Trump for Speaker?

I love this idea. Several Republican members of the House of Representatives, along with some prominent populist authoritarian “pundits,” are actively seeking to put forward Donald Trump’s name as a nominee to replace Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. One of those sympathetic to the idea, apparently, is Jim Jordan, a prominent member of the House Freedom Fraudsters, whose name is also being mentioned as a contender for the position. 

I hope to God the whackos are successful in convincing Trump that his best Get Out of Jail Free card at the moment might be to serve as house speaker. What a wonderful way to expose the party. For in order for Trump to win the job, almost every Republican congressman would have to vote for him, since obviously none of the Democrats would. How many would have the courage to vote against, thereby sealing their fates as this year’s Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger? How many — apart from the Trump-for-Life loons in the MAGA caucus and the “conservative media” — would support Trump for speaker in order to save or further their careers, thereby revealing their true priorities by putting their own wealth and vanity above their country in the most shameless and undeniable manner possible?

Oh, please, please let this happen, God. Let Trump be persuaded to accept the nomination. Let the nomination come to a vote. Let the Republicans draw their lines and identify themselves publicly once and for all. This would be the most delightfully entertaining way to announce the death of America to the universe. Why shouldn’t we, who have watched that formerly great country devour itself through episode after episode of horrifying disgust, finally get a moment of genuine levity at the end? Must we be forced to resign ourselves to a tragic view of the death of modernity? Couldn’t we at least have the gaiety of seeing the whole thing end not in heartbreaking decay, but with a great, epoch-defining fart?

But wait. Trump will not accept the nomination unless he is given a one hundred percent written guarantee that he will win the speakership. For if there is one thing we all know about him, it is that he is not man enough to accept the risk of defeat, as revealed in the fact that even when he does lose — which is quite often, actually — he simply insists that the cosmos is rigged, and that in truth he is the real winner, because he never loses, and can never lose. His tiny ego and wafer-thin vanity simply cannot accept even the possibility of material failure. He is a coward and a wimp. (And what does that say about the millions who continue to serve as his willing and eager reality-shield?) He will not throw his hair in the ring without a stone-solid promise of victory.

So disappointing.