This was from Reuters on Tuesday: “President Donald Trump is leaving the White House but he is not going to fade away quietly.” Perhaps he isn’t going to fade away at all.
President-elect Joe Biden’s victory means Trump will soon be out of a job, but there’s no reason to think that he needs the office of the presidency to continue commanding attention. He can take Twitter with him anywhere.
The New York Times reported that executives and journalists at CNN and MSNBC are uneasy about a “Trump-less future.” They’re concerned because their coverage of Trump’s presidency has driven ratings and may no longer, as if Trump will soon board the ship with Frodo, Bilbo, and Gandalf, bound for the Undying Lands.
There are dozens of Trump-adjacent stories that will develop, or have the potential to, and that he and his various surrogates can only be expected to keep alive. The political market has been primed for it.
For one, Trump will, in all likelihood, continue to make his case about election fraud. And why not? He maintains significant support among his base. Republican leadership seems to be moving on, but Republican Rep. Mo Brooks says he isn’t surrendering the fight against “voter fraud and election theft.” Sen. Rand Paul said on Wednesday that “the election in many ways was stolen.” Trump still has momentum on this front.
Aside from that, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell said he wants a commission to investigate Trump. “I don’t say this lightly: when we escape this Trump hell, America needs a Presidential Crimes Commission,” he wrote in an August tweet. “It should be made up of independent prosecutors who look at those who enabled a corrupt president. Example 1: Sabotaging the mail to win an election.” This would give Trump quite a runway.
Swalwell returned to his political vomit in a November interview with TMZ, to which interviewer Charles Latibeaudiere responded that going after Trump in that way is “just going to extend the amount of time that we’re talking about him and that he is also going to have an opportunity to have a platform to talk about his view of the election.” Precisely! Biden has said he does not want to go about wishing for investigations into Trump, but maybe he could be convinced. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was herself relatively cautious about impeachment until Trump’s Ukraine call struck the right (or wrong) nerve.
If that prospect dies, the Durham investigation (into alleged law-enforcement malfeasance during the Russia investigation) remains ongoing, at which Trump is the center, even if not the subject. Attorney General William Barr raised the profile of that investigation by appointing U.S. Attorney John Durham to special counsel status. If it yields indictments, or if any other evidence of impropriety among Trump-Russia investigators is revealed, that’s a Trump story. If Biden tinkers with the investigation at all, that’s a Trump story. If nothing comes out of it, Trump will sustain it. He is already quite upset that Durham hasn’t delivered. “Durham didn’t want to go after these people … before the election, so who knows if he’ll ever even do a report,” Trump said this month.
The U.S. attorney investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes is basically a Trump story, too. When the New York Post published its story detailing Hunter’s Ukraine business ventures, and his father’s connection to them, news organizations treated it as something unworthy of coverage. Trump and others used the story, and it’s treatment by the news media and by Twitter and Facebook, as campaign ammunition in the race’s final days to argue that they were all going to bat for Biden.
Whatever happens with regard to Hunter Biden’s taxes, Trump will find an angle to exploit. If Hunter Biden is charged with tax fraud, Trump could easily pounce at a corruption angle. If the investigation ends without an indictment, Trump could do the same, pointing back to the election, and pointing back to how investigators treated him. As soon as Trump is on it, the news media will be on him.
On the off chance that none of those flare up, there are defamation lawsuits that news media will be hungry to cover. Trump’s niece is suing him. Manhattan’s district attorney is investigating his company, and so is the New York attorney general. He and his family presumably have standing political ambitions. Trump, or his affairs, will give CNN and MSNBC something to talk about.
“What will we do without Trump?” asked James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal. It will more than likely prove to be a faulty premise. Nobody will have to do anything without him.
