This is all just too predictable

Yesterday a rather startling event happened. Donald Trump appeared on Fox News, got asked some moderately tough questions about his latest criminal indictment, and completely fell apart in embarrassing fashion. But while it was startling to watch it happen, none of it was surprising. It’s been clear for a couple years now that this is pretty much exactly where things would end up landing.

By the time Donald Trump left office, he could barely speak in complete sentences. His cognitive abilities were all but gone. It’s why the people around him managed to convince him to lay low for as long as he did. If he’d remerged as a public figure at any point during the previous two years, everyone would have seen how deep into dementia he was, and any mention of him and 2024 in the same sentence would have ceased. So instead a senile Trump spent two years in hiding, while the entire media (on both sides) chased ratings by hyping him for 2024.

But then Trump’s criminal indictments started happening, just like they were always going to happen. Grand jury criminal probes don’t cease to exist just because their ongoing progress isn’t hitting the headlines. Trump wasn’t off the legal hook just because the entire media pretended he was off the legal hook. He was always going to end up indicted in four criminal probes. Two of them have now happened. The other two will happen within the next two months.

This is the point where a desperate Trump was always going to blow off the advice of his handlers, and start putting himself out there again. After all, he’d see the increasingly frequent headlines about his criminal indictments, and try to make it all go away by getting back out on the political stage. And because he’s senile, he was always going to utterly humiliate himself on that stage.

What we saw play out yesterday was always inevitable. Donald Trump was always going to end up criminally indicted in multiple jurisdictions. He was always going to try to counter that by reemerging from hiding. And everyone was always going to end up seeing just how senile he is.

We were always going to reach this point. Trump was always going down for his crimes. And he was always going to foolishly dive in and help prosecutors to finish him off. And once we get to his trials, Trump will end up in prison, just like he was always going to end up in prison. It’s still startling to watch some of these things play out. But none of it’s surprising. Some outcomes are just that predictable.