Insurrection Day: A New Dawn

A few minutes ago Donald J. Trump released a video statement in which he agreed to stop trying to steal the election. Well not exactly; he agreed to a peaceful transfer of power to "a new administration".

While it was hardly surprising that he did not have the good grace to even mention Joe Biden, let alone congratulation him on his win, the fact that he has given up on the fight to stay in office is. 

Whether he feels partly responsible for yesterday's chaos, a situation he himself laboriously created or whether he was pushed we may never know. But the fact that there was serious talk about invoking the 25th Amendment and, were he not to be removed from office or resign, a second impeachment, may well have contributed to his decision, which, while not a concession per-se, was a close to one as anyone could have hoped. 

One interpretation is that were he to be turfed out under the 25th, or failing that, be impeached a second time (which was almost certain - although his removal by the Senate would again be doubtful) not only would his political future be over but his business life could get much more difficult with a completely trashed personal brand. While his removal under the 25th was a long shot, a second impeachment wasn't; and he would go down in history as the only president to have been impeached twice.      

His implicit concession was possibly the only way to defuse the coming onslaught; he'd pushed the envelope just a bit too far this time.  Unlike the Ukraine scandal, the images of the assault on the Capitol were striking and viral. The juxtaposition of video of his rally and the subsequent insurrection were so much more powerful than a "perfect [phone] call" that his ability to mount a defense in the court of public opinion was greatly diminished.   

As a now definitively lame duck president, effectively stripped of power and with his fair weather travelers jumping ship, his political adversaries and ex-allies, whom he had abandoned and often humiliated, could pursue him with far greater impunity; that was a risk he may have calculated was too great.  

By taking the wind out of the sails of the 25th amendment folk and making it politically much harder for the House to impeach him, he has averted an almost certain confrontation; and in so doing he may live to fight another day.  Lets hope he's lost his taste for politics and now understands that governing effectively  involves real work, something to which he appears to be quite allergic.