The surest sign yet that Donald Trump is toast

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Even though Palmer Report readers frequently ask me to do so, I’ve always refrained from trying to put a timeframe on Donald Trump’s removal from office. The legal process and political process each have their own peculiar internal clocks, and the timeframe will be what it is. What may matter more, and what I can help you pin down, is how damaged Trump has become, and how inevitable his ouster is. I believe we’ve just seen the surest sign yet that Trump is toast.

This week Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that he’s rolling out a plan to alert the public about any ongoing Russian attacks on U.S. elections. FBI Director Christopher Wray openly contradicted Trump on Russian election hacking. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats literally laughed at Trump’s devotion to Putin. Yet all three of these men still have their jobs.

For the record, all three of these guys have previously proven that they’re playing for Team America. Even though Trump hand picked each of them with the presumed expectation of personal loyalty, each of the three has demonstrated with their actions that they’re not willing to do Trump’s personal bidding. Yet all three of them have been cautious with their words all along, presumably so as to avoid getting fired. Now, however, it’s a different ballgame. They’re each calling Trump out over Russia in their own way this week, and Trump hasn’t done anything about it.

This is the same Donald Trump who, earlier this year, fired Rex Tillerson and H.R. McMaster just days after they dared to publicly contradict him on Russia. Yet now, under the current circumstances, Trump is sitting back and doing nothing while his own top people openly rebel against him over Russia. Even Trump seems to understand that he no longer has the muscle to oust his own people for siding with the United States over Putin. There’s no more sure sign that you’re toast than when your own top people are openly working to dismantle you, and you can’t even stop them.

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