When Saddam Hussein realized that his defeat was imminent in the first Gulf War, he ordered his troops to ignite hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells before retreating. It took months for coalition forces to extinguish the fires, and the region suffered economic and environmental effects for years, if not decades. Scholars have debated Saddam’s exact motivations, though it’s fairly obvious that at least part of it was the political equivalent of a frustrated bully’s temper tantrum, i.e., one last chance to feel a sense of perverse empowerment by inflicting gratuitous destruction and suffering on those he couldn’t beat fairly.
Can you all see where this is going? As administration officials start fleeing their posts like rats abandoning a sinking ship, as social media begin to cancel Trump and his seditious rants, and as former allies of convenience finally begin to repudiate him publicly, the future-former-president is now staring into an abyss of rejection and endless legal reckoning. And as all of the discussions of the 25th amendment or a second impeachment indicate, it is indeed a very live possibility that Trump will undertake (or at least attempt to undertake) a rampage of revenge and devastation in the eleven days he has left.
The Toteboard fully expects that Pence and the remaining cabinet members will fail to step up as they should, and that republicans will never go for impeachment and conviction, and so the only real question now is exactly what further carnage Trump will cause. For this, the Toteboard invites its readers to log your predictions about what gratuitous acts of destruction Trump manages between now and January 20. You may check any or all of the boxes below, and return this by email. Online readers may respond by using the “comment” field that appears below this post.
___ Going Nuclear
Trump initiates some kind of military action against another sovereign state
___ Yelling “Fire!”
Trump purges any remaining administration official he deems as disloyal (and effectively
leaves no one in charge of the government)
___ Pardon Me?
Trump commutes the sentences of both his criminal accomplices and random violent
offenders, and attempts to issue preemptive pardons of himself and his family
___ Getting Crabs
Trump attempts to flip on his not-yet-outed criminal accomplices, in exchange for leniency
or exoneration
___ Down and Dirty
Trump defecates on the White House carpets and wipes his ass on the curtains
PS: The Toteboard would STILL like to hear from you, but time is running out! Who do YOU think will be the democratic and republican nominees for president in 2024? Of course, the Toteboard has its own ideas, but it might be fun to hear what everyone else is thinking. Send your predictions to the Toteboard sometime between now and Biden’s inauguration, and we’ll announce the results shortly thereafter. And by the way, whoever gets it correct will win the prize of Lifetime Gratification.