Way early on I suggested it would be our own intel community that would take Trump down.

[Stinky The Clown]

I still think that.

It will not be a coup. Quite to opposite. The country will be saved from what was and is, for all intents and purposes, an invasion by a foreign country.

I also think it is possible we may never actually see it while it is happening.

[eleny]

1. I believe they scared the crap out of him with the big intel leak

[lagomorph777]

2. Your last sentence is fascinating.

I could imagine one or two scenarios like that...

Our own intel community surely has tons of Kompromat they could exploit in a national emergency such as this one. That could be done as invisibly as Putin's work.

[procon]

3. They have cause and Trump will find out that payback is a bitch! nt

[unblock]

4. i actually think he won't be "brought down", he'll be "defanged".

that is, i think the intel community and others will ride out his term and foil him at every step along the way.

ending him (politically or otherwise) merely gets us president pence, who equally benefited from the whole affair. that only gives republicans (and pence) a legitimacy they don't deserve.

but the intel community can avoid giving him critical intel and the military can steer him away from bad ideas.
the intel community can also manipulate events to foil him if need be.

this will somewhat limit the damage he can do, and also keep his actual power in check. this and his own incompetence will cause him to unravel politically, which is the right outcome.



technical point, i don't think replacing donnie would be a coup. seeing as russia installing him was really itself a coup, then either a restoration or a counter-coup would make a better term.

[Stinky The Clown]

6. I think we agree completely.

In a larger sense, "brought down" and "defanged" are, in actual effect, pretty much the same result.

[unblock]

9. i guess "brought down" is ambiguous as to whether he serves out his term.

sounds like we're on the same page though. he'll go out not with a bang but a whimper.

[Stinky The Clown]

12. I was being intentionally imprecise

[Phoenix61]

5. Twitler was warned not to screw with

our Intel folks but he didn't listen. He disrespected them the minute he took office and hasn't stopped. With all the shady and down right illegal shit he does it was inevitable they would catch him.

[irisblue]

7. There has been a cyberwar for quite a time.

It just got public & messy

[FreepFryer]

8. This. And we are a part of it. (n/t)

[matt819]

10. How do you picture this happening?

I've had similar thoughts and have included the military leadership in there. But I can't see how this plays out.

There are too many self-interests to have some sort of coordinated effort, and too many who really don't see anything wrong, however much they pay lip service to reality.

With this latest revelation from the NYT, we now know for certain that a) the intel community gave trump irrefutable proof of interference, and he has lied every day since and b) that nothing of substance has happened since to undo anything.

Sure, we have Mueller's indictments, and that's fine as far as it goes, but trump is accelerating the pace of the destruction of the US, what with the NATO meeting, the Surrender Summit, and now today's invitation to the puppet master to visit the WH. You know how in movies they show something bad happening in slow motion and then speed it up as some point to make the point that things are really awful? That's where we are now, in the speed things up phase.

Pundits on the left and right have called for resignations. Nothing has happened. They may believe that they are buffers between trump and utter chaos, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I don't think it's out of line to suggest that they - Coats, Pompeo, NSA Director, Bolton, et al - are fully behind trump. Yes, yes, I know. They have repeatedly stated that the Russians are in the midst of a cyber war attack on the US. That's a fact. What we don't know is how they actually feel about that attack or about trump's actions. They may be fellow travelers. At the very least, they are enablers. And if they resign in some sort of coordinated action, what then?

If this were a novel, it would be considered too outlandish. Heck, zombie apocalypse novels are more believable than what's happening now.

So, after rambling, back to the question. How do you see the intel community taking down a sitting president? And then what? Pence? Ryan?

[Stinky The Clown]

13. How did Putin install Trump?

The point being that spooks do this shit for a living.

Gross oversimplification have no idea how it might go down. As I said in the OP, if done right, we will NEVER know how it went down. We will only know the result.

See my exchange with Unblock, upthread. Unblock lays it out in a reasonable possibility.

[Hekate]

11. Gods willing

[Garrett78]

14. Well, last night's NY Times story didn't seem to have any impact.

I hope the next bit of leaked info actually accomplishes something.