If he actually leaked information which resulted in the deaths of intelligence agents, then we could actually see the first time that a former President was put to death for treason (should happen....but will it?) *sigh*
Me, I think there should be a civil war with Trump's supporters - it'll clean up the US gene pool considerably.
Trump has certainly proven himself (so far) more of a Teflon Don than anyone might reasonably have expected. But he's playing in a civilian ballpark now; not the venue of a sitting president with political protocols and rulebooks amended by the likes of Mitch McConnell.
On the matter of resisting the return of sensitive documents, that's not at all like some dude ignoring a bunch of parking tickets. Trump seems to have tried seriously to obstruct the government's effort to retrieve for secure storage some highly restricted materials, and he may already have dragged a few hapless attorneys into legal trouble themselves.
What more does it take to bring a rogue ex president to heel? He appears to have incited electoral fraud and overturn of the government. He appears to have stolen documents that endanger our national security. He has definitely mocked every guardrail that protocol, norms, rules and actual law together ever framed and constrained powers of a president, or an ex-president either.
And still out on the hustings this afternoon there are politicians campaigning on the assumed appeal of an outlaw-caricature of Trump (an image elevated by Trump himself!) to their own potential voters.
It's not just Trump who is dangerous. It's also the people who think he's cool, and think he's persecuted, and think he should run again for public office. But there's really no there there for a lot of his rally-base sort of followers, it's all props and smoke and mirrors and often enjoyed as entertainment.
When one breaks out the stats, it doesn't seem like there are enough of that hard core to be a threat to America. But they're not all faceless people in crowds; a significant number of politically aware fans of Trump's autocratic take on leadership are already in positions of supposed public trust, in Congress, state legislatures, school boards, county election offices.
Who knows how hard or easy it will be to un-sell the false images of Donald Trump to those followers. And behind Trump are a bench of wannabe successors.
Best we can hope for right now is that he keeps pulling walls down around himself to reveal his unfitness. So far the DoJ seems to have been patiently allowing an apparent criminal to further incriminate himself. It's alarming though to reallize at each turn in the road, we still hadn't seen the extent of his unworthiness to have been where he once sat atop our government.
If there was ever a book of object lessons for pols and voters alike to quit dismissing character and morality as key in electing leaders, Trump certainly warrants a chapter of his own.
www.cnn.com
