Paul Krugman thread on the personal desperation of Trump officials if he loses [View all]

[highplainsdem]

Eight tweets, starting here --

Link to tweet

ThreadReader page:


https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1322519653793599488.html

Next week is going to be horrible, for multiple reasons. One reason I haven't seen mentioned much in the media has come up a lot in my discussions with Wall Street types: the personal desperation of the Trumpies if he loses 1/

Trump himself, of course, faces likely financial ruin from his unpayable debts and perhaps criminal charges if he loses the shield of office. Quite a few officials will probably also face criminal charges for abuse of office, both political and financial 2/

But there's another, more mundane issue facing many lower-level Trump minions: they may not get the traditional soft landing available to former officials, in which you move into a cushy lobbying or industry job 3/

Normally service in government is a plus on your resume; serving this government, not so much. For one thing, everyone knows that the Trumpies aren't the A team, or even the B team; they're people who had nothing better to do 4/

What about K Street? The usual connections won't count for much: Democrats control the House. If they take the Senate too, they will play hardball, giving McConnell very little chance to shape legislation — and anyway, it's obvious that MM personally despises Trump and co 5/

So if you are, say, Trump's Deputy Assistant Secretary for small endangered mammals, who's going to offer you a job? You pretty much burned your bridges by joining this administration, and that has jammed the revolving door. 6/

And if you're tempted to mock my mixed metaphor, all I can say is that if Biden wins, the upper hand will be on the other foot 7/

What all this means is that we're going to be looking at some very desperate people, many willing to do extreme things to pull this out 8/