A lot of talk in the media and in the Biden campaign circle that the former president is incoherent in delivering his speeches. It sounds bizarre but it may be, albeit unusual, a possibly effective campaign strategy.

According to The Nation, the 45th president delivered a speech in a 105-degree outdoor in Las Vegas meandering from sharks to boats to batteries that his audience did not know what he was talking about. His detractors conclude that he was incoherent and thus incompetent to govern. They hope the voters can see that and not vote for him coming November 2024.

A case can be made that it has been the Republican strategy all along.

The former president has always conducted himself in a haughty manner. Whether it is his nature or acting, he has treated everybody with disdain as if he were a Kaiser or a Windsor (unlikely, as it would be unimaginable for Mr. Trump to walk with his hands behind his back). That is the image the MAGA Republicans want the public to see: a King moving along in his carriage, smiling and waving to the onlookers without uttering a word let alone meaningful sentences. That was enough to command respect and loyalty of his subjects.

MAGA wants Mr. Trump to do the same in a modern-day American version of royalty, appearing in public often so that his people can SEE him. They are not worried about his “incoherence” but seem to encourage him to talk about anything, even incoherent things. After all, true Kings and Emperors hardly made sense. Even the formidable King of France, Louis XIV, could be incoherent who famously said “L’etat c’est moi (the nation that’s me)”. That of course is nonsensical.

The strategy requires that he can say things like “Somebody didn’t pick up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine (in the White House). I wonder who that could’ve been. I don’t know. Actually, I think it was Joe.”

Perfect. Just don’t try to make sense.

The former president has persistently denied against all evidence that he lost the 2020 election. The Republicans have openly and steadfastly sided with him.

Then, he was convicted in a court of law by a jury of his peers. He has defiantly accused the judge presiding over the trial of being biased against him, the jury rigged, and the trial a disgrace. With no evidence to support his accusations, the Republicans have fiercely defended him and emotionally and approvingly repeated his unfounded accusation.

We all were flummoxed, asking the question in bewilderment what was going on with the Republican Party?

After four years of witnessing Mr. Trump performing as president of the United States, it became obvious that the presidency was not in his natural portfolio. A president of one country, let alone the most powerful country in the world, does not fawn, even in private, over a leader of another country. Just doing so would have disqualified him for the job. But seventy-six million assumably Republicans voted for him in the 2020 presidential election.

What did that signify? -Mr. Trump was not the leader. He was not the commander in chief. But like the soldier in Iwo Jima, he was holding the MAGA flag rushing up the hill of American politics and planted the flag there for the glory of MAGA. He has done it well and deserves to be protected.

But why do they publicly and vehemently chorus his obviously unfounded and poisonous complaints? -The Republican Party has transformed.

It was a party, which elected a leader who thundered “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” and is now demanding a wall to be built on the border with a friendly neighboring country.

It was a party, which fiercely fought dictatorship of any form, is now courting Russia and North Korea, fawning over its leaders and wannabe dictators such as Viktor Orban of Bulgaria. It has taken a confused attitude on the Russia-Ukraine war even though politically and morally there is nothing confusing about it.

It was the Party, which voted to allow the Vietnamese to emigrate to the U.S. after the Viet Nam war despite strong voice opposing such legislation. Now it wants to ban immigrants.

It was the Party, which steadfastly advocated a strong NATO with deep commitment by the U.S. It is now hinting at withdrawing from NATO.

The transformation is now complete. By supporting his lies about rigged election that was allegedly engineered by the deep state, the Party is openly rejecting a fundamental principle of Democracy by refusing to accept the result of free election. By vocally and irrationally supporting Mr. Trump’s emotional denouncing of the jury verdict of his guilt, not just one, not just two, but 34 counts, the Party is openly rejecting our legal system, which is the nervous system of the American democratic society.

There is no longer a MAGA faction in the Republican Party. MAGA has infected the Party and is now in complete control of and is one with the Party. Mainstream Republicans from Mitch McConnell to Nikki Haley, have receded or surrendered to MAGA.

In 2020, MAGA was in a sense caught off guard. The chaos and violence were limited to the Capitol and a few raucous but sporadic denouncements in Congress. They have had four years to regroup and organize. If the election result has not been accepted to this day by MAGA, and only a few “patriots” marched up the Capitol steps, what would be the scale of the revolt after the 2024 election and Joe Biden won? MAGA has signaled what would happen: It would not respect the democratic institutions and it would not respect the legal system.

So, what is its intention? If it wins in 2024, with a stroke of the pen, it will revolutionize the political system. If it loses, it will create chaos to seize power. Clearly, Democracy and the current legal system don’t serve its purposes.

The question every Republican must ask is, what are the Republican Party’s purposes?

    Hamas has received massive international aid for years, billions of dollars. The majority of the money did not go into bettering Gaza or its citizens but into the building of almost a hundred tunnels along the border of Israel, stockpiling weapons, and filling up the coffers of its leaders. Their intention was clear: all their effort and money had gone into carrying out their promise to destroy Israel.

    Of course, the Israelis knew about this, for years.

    But they did not take any preemptive action, which any security expert must admit to be necessary to secure Israel against such an out-in-the-open threat to its national security. They were patient and calm about the situation, minding the weird mindset of the world that Israel was always in the wrong, too aggressive and too militant.

    Until October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched their surprise attack unprovoked, savagely killed, raped, and took Israelites hostage.

    From Israel’s point of view, and the view of ANY national security strategist, Hamas must be attacked. Even that was not enough, Hamas must be eradicated and the campaign to clean up Gaza must continue until that strategic goal is completed.

    Then, what will the world do in the aftermath? Clamoring for Israel to pay for reconstruction. And what will happen after reconstruction? If history tells us anything, that is that Hamas II led by leaders dead set on revenge and the termination of Israel will emerge, and the cycle of crossing the border to kill, rape, and kidnap will start again.

    You can clean up Gaza but you can’t uproot Hamas. Sooner or later, another Hamas-inspired, ruthless, and violent group of terrorists will form in Gaza after Israel “pacifies” and returns it to the Palestinians.

    So the solution is to take and separate Gaza from Hamas, annex and make it a province of Israel. In exchange, Israel will agree to a two-state political framework and cooperate with the Palestinians to make a Palestinian State a viable reality, with some concessions on the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

    Of course, there will be loud swearing and cursing. The alternative is the Palestinians will be without a country for a long time, and the Israelites will not just be open to savage attacks by the likes of Hamas. They will be unable to develop their full and proven incredible potential to work for the benefit of mankind.  

History is full of cases when men used their physical power to relegate women to second-rate human beings, punished them to keep their control over them, and killed them whenever they felt like it, such as when they had a lover BEFORE marrying them or when they could not bear a child.

So, in the new country founded on the principles of equality, freedom, and democracy, enlightened American women struggled and valiantly fought the American chauvinism to assert their rights, rightly so, to be equal to men’s. In 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment was drafted. It needed the ratification of 38 states to become an amendment to the Constitution. That requirement was not met by the deadline. What happened?

The proposed Amendment was vehemently opposed by, of all people, WOMEN led by a very well catholic-educated, eloquent, obedient, and charming lady named Phyllis Schlafly and her 80,000 followers, who convinced women that equal rights would not serve their interests. Their mission in life, in their opinion, was to serve men, bear children, and do housework. Equal rights would subject them to the military draft and the burden of making money. Many women bought their argument.

It was quite believable that it was a political legerdemain performed by the Republican men who had pulled the trick beautifully. Eh, we have nothing to do with it. That’s what they want. Every Republican, female and male, is happy. Men’s rights are, and power is, intact. They continue to dominate their households which unavoidably leads to women being abused because there is no counterforce as women have no equal rights; they don’t want them. Right?

Women have been put back to their mission position.

In the last few decades, many maverick women have tried to prove otherwise that men’s strength is relative. Technology and science have changed the dynamics that have given men advantages. Women are competent in doing whatever men can do. They can till the fields, fly a fighter jet to defend the country, and run mega-conglomerates. They can even wrestle convincingly and more seductively.

But politics is the last bastion for Republican men to cede to those darn democrat women pretending to run Congress or even for president. Something needed to be done. So, Republican men hatched a scheme to prove to the nation that women are not for politics but in the house, doing what they have been doing best since religions were conceived: bearing children, cooking dinner, and pleasing their male partners.

The scheme has been implemented and successful beyond the men’s dream: they have elected so many female Republican politicians to political powerful positions in state houses and in Congress, waiting for them to prove themselves, and as an extension other women, to be unfit to hold political posts. They have behaved as if they find themselves in a Louis Vuitton shop with thousands of handbags and don’t know what to choose, or act blindly.

A Republican governor shot her dog. When she was criticized, she defiantly told the public she had shot her horses too. In a congressional committee’s session solemnly discussing if the U.S. Attorney General should be held in contempt, one Republican congresswoman loudly smeared a colleague for wearing “false” eyelashes, probably thinking that the chambers of Congress were no different than a cosmetic parlor at an L-shaped shopping mall. Another one took every opportunity to make known her desire to be picked by the former president to be his running mate, publicly shopping herself for the job.

A Republican former governor harshly criticized former president Donald Trump, calling him UNFIT to be president. She even questioned if he was mentally fit. Now she says she will vote for him – she will vote for a person she believes to be unfit to be president, or probably worse, mentally unfit. Such about-face is stunning, a naked self-interest chasing disregarding principles that for some time I thought she alone among the Republican presidential candidates possessed.

The men have proved their point: their counterparts are confused, lost, puzzled, and cases in point bearing out the chauvinistic conviction that Republican men and women are not equal, and where the women should belong.

The Republican men would smirk and quietly spread the words: you see that and still think women are equal to us?

The Liz Cheney Republicans, male or female, seem to be a very rare breed nowadays. But the Party does need them, desperately.

The MAGA Republicans have gradually and deliberately brought down all institutions, ethical, social, and political, including a bastion of Democracy and Freedom, the U.S. Supreme Court (why else a member of the symbol of, and real power to uphold and protect the Constitution, flew the national flag upside down to SUPPORT the disproved claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and Joe Biden lost? The Court and its members exist to serve the laws, even when at home, not beliefs or sentiments), and returned American society to a political primordial soup.

After so many years including four years in the White House, the former president has been found to possess a deeply flawed character unfit to even run the Trump Organization let alone the most powerful and complicated country on earth. But the MAGA still sticks with him.

The former president is perfect for a scheme to muddle the political landscape and create chaos. He has proved to be able to throw out words such as shithole countries, Mexican rapists and murderers, easily and naturally. Now he could, or probably was told to, drop big bombs such as Unified Reich.

Senator Ted Cruz dropped another bomb not long ago: secession. They are trial balloons, different kinds of balloons serving the same purpose: bringing down American Democracy and replacing it with a dictatorship.

They also serve another purpose: to condition and familiarize the American people with the idea of dictatorship, only a few years back an anathema to American politics, and Americans.

    Former Vice President Mike Pence is underappreciated. He has even been maligned. He does not deserve it. On the contrary, he is an unsung hero. He was probably chosen to be Mr. Trump’s running mate in 2016 because he was a humble, unassuming, following-order-to-the-letter type of man. 

    Once the real estate tycoon from New York took the seat behind the desk in the Oval Office, everything had gone smoothly like clockwork as meticulously designed by the MAGA Republicans. The FBI director was unceremoniously fired. A new U.S. attorney general was in place to dismiss the Mueller Report. The Supreme Court was stocked with not just five but six safely conservative Republicans. The Department of State was already led by a “we lied, we cheated, we stole” former CIA director. Very well organized and ready for any contingency in case the incumbent president would lose the next election. It was unlikely because he was very popular with the Republicans. But the election could not be left to chance. One more term, then the MAGAs would have their revolution to turn the country upside down. Just one step at a time but soon MAGA Republicans would be forever!  

    Then, the incumbent lost. But MAGA did not panic because they had already had a plan: They would clamor loudly and even violently that the election was rigged by the Democrats. Members of Congress would launch investigations. Legal experts would support the theory the vice president had the power to reject the state certificates, disqualify the Biden electors, send them back to the states for recertification, and the Trump electors would replace them and declare the incumbent the winner. Patriots would flock to the Capitol to demand Congress to declare the election to be fraudulent and the vice president to do his job to reject the Biden electors. A perfect plan.

    History has had a quirky way of making unlikely men a hero such as Michael Keaton being Batman. Mike Pence suddenly found himself in a unique and historic position to decide if the country would remain constitutionally democratic or become a monarchy or a dictatorship or forever MAGA Republican. 

    He had every reason to go with the latter. He would be a hero in the MAGA world. He would receive the highest accolade wherever he went. The incumbent would even reward him with a partnership in the Bedminster Golf Course for his good deed because if he refused to certify the Biden electors, he would eventually create the biggest fortune on this earth worth millions of times the value of a golf course. He would give the real estate of America to just one man, or one family. Then, an executive order would change the State of Indiana to the State of Pence. All was possible and all was so powerfully seducing.

    Then, imagine what would happen next. Anti-woke people would go look for woke people, and anti-woke states such as Florida and Texas would send national guards to subdue woke states such as California or New York. The ensuing chaos spiraling out of control would justify strong measures. The new president would declare a National State of Emergency and suspend the Constitution. Congress would shut down. He would form a new emergency cabinet with at least four heads of department named Trump. He would demand the AG, also named Trump, to issue warrants for the arrest of Biden, Biden family, Harris, Harris family, Pelosi, Pelosi family, Schumer, Schumer family, and so on, anyone perceived as disloyal to the new president. The nation would descend into another civil war.

    Any anti-democratic regime could follow to replace the Democratic and Constitutional U.S.A.

    Another outcome would logically result based on the theory advocated by MAGA legal experts that the vice president has the authority NOT to certify the Biden victory. That perverted interpretation of the Constitution would leave the government forever in the hands of the Republicans because the next, and the next, and the next vice president until the Constitution, so interpreted, would somehow be amended or canceled, would always be Republican who would of course certify a Republican slate.

    Faced with such humongous seduction of wealth, power, and glory, and real serious threat of bodily harm and even death, Vice President Mike Pence did not waver. He put his signature down to certify that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and was, and is, the legitimate president of the United States.  

    For such a deep-rooted sense of what is right or wrong, the honorable discharge of his duties to the Constitution and the Nation, and his heroic stand against all threats of harm or death, Vice President Mike Pence deserves the respect of all Americans and the people in the world who cherish and appreciate the God-given concept of Democracy.

    He deserves to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Nobel Prize.

JOHN P. LE PHONG, ESQ.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO FORM A TRUMP-DESANTIS TICKET

The obstacle is the former President himself.

He would no doubt consider three factors before he would choose the governor as his running mate. First, whether Mr. Trump would feel comfortable with Mr. DeSantis who is so energetic, youthful, and more importantly, as ruthless as the boss.

Second, could his publicity machine overcome the comparison between the First Ladies. The Florida First Lady is convincingly charming in public. She has a good brain too. In contrast, the former First Lady seems a little stiff and un-smooth in public. The former President would not like that. He has always wanted to tell the nation that he possesses the best. His woman has to be the most charming and beautiful in any setting. Anyone who upstages his wife is upstaging him, something he won’t tolerate.

The third consideration is probably the deal-breaker. With a Ron DeSantis VP, much younger, more energetic, and much more experienced than the President Donald Trump, the party would not indulge in Mr. Trump’s antics any longer. They would want to move on. The possibility of being replaced during his term would never be overlooked by the former President. Thus, his VP could only be someone like congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene or Elise Stefanik whom the party would be scared to death to see either one of them occupying the Oval Office. So, it would do anything and everything to keep him sitting behind the Resolute Desk for the full term.

The Governor could play humble, meek, and always walk three steps behind the boss, just like VP Mike Pence, who was a natural Trump Vice President. But that is something more easily said than done because it has to be real. The governor has a rather stiff personality, and a proud man; he wouldn’t play that role well. And a pretender could not escape the former President’s experienced and sharp eyes when it comes to pretending.

JOHN P. LE PHONG

For almost eight years since 2016, the MAGA Republicans have subjected the public to constant and deliberate lies about so many things. But eight years are too long for lying without harm. At the time one may have thought that MAGA Republicans would have a second thought about lying, they shot the public with another lie, a big and blatant one.

The senator from Alabama, Katie Britt delivered the rebuttal to President Biden’s State of The Union address. Was she so designated by the Republicans because the senator was beautiful and charming, or because she was willing to deliver another lie? It was refreshing to see a female politician deliver a political speech, not in a Thatcherite manner, direct, straight to the point, but with a soft murmuring voice accompanying every word with a smile. She was totally beautiful and charming.

And she knew she was beautiful and charming. The thing she did not know was how to use her smile, beauty, and charm to make her speech coherently effective and believable. She smiled, a lot, at the wrong sentences or words. She oozed her charm constantly like a schoolgirl trying to impress her teacher and classmates with her smile and charm so that they would not know how bad her speech was.

It was not just bad. The speech was harmful to the nation, and in particular to the American children. And she had to know it was harmful to them because she knew it was a lie. She came from a rural family in Alabama and was elected to the U.S. Senate. Her success was, and is, an American dream. And on camera to the public, that living example of the American Dream declared that the American dream is dead.

She accused the President of creating the southern border crisis then immediately recounted the story of a sex trafficked victim she spoke to in Texas, so that the listener could not lose the connection between Biden’s horrible policies and the rape.

The whole story of the traumatic experience of the victim as told by the senator was a horrific lie.

“I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartel at the age of 12. She told me not just that she was raped everyday but how many times a day she was raped.” It was graphic and a detailed accounting for a girl of 12 to remember.

“The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoebox of a room, and they sent men through that door over and over again for hours and hours on end. We would not be ok with this happening in a third world country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time that we start acting like one. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.” Horrific! The Biden Administration be damned!

It turned out to be a big lie told by the senator with gusto, fake indignation, and fantastic imagination. The girl was sex trafficked not by the cartels but by a pimp. It happened not in the U.S. but in Mexico. And it happened while George W. Bush was in the White House, 20 odd years ago.

The lie was roundly denounced even by Republicans, but it was too late. The children, probably including Senator Britt’s, had already watched it. They were traumatized by her story: after Trump had left the White House, the evil Democrats let the cartels into the U.S. to set up a shoebox room for a horde of their members to rape a 12-year-old girl “over and over again for hours and hours on end”.

She was passionate about the story. “Over and over again” is not enough “For hours and hours” must be added to describe her outrage.

But it was a lie. And she knew it was a lie because she talked to the victim.

Before the children could recover from their psychological wound, they were struck with another blow, much harder: a parent was lying. Her story was fake, invented and intentionally delivered with the beautiful and sweet smile of a concerned mother.

It would not be hard to imagine the children of a MAGA parent would leave the house in the evening when she came back from work. She would ask where are you going? They would answer a friend’s house. At this hour, she would say. Are you lying to me, she would ask. The children would adopt a Democratic response is it appropriate for you to ask the question? (The question Hunter Biden should have asked “Is it appropriate FOR YOU to ask me that question, Mr. Gaetz?” But he was too self-controlled and laudably non-confrontational to address the question to Mr. Gaetz directly and pointedly. If he did, the MAGA Mr. Gaetz could not have responded “Absolutely” with a straight face.)

That question would naturally pop up in the mind of the children when their parents lied to them. And that would be the real relationship between parents and children in the world of MAGA.

The American people understand the need to save, preserve, and strengthen the Republican Party for the good and stability of the country. But lying blatantly and abandonedly? And publicly supporting those congenital lying politicians?

We have seen a lot of people getting quick fame and even fortune by lying with the MAGA crowd and forget who they are and what they have said. They are politicians, who have sworn to uphold the Constitution and protect the country. How can the Constitution and the country be protected when the very foundation of Democratic America is rotten from within by their deliberate lies. They profess to fight for Christian values and traditions, but do they remember what they are? Do they remember Truth, Goodness, and Beauty? Do they remember the story of little George cutting down his father’s favorite cherry tree?

It is doubtful that individual MAGA Republicans just lie separately and independently. The lies must be part of a well-orchestrated campaign to seize power one way or another including driving the country to chaos and destruction of cherished democratic institutions inspired by Christianity. Non MAGA Republicans need to look beyond their reelection or plum jobs after political life and speak up. One wonders why Republicans with a sense of right or wrong prefer to be passive and silent. The Paul Ryans, the Mick Romneys, the Jeff Flakes seem to have left the fighting arena and left it to the Liz Cheneys, the Cassidy Hutchinsons to fight for the Republic.

Take a very careful look at who would be waving from the White House balcony. If the MAGA Republicans’ wish were fulfilled, we would see in January 2025, a long row of cabinet members, and possibly even Republican members of Congress, raising their right arms slanted upward shouting Heil Leader to pledge their loyalty NOT to the Constitution, Democracy, or the Nation but to the leader, who would be smiling benignly until he shouted to his secret service to arrest a reporter on the lawn for asking a question he did not like. The American Dream, Senator, would definitely turn into a nightmare then.

Once upon a recent past, our beloved Republican leader (I am a Republican) thunderously demanded “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” So eloquent, so right, and so righteous.

President Ronald Reagan stood tall and lifted the country to a lofty height to demand the Berlin Wall be torn down because the wall stood for isolationism, anti-freedom, us-against-them, clannishness, the world being not a community for all but separated into tribes, suspicious and hostile to one another.

The Republican Party, which had vehemently demanded and got the Berlin Wall  torn down, now demanded, even more vehemently, to build a wall on our southern border with Mexico. Forget about the irony, which to the extremist Republicans including some of the once ardent followers of the late president, might just be a word spoken on a planet in a faraway Goldilocks zone that they don’t know what it means. Forget about the moral and ethical ramifications of a wall between people and countries. Forget about the irony and selfishness of those immigrants, children, and grandchildren of immigrants who forcefully and shamelessly advocate their immigration position that “We are in, now close the door.” They load their call for a wall with so much fake patriotism, duties to the country, and duties to protect American values and traditions that crowd out the obvious result of building a wall: everyone would want their walls.

Starting with Mexico. Why would they not build a wall on their southern border? Canadians would want to build a southern border wall too because they were fed up with the American antics. Walls in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, walls between Eastern European countries and Russia, and between Russia and China. Walls between Israel and the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. Egypt and Turkey would want their own walls. Little Monaco would build walls too because they reasoned, every country has walls, why not us? Everyone has reasons to build walls at their borders.

Then the Kari Lakes of American Republican politics would want Arizona to build a wall on its west border to block woke Californians from going into Arizona. In no time, we would have walls all over the country. The governor of Texas would want a very long wall SURROUNDING itself because he did not want immigrants, or anyone without his approval, to sneak into Texas. Florida would definitely want walls to block not just immigrants but anyone who worked for Disney.

From outer space looking down you would see little boxes like beehive cells covering Earth, suspicious and hostile toward, and isolated from, other cells. In a short time, the Republicans would be so exhilarated because they were not bothered by anybody. But little things would start happening: prices of strawberries doubled; grass in the middle-class lawns two feet high and no one to cut it; swimming pools turning green with algae. Then the lives of the privileged would be affected: limousine services stopped because no driver would be available; yachts moored rusted alongside jetties, going nowhere.

Then, big things: Tesla and other electric cars would become obsolete because cobalt was too scarce for building batteries, and computers could not be built because of insufficient silicon supplies. In their own cell-like countries, people would spill CO2 into space at will. No commerce in any international waterways, only pirates and terrorists. Oil would not flow, and food would stay in one place. Travel would be suicidal.

People armed to their teeth would start looking over their shoulders when they walked out of their cell, always on the alert to unfriendly others. Tired of suspecting everyone all the time, the billionaires would confine themselves inside their fortified mansions. Or waking up from their factories’ floor to find themselves alone with their idle machines, and hear nothing but their own cursing “What the f—k is going on?”

That would be the possible future of the US and the world if somehow, the Republicans, against all reasons, could manage to build an American southern border wall.

Would America then have the shamelessness or temerity to admonish, “World, it is getting ridiculous. Tear down your walls.” Of course, one could imagine the answer – an uproarious laughter.

Everyone certainly wants to hear the rationale for building the wall other than the racist theory of the poisoning of the American blood pushed forth by the extremist elements in the Republican Party and the twisted and demagogic arguments by those who know that building a wall is not right or necessary but clamor for it to be built to ingratiate themselves with the people, who they think could benefit them.

The Republicans’ answer to the argument that a border wall is hideous, counter-productive, and outright harmful, is, “Impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security!”

Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis know very well that the Republican Party will stick with former president Donald Trump because without him and his base, the Party would become a junior party or worse, splinter into two junior parties one formed by the Trumpers and another of rudderless undecisive Republicans who just can’t stand Donald Trump but are powerless to wrest the Party from the Trumpers.

So, they wait, ostentatiously supporting Trump but looking up to Heaven every night to pray, fervently, that he would be convicted or at least disqualified for the presidential run, making them the only two viable Republicans vying for being the Republican presidential nominee.

Is it statesmanship? Could either one of them lead?