From Alternet
We should prepare for any drastic measures from war to martial law that Trump may undertake to escape his crises.
Is it now time to imagine how far Trump and his Republican cronies in Congress might be able to push things? And how we, as Americans, might respond?
This isn't the first time such a question has been raised.
A bit more than a week before the election of 2016 -- a week before Trump won the election -- one of the few people on earth who's really and truly studied Donald Trump up close and personal, Tony Schwartz, granted an interview to the British newspaper the Independent.
Schwartz, who wrote Trump's book The Art of the Deal and spent months with Trump to gather information for the book, predicted that Trump would declare martial law. Not as a possibility, but as a near-certainty.
Schwartz predicted that Trump would do three specific things, although not necessarily all at once or in any particular order: He'd attack the free press; he'd compile an enemies list and begin getting revenge on those he thinks slighted him; and he'd declare martial law to solidify his power.
"When I said that," Schwartz told the Independent, "I got a lot of rolling of the eyes from people in the media and other people to whom I was making that case. I think today, people do really begin to understand that this is a volatile man with very low self control."
How would this happen? Andrew Buncombe, who interviewed Schwartz for the Independent, wrote: "Asked how Mr. Trump would go about undertaking such a drastic measure, [Schwartz] said many of Mr. Trump's supporters were police, members of the border guards force and the 'far right wing' of the military."
It's enough to make you think that Charlottesville was just a dress rehearsal for our version of the Brownshirts, and that Trump is counting on the support of these "very fine people" if he ever needs them in a pinch. Our very own version of Kristallnacht could be not far off.
For example, imagine that Trump, his family members, and numerous Republicans are indicted for actual crimes, and, particularly with the Nunes faction of Congress, for conspiring to conceal or obstruct investigations of those crimes. And the indictment comes right after the election in November when Democrats have won control of one or both houses of Congress, but Republicans are still in charge until January.
This combination would present Trump and his GOP with both a problem and an opportunity.
The problem, of course, is that Trump, Jared, Don Jr., and the Republicans who've conspired with Trump like Devin Nunes (for example) might all be heading toward jail, and possibly even impeachment after the first week of the New Year.
The opportunity is to create a constitutional crisis and grab even more power and immunity for themselves, possibly even "temporarily suspending" the 2020 presidential elections.
There are numerous possible scenarios; I'll just outline a few trigger points, and you can fill in the rest.
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