‘He feels the heat rising’: GOP strategist Rick Wilson says 'playtime is over' for Trump - and he knows he's cooked
The 2018 midterms marked a major turning point in the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Democrats enjoyed a net gain of at least 39 seats in the U.S.House of Representatives, paving the way for a variety of investigations, probes and subpoenas. And in a blistering new commentary for the Daily Beast, Republican strategist and NeverTrump conservative Rick Wilson asserts that between the new Democratic House majority and recent events with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia-related investigation, Trump is “feeling the heat rising.”
After being sworn in as president in January 2017, the Florida-based Wilson explains, Trump enjoyed a free ride in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives—but that free ride officially ended on Election Day.
Wilson stresses that for two years, “Republican members of Congress may as well have sported ‘Property of Donald Trump’ forehead tattoos. During those halcyon days, the power of the Republican House was used to obstruct justice, block the Mueller probe into Russia’s pro-Trump efforts and to attack the intelligence community in order to protect Team Putin. They were a blocking force against investigations into his taxes, finances, and his administration’s misdeeds.”
But with House Democrats getting ready to unleash their new investigative powers in January 2019, Wilson observes, Trump’s Twitter posts reflect his realization that his days of having a submissive House are over.
Wilson says of the president, “His rage-tweeting shows us that he knows he can’t juggle all the crises steaming toward him, that he knows his astounding power to distort reality for his followers won’t shield him from the political, legal and personal perils closing in on him. Playtime is over, and Donald doesn’t like it.”
Trump, Wilson observes, is “going to face actual congressional oversight, not a daily foot massage from do-boys like Devin Nunes.” And on top of that, Wilson adds, Trump will have Mueller’s investigation to contend with.
“The worst pressures on Trump come from Robert Mueller,” Wilson emphasizes. “Yes, the Mueller investigation is starting to close its steely trap around the Trump-Russia conspirators, and the notoriously close-mouthed Mueller is speaking with indictments and sentencing memoranda rather than Trumpian tweet whines.”
Wilson asserts that recent developments with Mueller’s probe are bad news for Trump—including allegations that Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has been lying to Mueller’s team and that he met with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange in 2016 (according to the Guardian). And the U.S. economy, Wilson adds, won’t be Trump’s salvation.
“Trump’s idiotic trade war has led to bankruptcies and economic stress for farmers across the Midwest and northern tier states,” Wilson writes. “GM is closing plants across the country.”
Wilson concludes, “Even Trump’s most reliable defenders on Fox, Breitbart and social media won’t be able to spin all of this away….Pain—political, economic and legal pain—is coming to Donald Trump, and he’s earned every bit of it. Go long on popcorn stocks.”
