JANUARY 2, 2018
President Donald Trump greets members of the five branches of the military by video conference on Christmas Day 2018 in the Oval Office. – Jacquelyn Martin
A former Republican Congressman predicts that President Donald Trump will leave the White House “soon” in a “spectacular political crash-and-burn” set to take place during 2019.
John LeBoutillier, who was a GOP representative in Trump’s home city of New York back in the early 1980s, made his prediction in a column for The Hill.
“Donald J. Trump’s presidency will not survive 2019,” LeBoutillier wrote.
“The downward trajectory of every aspect of his tenure indicates we are headed for a spectacular political crash-and-burn — and fairly soon.
“His increasingly erratic and angry behavior, his self-imposed isolation, his inability and refusal to listen to smart advisers that he hired, all are leading him to a precipice.”
There are a number of threats to Trump’s turbulent presidency. The largest of all is the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, won by Trump.
Under the spotlight is the Trump campaign and suspicions it colluded with agents of the Russian state to undermine the election.
Several of Trump’s advisers and allies are either ensnared by or in the crosshairs of Mueller’s investigation, including Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer.
Manafort faces spending the rest of his life in jail after his conviction for fraud and admitting to acting as the unregistered agent of a foreign government, namely Ukraine’s corrupt Yanukovych regime.
Cohen was sentenced by a judge to three years in prison for fraud and campaign finance violations relating to hush payments made to two women accusing the president of extramarital affairs.
Though he has not yet been indicted, political consultant and Trump ally Roger Stone is facing scrutiny for his relationship with WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, whose organization published emails stolen from the DNC by Russian hackers.
“The Mueller investigation will unveil evidence of Trump putting himself out to the highest bidder in return for campaign help and financing: Russians, Saudis, Emiratis, Qataris — there will be evidence that millions of foreign dollars illegally flowed into the Trump campaign coffers in 2016,” LeBoutillier predicted.
“In other words, Trump basically said, ‘I’m for sale.'”
The Trump presidency is also struggling to retain experienced heavyweights in its most senior positions.
Two of the most recent departures are White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, whose resignation letter was a rebuke of Trump’s policy.
Brookings, a Washington D.C. think tank, is tracking turnover in the Trump administration. As of December 14, 2018, Trump’s “A-Team” of most senior positions had a 65 percent turnover rate.
Courtesy/Source: Newsweek
