If it looks like we really will impeach Trump, he'll resign [View all]

[jmowreader]

There are a few very good tactical reasons why he'd go the Nixon route.

First...to paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson's character from "Jackie Brown," Trump ain't got a doin'-time disposition. If he resigns Pence can pardon him - and probably will pardon him the hour he's sworn in. If he's impeached, the Constitution makes that impossible.

Second, there are 207,800 reasons why Trump will not allow himself to be impeached. All of them have George Washington's portrait in the middle. $207,800 in annual pension, plus a staff and an office, are what a former president receives under the Former Presidents Act. Donald Trump is the kinda guy who wraps duct tape around his shoes glue-side-out to pick up pennies off the sidewalk. There's no damn way he's leaving $200,000 a year on the table.

Third, Trump knows Nixon ultimately became sort of an elder statesman in the years after his resignation. (That Nixon was one of the best foreign-policy experts we've ever had in the White House is why.) Trump knows he'll never be an elder statesman if he's the first man to ever be kicked out of the White House. And the sick thing is, there are people who believe Trump is the greatest president this country has ever had. If he resigns because he's "tired of the bullshit" they will still listen to him. If he's fired because he's the worst crook to have ever drawn a paycheck from the Secret Service expense account, they probably won't.

Fourth, an impeached president probably loses the right to build a monument to himself called a library. Trump really wants a library. It'll be full of exhibits on the grandeur of the Trump Administration and Trump's life before politics. Everything in it will be gold-painted, there'll be 50-foot-high portraits of The Great Man, and his display of golf paraphernalia will dwarf the collection at the World Golf Hall of Fame. All that goes away if Trump gets kicked out of office.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going and Trump gets the hell out of Dodge. There's a reason he has a plane with transoceanic range.