Scoundrel Time

How It Ends – Or Doesn’t

How is the ongoing shitstorm that is Donald Trump’s administration going to end? Though everyone on earth has noted his unpredictability, his year in office may have established, paradoxically, that it’s not so hard to predict where Trump himself is headed: more tantrums spawned by narcissistic rage, more glimpses of his bottomless ignorance, more ugliness of the sort that diminishes us all, and, once Mr. Mueller finishes, the full extent of Trump’s financial corruption. Are impeachable offenses going to be uncovered? Almost certainly. At which point a less dysfunctional government would grind into action. But at which point most Americans will be left in a position nicely evoked by a recent SNL skit entitled What Even Matters Anymore?: a game show in which the contestants are tasked with conceiving of something–anything–that Trump could do that would cause him to be removed from office before 2020. You’ve probably figured out by now how that skit ends.