Stages of Trump Normalization

Last night, the NYT posted an article about John Bolton’s forthcoming book that adds even more evidence to the Ukraine case. GOP senators reportedly “felt blindsided” by the news. Romney said he thought calling Bolton as a witness was now likely.

We’ll see. This is another in an uncountable series of identical moments when Trump has done something that would have been historically disqualifying and would have ended any other politician’s career. The initial reaction suggests such a pattern will unfold: the initial allegations will snowball, party support will wobble and ultimately fail, and the politician will be forced out. But in every single moment of the Trump presidency something different happens instead. 

This is stage one: shock, assumptions of doom. Moderate GOP suggesting consequences (while stopping short of demanding them). Hardliners stay quiet and hole up. Stage two starts when Trump doubles down. He wallows I’m self-pity and attacks viciously while putting maximum pressure on the GOP to support him. Stage three is when those GOP politicians do support him, emerging from their holes with a unified talking point about why the current outrage is actually normal, Obama did far worse, and actually, it’s perfect. Media report both sides as if they are equal, the right-wing outrage machine kicks in and the GOP actually begin wailing their grievances as if they have been persecuted. This convinced the base, which is good enough, and everything dies down until the next moment comes and the cycle repeats.

I expect the same to happen here. It will only take the Senators a few hours (or maybe a couple days) to calculate that stonewalling and acquitting is better than opening a Pandora’s box of real accountability. They’ll take a PR hit, but at this point, it hardly matters.