A Blow Of Mercy

-by Nigel Best

“Doomed!”

So said U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), U.S. House Minority Leader John Rhodes (R-AZ), and U.S. Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott (R-PA), to Richard Nixon in 1974, effectively bringing to an end the then U.S. president’s tenure. 

Resign or be impeached, they informed Tricky Dicky Nixon. These were his only choices, he was informed, regarding the Watergate Scandal that had cooked Nixon’s White House days.

The same heat is making it feel like those times are descending on the nation’s capital again. These past few days of this current presidency sure feel like Trump, like Nixon, is doomed.

Each day, another damning revelation about Trump’s Epstein associations seems to be about to bring the blade of the proverbial guillotine ever closer to removing the head of the country from the body of the nation.

As I write, Speaker of the House, and sex-monitoring app aficionado, MAGA Mike Johnson, has broken from Trump’s messaging, stating that Trump’s position that the whole Epstein scandal being a hoax is false.

It’s feeling more and more that the walk by a couple of politicians from the Capitol to the White House is imminent.

As much as Trump and his administration try to deflect the Epstein stories, the more it feels like Trump is in a honeytrap of his own making.

Even the swirling allegations by Trump and his cronies of Obama’s somehow carrying out a “treasonous conspiracy” with the use of false intelligence suggesting that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump feels like little more than a sad, despondent loser walking out of a casino at 5 a.m. concocting strange excuses to explain away why he’s gambled away the family home.

Meanwhile, I talked to a couple of my D.C. insider compatriots this morning. Their take is that Congress doesn’t need Trump now that the so-called Big Beautiful Bill passed, a bill that has garnered Republicans the laws that it has desired for a very long time, effectively paving a new country order to come. These friends, always happy to expand on Washington gossip, suggest there is a very real fear that Trump has been pushing Republican/MAGA voters away with his constant emphasis on tariffs.

“Voters are feeling the pinch with the loss of jobs and the rising cost of living,” said one, downing a healthy breakfast of a honey-glazed donut and a Yoo-Hoo, a drink that just reminds me of those early 90’s New York 9 a.m. post-all-night-clubbing treks up to Central Park to watch the-in-line skaters bust their moves skating the morning away.

Now, as the Epstein scandal has become the dinner table talk of the country,  there are a lot of Washington power folk gripped by the fear of whose names may be in the Epstein files— everyone already knew Trump’s name was associated with Epstein, so no surprise there.

It’s not so much the names as it’s not wanting the stench of Trump/Epstein on their gilded bodies; Republicans are sweating that being associated with the Trump/Epstein name will cause irreparable harm to the party, and ultimately themselves. Many current members of Congress who don’t dissociate themselves now could find themselves taking a one-way flight home after voters cast them out in next year’s mid-term elections.

After all, would anyone really want to admit to voting for a perceived supporter of a president who associated with a proven child sex abuser? For a politician, it’s one thing to have defended a convicted felon, but a completely different optic to be seen laying hands on an Epstein associate.

As for voters after all, would anyone really want to admit to voting for a perceived supporter of a president who hung out and had such a close connection with a proven child sex abuser?

(It could, for the conspiracists who read this, also be argued here that Trump’s cozying up to Epstein may have been a way to collect dirt on those in the rarified ether of the Epstein world; dirt used to coerce in future days on Trump’s behalf; kind of like the Roy Cohen method of collecting then using info against rivals for one’s own gain? I digress.)

“This situation is, for many, a path out from what had appeared to be the iron fist of Trump,” said one source. “Trump is old, displaying signs of mental incompetence. Who knows what he will say or do next? His flailing around has a lot of those Republicans in Congress very worried.”

In agreement, my other friend said, “It’s now or never. This Epstein situation isn’t a scandal by chance, in my opinion. The way this has taken hold seems too deliberate, hard on the heels of this omnibus legislation being passed. “The Republicans got what they wanted. They have little use for Trump now. Take him down whilst they can.”

It remains to be seen how this story unfolds, but as one source said, “If I had one word to describe Trump’s current predicament, it would surely be ‘Doomed!”

The question now appears, who has the wherewithal to go walk down to the Oval Office to deliver the coup de grâce?