Does President Trump Have Any More Cards to Play or Is It Game Over?

President Donald Trump speaks in a video released by the White House late on Jan. 13, 2021. (Screenshot/White House)

Commentary

There has been intense speculation for the past several weeks as the post-election drama has continued to build over whether President Donald J. Trump has any more cards left to play in his efforts to remain in the Oval Office.

As I put the finishing touches on this column, the U.S. House of Representatives, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), has just finished impeaching Trump for a second time.

This is most curious when one considers that Trump is supposedly leaving in just six short days anyway, on Jan. 20, when Joseph R. Biden is scheduled to be sworn in as the nation’s 46th president.

This current rush to this second impeachment makes even less sense than the previous one did, where a completely innocent phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was somehow turned into a crime.

The present impeachment article claims Trump incited insurrection when he encouraged his supporters to become violent as he addressed them in the nation’s capital, at the Ellipse, just a short distance from the White House on Jan. 6.

The article states:

“Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington DC. There, he reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide’. He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—lawless action at the Capitol, such as: ‘if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore’. Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive and seditious acts.”

This is absurd.

Nowhere in his comments to the crowd that day did the president call for any violence. The speech Trump made is available online in its entirety.

The very last words Trump spoke to the crowd were these:

“Our most exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country, and I say this despite all that’s happened, the best is yet to come.

“So we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue—I love Pennsylvania Avenue—and we’re gong to the Capitol [Building], and ... we’re going to try and give our Republicans—the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help—we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

“So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I want to thank you all, God bless you and God bless America.” That was far from an incitement to violence or riot, as any honest viewing of the speech will demonstrate. Therefore, anyone claiming Trump was calling for a violent insurrection is making such a case in bad faith.

It has also been established that those who led the way into the capitol building had begun their foray into the premises well before Trump finished his speech. The speech Trump made therefore cannot be the cause of the violence that occurred.

It now appears Pelosi rushed this impeachment vote through the House before news could break that the Capitol Building assault was planned days in advance.

All the relevant facts say this impeachment article is absurd on its face. The question that arises is what is really prompting this frantic scramble to impeach a president who by all appearances is shuffling out the door in just one week?

Is It Revenge or Is It Panic?

While some are spinning this latest impeachment as a revenge act by Democrats gleefully kicking the despised Trump while he’s down, that’s not the sense I get from observing all of this.

What I see is fear and panic that Trump might do something before noon on Jan. 20, and this is prompting a frantic attempt to remove him from power even if it’s only just two or three days early.

What cards could Trump still be holding back that would prompt such a frantic display by the Washington establishment?

Trump Knows What’s at Stake for Him, His Family, and His Supporters

Nobody understands better than Donald John Trump does what will happen to him and his family.

What strikes many Trump supporters as strange is that Trump doesn’t seem to be presenting the appearance of a desperate man fighting a losing battle in a scorched earth fashion for his own future and that of his family.

During his recent trip to Texas where he commemorated the completion of 450 miles of wall during his administration, aside from a few sharp comments about the Democrats’ latest attempt to impeach him, Trump seemed jovial and serene.

This tells me that Trump either knows something is coming that we don’t yet know about, or he’s already resigned to his fate and is at peace with the fact there’s nothing he can do to stop what’s about to happen to him, his family, and all his supporters.

Whichever scenario is the correct one, we won’t have to wait all that long to find out.

No One Will Ever Forget What They Saw

It has become increasingly clear over recent days as Democrats viciously celebrate what appears to be a successful theft of the 2020 presidential election, that this was never just about Trump or his family. It was about settling scores with anyone who supported him.

They’re only starting with Trump and his family; they’ll get to the people who still support him soon enough.

Whether it’s the PGA announcing it’s dropping Trump golf courses from their tour, or major banks very publicly cutting their ties with him, the complete isolation of the Trump family is already under way.

Biden hasn’t even been sworn in yet and already news media is full of stories in which Trump’s powerful enemies have been gleefully letting Trump’s supporters know what’s being planned for them.

As with the Trump family, it’s complete ostracization and isolation. Not just on social media, but in banking, in travel, in employment, and more.

In one viral video, a Delta Air Lines flight returned to the airport to expel several Trump supporters, allegedly for making comments in support of the president.

Will Trump and his supporters accept this fate of being second-class citizens in their own country?

Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and author of “Nobody Asked For My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!” He can be reached on Telegram at t.me/drawandstrikechannel.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.