Exit Stage Right

Trump hints he might not go peacefully if he’s impeached or indicted

- Jeff Stein

AN UNSEASONABLE ICY COLD SWEPT INTO Washington in mid-December, like a celestial omen that winter was coming for Donald Trump’s presidency. With the sentencing of three former key aides, including his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, and the guilty pleas and prosecutorial cooperation agreements of others, the administration seemed suspended between the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. In guarded conversations on the edges of holiday cocktail parties in the capital’s power corridors, Republicans, Democrats and longtime “deep state” bureaucrats seemed to recognize that a turning point had been reached. The end, perhaps, was in sight, if not near.

“I can’t imagine he’ll escape the traps Robert Mueller has set for him,” one top former national security official whispered, speaking of the special counsel investigation on condition of anonymity because he deals with the Trump administration on intelligence issues. “Then there’s the New York stuff [investigations of Trump’s foundation, the Cohen scandal] and now Democrats coming into power in the House. He’s in a very tight spot.”

With the various vises tightening, conversations turned toward another icy specter: Would Trump leave the White House if prompted to do so by an indictment or impeachment vote?

The president himself revived jitters over the prospect of going rogue when he predicted in a Reuters interview on December 9 that “the people would revolt” if he were impeached. Earlier in the year, he notoriously crowed approval of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s abolition of term limits. “I think it’s great,” he said. “Maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.”