Trump in the White House—succeeded wildly beyond what probably most Kremlin planners had dreamed of, and a president that literally broke the U.S. Constitution almost from the get-go for the duration of his first few years in office (and who knows how much longer) was probably not a specifically anticipated or designed outcome, especially within this timeframe. But it would have been within the realm of desired outcomes, as placing an agent of chaos—witting or unwitting—in the oval office can obviously produce a wide range of outcomes that generally destabilize and weaken the United States, which most certainly were the Russian aims in 2015-2016, and, as the just-released latest Justice Department criminal charges show, still are the goals as we head into the 2018 midterm elections, carried out by some the same overall agents as before. This campaign of Putin’s is still further part of his overall war against the West, NATO, and democracy, or the rise of what I call worldwide (small-d) democratic fascism. Taken together, this is a new form of (cold) warfare, using Twitter and racism instead of tanks and rockets, but it is warfare nonetheless. 

And it is warfare we are losing.

That a sitting U.S. president is essentially not necessarily in charge and is being constantly ignored and sidelined by patriotic underlings, that the U.S. Constitution has ceased to properly function as intended, that the Trump presidency is operating outside the bounds of the Constitution and the law, may all be an overperformance on the stage that Putin has set, but make no mistake about it, this is all part of the Kremlin’s overall designs to do short, medium, and long-term damage to American political institutions, rule of law, politics, standing, culture, and the norms that support them. The longer this all continues unchecked, the more success that will be enjoyed by Russia and the more damage to the health, even survivability, of the American political system and the U.S. Constitution. If the true functioning U.S. Constitution is not restored soon and Trump and his now cultish, sycophantic Republican party remain in power, perhaps Trump’s successor will operate within the Constitution, but perhaps not. Far better to check Trump and the GOP in these midterms, than leave it to chance, for the history of the Roman Republic shows that once precedents are broken and the longer they are broken, the greater the propensity that they will be broken again or swept away by new precedents, in Rome’s case, an autocratic emperor-based system operating under the guise of a democratic republic, and even that eventually gave way to out-and-out acknowledged autocracy. To maximize our odds of not repeating and falling down the same degenerative path, it is essential to restore the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law by first checking Trump and his Republican enablers during today’s midterms, and then Constitutionally removing him and them from power as soon as possible, whether at the ballot box or through other measures as allowed within our properly functioning constitutional system.

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer and consultant from the New York City area who has been based in Amman, Jordan, since early 2014. He holds an M.S. in Peace Operations and specializes in a wide range of interrelated topics, including international and U.S. policy/politics, security/conflict/(counter)terrorism, humanitarianism, development, social justice, and history. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg, all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse May 10, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 10th, 2017

NBC News

AMMAN — In banana republics, in increasingly-dictatorish dictatorships like Egypt, when someone challenges the Dear Leader, they are removed from power. When the dictator feels far more powerful, like Kim Jong-Un in North Korea, that person may be executed with an anti-aircraft gun.

If liberals smug in their “accomplishments” in their marches (I’ve lost track of how many disparate marches there are) think they and the nation are winning against Trump now, it’s time for them to wake the *&^% up, put aside their “boutique issues,” and unite behind the Democratic Party (for all its imperfections), which is the only entity in the here and now able to stand up to Trump besides the bureaucracy within the government (a government that is clearly intent on and is in the process of carrying out a purge of that bureaucracy), before we succumb to what I label democratic fascism.

Liberals and America are not winning. Every temporary win is at the mercy of the presidents’ whims; the Muslim ban? Trump will have plenty of time to appoint new judges to do his bidding and an unusually high number of them. Flynn out? Trump is already souring on McMaster, his replacement, one of the few “adults in the room” in the “axis of adults” that non-Trump supporters desperately try to tell themselves and the public will moderate/are moderating the “madness of King Donald” (and remember, as quickly as Trump “moderated” on any particular issue, he can just as quickly un-moderate). Senate Republicans have zero women working on health reform after the House’s passage of Trump/Ryancare. What does the women’s march mean when women’s health services are gutted, when judges are appointed that will take away women’s access and ability to decide on how to handle their own pregnancies? And Trump and the unhinged überpartisan Republicans will now be able to appoint an FBI director (Giuliani? Christie?) who will, in effect, bury the FBI’s investigation into ties between Trump and Russia and the 2016 election.

To quote Gen. Michael Hayden, former NSA and CIA chief, “I’m trying to avoid the conclusion that we’ve become Nicaragua;” to quote Jeffrey Toobin, CNN’s all-star legal analyst, “this is not normal;” and to quote Bill Maher, to those of you who though Hillary Clinton was merely the lesser of two evils, “go &^%$ yourselves,” because we now have the worst threat to our system of government, to the survival of our republic as a republic, since the days of Nixon, mainly because you couldn’t bring yourselves to support a candidate who was easily closer to your politics and beliefs and instead saw that a serial-lying narcissistic monster of a man-child was installed in the White House after only winning 46.1% of the vote in what was a de-facto two person race, since far too many of you threw your votes away on non-Clinton non-Trump votes.

In fact, the only times anything like this Comey firing has happened with a president was during Nixon’s presidency, during the 1973 Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon fired the special prosecutor—Archibald Cox—investigating the Watergate scandal, and arguably when Andrew Jackson—Trump’s apparent historical idol—ignored the Supreme Court when it came to removing Native American tribes from America’s Southeast. In Nixon’s time, significant numbers of Republicans put country over party and helped to lead the fight against Nixon’s abuse of both office and power. 

Does ANYONE not drinking GOP Kool-Aid think that today’s farcical Republicans will do the same? Whether the “Benghazi” (really Clinton e-mail) “investigation” (really witch hunt) or the recent Russia hearings where the vast majority of Republicans focused on leaks and unmasking, it’s clear that, no, Republicans in Congress will not put country over party, even when it comes to vital issues of national security. Even as I write this, I am seeing Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defend Trump’s firing of Comey using hackneyed partisan talking points that ignore the current context. I fully expect Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to do the same thing, and I expect the same as well from the vast majority of Congressional Republicans or at least expect their reactions to be far from condemnation, and so far, this has clearly been the case.

If you read Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s letter about Comey’s firing, you’d think that Trump fired Comey because of his unfair treatment of Hillary Clinton during the e-mail/server investigation, treatment of which I wrote about repeatedly before the election and which, all things being equal, seems to have cost her the election (not that other factors did not also play into the loss). So, yes, objectively, Comey should have been fired, but fired by Obama long ago, and yet, this would have looked so unseemly for Obama, Clinton, and the Democrats, and been such political suicide for Obama, that that was never really an option. Long after these events in question, Trump apparently expects us to believe that those reasons related to the handling of the e-mail/server investigation are why he fired Comey.

Nothing could be more absurd or further from the truth. 

There are three real reasons for why Trump fired Comey: Russia, Russia, and Russia (and a fourth: Trump feeling he could not control Comey). And Trump made it clear that the investigation of both Trump’s ties to Russia and Russian election interference (cyberwar!)was at the center of his concerns when he mentioned that investigation in his own letter firing Comey.

It is fitting that Trump included what is virtually certainly a lie—that Comey thrice told Trump that Trump was not under investigation—in his own letter; still, I don’t believe nearly enough people are paying close attention; rather, I believe this is how democracy dies. So soon after Star Wars day, Trump is showing his authoritarian Emperor Palpatine colors faster than some would have anticipated.

Oh, and all this is the same day (just hours after!) that federal grand jury subpoenas went out in relation to the Russia investigation, just days after Comey had requested more resources to conduct his Russia investigation, just one day after Sally Yates’s testimony in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee had made it clear she was fired just days after she had warned the White House about Gen. Flynn being compromised by Russia, and with Attorney General Jeff Sessions—who had pledged to recuse himself from all Russia/election 2016-related matters because of his own misconduct—acting to help remove Comey, who had been leading the Russia investigation, despite Sessions’ vow of recusal.

This is where we are now, and this is the first truly tipping-point moment in Trump’s presidency: many years from now, historians will look at this moment and look at how the people and their elected political leaders reacted, in particular the leaders of the Republican Party now (especially in the Senate) and the American people when they get to weigh in during the 2018 midterms. If we don’t handle this appropriately, this moment will likely be seen as a moment when the system failed and a lurch toward tyranny happened; even if that lurch doesn’t put us firmly in the realm of tyranny and authoritarianism, it will be a tall task to lurch back in the right direction and it will put us ever closer to even more dangerous tyrannies that may yet be self-inflicted upon our body politic.

The ancient Roman Republic lasted far longer than America’s republic has thus far lasted; looking at its example of the erosion of democratic (small “d”) republican (small “r”) institutions and their eventual collapse, once centuries-long precedents were broken, the ensuing consequences proved fatal for a system that had been stable for longer than America has existed as a nation; this should all give us pause as we wait and see if, or to what degree, the United States has descended/will descend to the level of a banana republic under President Trump, his Administration, and with the help of his supporters, enablers and voters.

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

See related articles:

Trump & GOP Destroying the Pillars of Democracy

The Trump-Russia-Mob Connections Details You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part I: Defining Democracy, Fascism, and Democratic Fascism Usefully, and Spin vs. Lies

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse December 29, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) December 29th, 2017; republished by IR.net on March 23rd, 2018, and updated March 27th, 2018, to reflect Putin’s abstemious nature

Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

AMMAN — Those wishing for impeachment might get more than they wished for, and either way, America may be irreparably damaged.

Disclaimer: this is a fictional, hypothetical situation

Sometime in April of 2019…

The House vote to impeach President Donald Trump set off a firestorm in American politics not seen since at least the 1960s and perhaps even the Civil War and Reconstruction era.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into all things Trump-Russia ended on August 10th, 2018. In the process, nearly two-dozen Trump associates—from lower “unofficial” campaign officials to senior Administration officials—had been charged with various crimes, from lying to federal investigators to money laundering, some resulting in stiff prison sentences. Mueller uncovered enough information that made it clear people very close to Trump had attempted to collude with Russia, then lied about it and attempted to obstruct justice. While specific evidence making it clear that Trump had himself colluded did not emerge, clear evidence that he had attempted to obstruct justice did.

And yet, this information only came out in and drabs leaked to the press, as the Republicans in Congress who received the report decided to sit on its details and not release them to the public, ignoring the recommendation of charges by the Special Counsel and signed off on by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Just a few months before the midterms, the actions of the Congressional Republicans, combined with the juicy leaks to the press about some of what they were hiding, set off an uproar that allowed a November Democratic sweep of all House Republicans on the West Coast—alone accounting for nearly 20 seats—as well the flipping a number of seats in East Coast liberal areas, including suburban districts in places like Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and even a few rural districts in places like Maine and Maryland. A few of the key Republicans who deliberately kept Mueller’s findings from the public were voted out of office, too, the so-called “Resistance” pouring inordinate amounts of resources into their races, and Republicans overall—facing many more tight races than expected across the country and with the donor class demoralized—were unable to match the intensity of their rivals in those marquee races.

Even allowing for all this, the Democrats were unable to take back the House, but they had eroded the GOP House advantage to just a handful of seats and managed to score a 50-50 tie in the Senate.

The public had spoken, a voting coalition that included conservatives in many liberal states who had united with “the Resistance” to stand against the blatant Republican obstructionism in the Trump-Russia investigation, sending send a clear message as the 116th Congress took power in 2019. It was obvious that the GOP would find it much more difficult to get away with its blatant obstructionism, and the House Judiciary Committee with only a few GOP defections was able to pass a vote allowing the contents of the Special Counsel’s detailed findings to be made public late in January, though with some redactions. 

Then in mid-February, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan reluctantly agreed to allow the House Judiciary Committee to take up discussion of impeachment articles that had been introduced by Democrats months ago.

The evidence was clear and overwhelming, and the committee—with just a few Republican defections—was able to vote in March to recommended several articles of impeachment for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

A right-wing media assault led by former Trump advisor (and still confidante) Steve Bannon from his perch at Breitbart News had already begun once Speaker Ryan had allowed impeachment to be taken up by the Judiciary Committee, but it went into overdrive once the House debate on impeachment began. The vast majority of the well over 200 GOP House members stayed loyal to the President, but all that was required to reach a majority were a handful of Republican defectors—some of the few remaining Republicans from states like New York and New Jersey, ironically, Trump’s backyard—and the House voted to impeach both Trump and Pence on April 9th, 2019, in a vote that featured two fistfights on the House floor.

The vote’s symbolism—154 years after General Lee’s surrender of “Confederate” rebel forces at Appomattox in Virginia—was not lost on Trump’s supporters, who used it as a galvanizing call. The day of the vote, hundreds of protests and counter-protests all over the country were held, violence breaking out in many; a good number of the protests against impeachment were organized by alt-right groups as armed open carry protests, and were often men by Antifa folks ready for a fight. Dozens of protesters, counter-protesters, and even some law-enforcement officials were wounded and, all told, there were 14 fatalities, the worst political violence in America since the 1992 Los Angeles riots and, before that, since the unrest of the 1960s and 1970s.

That same day, Russia launched offensives (with soldiers in unmarked uniforms) in Moldova and in Ukraine, taking the capitals of each and removing what Putin, in a speech televised live nationally in Russia, called “criminal regimes installed by the West.” Russian jets also buzzed U.S. planes in Syria, the Black Sea, and over the Baltic states, where aggressive Russian activities resulted in several air defense missiles being fired in Latvian airspace at Russian jets that nevertheless maneuvered safely back to Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave. 

North Korean forces fired several test missiles into Japanese waters but also shot down a U.S. spy plane with newly equipped anti-air missiles purchased from Russia, taking the American pilot prisoner. 

Iran—reacting to the U.S. decision nearly a year earlier to ignore the nuclear deal reached under the Obama Administration and to unilaterally reimpose sanctions, as well as fearing war from a bellicose American government—conducted the first nuclear test in that nation’s history in the middle of the night, even catching Israel’s Mossad by surprise. 

ISIS also conducted attacks on several American embassies in the Middle East, killing dozens (though mostly local bystanders and local military), and al-Qaeda even managed several attacks in Afghanistan and against the U.S. embassy in Pakistan, though no Americans were killed in either attack.

The next day, Mike Pence resigned as Vice President, and Congress made it clear that it would not vote on anyone Trump would nominate as a successor until (at least) the Senate had decided its verdict.

Even before the Senate began its proceedings, cries among rightists that the country was being stolen from them, that liberals and the “Deep State” were conspiring to thwart the will of the voters and to illegally overturn a valid presidential election, had been mounting. Vigilantes in Texas and Arizona assaulted migrant workers, seriously injuring a dozen, claiming that liberals were trying to get them to illegally vote after Trump tweeted concerns about illegal voting helping change the balance of power in the new Congress amid an unprecedented Twitter storm the day of his impeachment.

In one day, several apparently spontaneous assaults on congressmen and senators in town halls being held across the country before the Senate’s trial resulted three failed assaults but also in two dead congressmen, one seriously wounded senator, and one slightly wounded senator (the seriously wounded senator the result of an attack by an Antifa extremist, the lone leftist among the assaulters). All town halls were subsequently canceled and Congress began to operate amid unprecedented security, with the special election to replace the murdered congressmen operating in a state of fear and rage.

Meanwhile, many alt-right groups were organizing a combined armed march on Washington, to begin in Northern Virginia the day the Senate trial of Trump—who was showing no signs of backing down and had ordered military units to protect him in the White House—was to begin. They had weeks to organize, and well over 100,000 arms-bearing Trump supporters—including some full militia groups—gathered during the days before the Senate trial was to start. Since it was illegal for armed protests to happen in when the groups tried to march across the Potomac over several bridges into Washington, they were blocked by authorities; rather than cooler heads prevailing, gunshots rang out and pitched battles occurred on the bridges. The shots could be heard from the Senate floor as the trial commenced. When Sec. of Defense Jim Mattis acted to deploy units to restore order, Trump abruptly removed him from office that day, and the militia groups and civilian law enforcement, each sustaining wounded and dead, settled into a stalemate as Washington went on lockdown. Protesters protesting the march were also shot, and of protesters, inspired by a defiantly unhinged Trump and the first wave of protesters who refused to back down, began to organize. Throughout the country, federal government installations were attacked by militias, which in some cases took over smaller facilities and took hostages. More deaths occurred during these developments, and protesters of all stripes took to the streets that evening, with scuffles and deaths reported in a wide range of locations. 

Many governors reacted to the shocking events by imposing state-wide curfews and calling in the National Guard. In many instances, the National Guard had to use force to restore order after overwhelmed local law enforcement officials were unable to do so.

By the next morning, from the Memorial Bridge connecting Arlington and Washington to Austin’s Texas State Capitol and many other locations, over 200 Americans were dead, more wounded. The fighting in the U.S. had sent world markets into their worst plunges since the 2008 financial crises, and many governments halted trading. Governors in West Virginia, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, North and South Dakota, and Kentucky called for secession, as did dozens of state lawmakers elsewhere.

By this time, Israel had already carried out military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, and Iran had retaliated by firing missiles that hit Tel Aviv and had killed several hundred Israelis, while Hezbollah missiles from Lebanon had killed scored of Israelis and Israel’s retaliatory strikes in Lebanon and in Syria against Hezbollah-stationed units there killed over 1,000 people. Israeli jets had ended up in dogfights with Russian jets while American planes just looked on, though the Russian and Israeli leaders were said to be reducing tensions, all this occurring without any mediation 

On the Korean Peninsula, several border incidents resulted in several dozen U.S., South Korean, and North Korean dead, with fears of war gripping East Asia and Kim Jong-un threatening nuclear attacks on Seoul, Tokyo, Honolulu, and Los Angeles. 

When the UN convened the Security Council, none of the other representatives knew if America’s ambassador spoke for the U.S. Government anymore (even more so than before).

The Senate, fearing what a prolonged trial would lead to and with some surprising defections from Republicans who were taken aback by the national violence, got exactly 66 votes to remove Trump from office.

The President, suffering from a mental breakdown, then said that he refused to acknowledge the result and called on his supporters to “fight to take the country back.” With Mattis gone, chaos reigned at the Pentagon as individual local unit commanders took it upon themselves to assist local law enforcement officials in beating back the armed pro-Trump militias converging on Washington; fatalities crossed the 1,000 mark and continued to rise rapidly in this second day of increasing violence, and members of the Secret Service, as well as the military units that had been ordered to the White House by Trump, felt torn. 

With violence erupting across the country and law and order breaking down in some areas (even though most Americans remained safe), with the Senate having convicted a President of High Crimes and Misdemeanors for the first time in American history (one who was still defiantly occupying the White House), and with several million angry Trump supporters—many armed—converging on Washington, the U.S. was faced with a constitutional crisis that went far beyond Nixon and even the Civil War. Whatever would happen in the coming hours, days, weeks, and months, there was serious doubt that such a polarized and wounded nation could come back to “normal order” anytime soon. It seemed clear that Trump would be gone soon, and Paul Ryan in as president, but how could he govern? And how could the violent fury that had been unleashed and the calls for secession be contained?

Vladimir Putin sat in in bed in his presidential palace, breaking his usual abstemiousness by sipping vodka with one of his mistresses lying naked on top of him, and gleefully watched the Breitbart News Network (BNN) coverage of the fighting on the Memorial Bridge. “You Americans were so arrogant thinking you had ‘won’ the Cold War,” he said aloud, his mistress chuckling. “Who is winning now?” he asked and downed the entire rest of his glass before turning his attention to his mistress, gunshots in America providing the mood music for his date night.

CTK/AP

*****

It is impossible to know if or when Donald Trump will be impeached. But if he were, none of the events described above are so far out of the realm of possibility that they can be regarded as mere fantasy. Whatever events do transpire, it is far more likely that impeachment would only further divide the nation rather than bring it together, the same as the prospects for a continued Trump presidency. It seems, then, that for the foreseeable future, we are the Divided—not United—States of America.

With or without Trump in office for a full term, Putin has already won. 

Disclaimer: the author does not hope for, nor does he encourage, any of the violent acts depicted in these hypothetical scenarios

September 21st, 2019 note: I absolutely think as a matter of principle, Trump should be impeached. But in practical terms, it’s not so simple, and bad timing or moving without enough support could hurt Democrats, empower Trump, and even help Trump go after his political enemies. So I’m with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, I trust her judgment and if it can work she’ll know the time to strike if it presents itself or if it will be better to hold off. After all, there are a lot of possible side-effects to consider…

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

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