BBC News) Today marks the third anniversary of an important day in the ascendancy of president Donald Trump. In February of 2016 vice president Christie, while he was still governor of New Jersey, endorsed Trump, making him the first established Republican to do so. This endorsement laid the groundwork for other prominent Republicans to be willing to throw their support behind Trump, and for the party machinery to assist him in his election victory. This support was especially crucial after the 2016 election ended without Trump, Hilary Clinton, or third party candidate Michael Bloomberg getting a majority of the electoral vote. Although Trump did not get a plurality, trailing Clinton, House Republicans threw the balance to his side.
It has been impossible for the BBC to talk to Trump or Christie to discuss this anniversary, since only journalists vetted by Secretary of Information Scarborough are allowed access to the president. Other outlets, such as the New York Times, have not been so lucky. A libel lawsuit conducted under new laws formulated by Trump has left that newspaper bankrupt and unable to operate. Because the United Kingdom has not remained allied with the United States in Trump's recent military interventions, the BBC too has been threatened with lawsuits by the Trump government.
With American armed forces currently deployed in the oil fields of Iraq and on the Mexican side of the border with the United States, Trump has been restricting the media even more on the grounds of protecting the nation in a time of war. Just last week he sent the American army over the Rio Grande, where maquiladoras (Mexican factories on the border) have been forcibly shut down after the Mexican government refused to pay for the wall Trump is currently building. Sources in the US military also say that the maquiladoras may be burned down, or failing that, turned into dumping grounds for the millions of undocumented immigrants that are currently being held in makeshift internment camps in the Nevada and Utah deserts.
After what some insiders call a plastic surgery operation gone wrong, Trump has not appeared in public for the past four days. Rumors about the leader's ill health, combined with unrest over the policies of mass deportation and invasion, have led some to think that a palace coup may be in the offing. The suspension of Congressional elections in 2018 after armed skirmishes broke out between federal agents carrying out deportation orders and undocumented workers in several immigrant neighborhoods was seen as a step too far by some powerful Republicans. Others see a potential power grab by vice president Chris Christie, information minister Joe Scarborough, secretary of the interior Sarah Palin, or even chief justice Andrew Napolitano. Fox News, now the de facto government organ, has been showing nothing but reruns of Trump campaign rallies from 2016 and reruns of The Apprentice, leading some to wonder if his death is imminent. Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch have both refused to comment.
That's what really scares me - Trump obviously is incapable of any kind of real leadership. I don't think he'd go along with being a puppet like Bush so probably he'd soon vanish from the scene amidst all kinds of phony grief and horror (a fatal toupee accident, perhaps?) and then we get the real question: who steps in then? I used to wish I was religious so I could pray that Dubya wasn't assassinated because then we'd have Cheney who would have been so, so much worse. But if Trump gets into the WH, then dies, I think we're really seriously screwed. Globally, historically, screwed.
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