What's going to happen next?

What is going to happen next?

It is a natural question. Sometimes it’s driven by awe, wonder and curiosity.  Sometimes, by fear.

Watching Joe Scarborough harangue Bob Woodward the day after Trump’s victory, and two days before his capitulant kowtow at Mar-a-Lago, is a pristine example of how fear works:

Joe is afraid and searching for certainty, which is something Woodward can’t give him because Woodward is a journalist, not purveyor of the psychic help line.

He doesn’t know.

How could he?

What he says is the truth about what will happen next. Whatever Trump tries to do that is dangerous, immoral, illegal and unconstitutional will be resisted at some point, somewhere, at some level, by someone.

How it goes is an open question.

Again, what happens next?

Here is Scarborough’s question:

Right now you have people in and out of government trying to figure out, was that just Donald Trump on the campaign trail talking, or should he be taken at his word? His own supporters say, 'Oh, he doesn't mean any of that, he's just saying that to rev up the crowd.' Based on your knowledge, if you were Mark Milley or Liz Cheney or CBS News, would you be worried right now?

Here is Woodward’s answer:

Well, of course you're going to be worried. Trump hasn't changed. I spent the last year of his presidency interviewing him for nine hours, how he handled the coronavirus and it was tragic. He doesn't understand lots of things, he likes to smash things up. So he's in for a fight.

Scarborough pressed him again:

If you don't want to state an opinion, I can move on, Bob. I'm asking you based on your knowledge of Donald Trump. I'm asking you to just report the news here, to give us insight, because you have better insight. Are these credible threats at this point, or was that just Donald Trump trying to whip up his crowd by talking about the military arresting Democrats?

Woodward responded:

But, Joe, you're asking me to predict the future.

Scarborough shot back:

No. I'm asking for your insight.

Woodward gave a clear and factual answer the first time, but Scarborough moved the journalism line on the greatest journalist of the late 20th century and early 21st century.

What he seeks is an emotional balm that is not so different than a young school boy nervously and repetitively asking his older brother if the cute girl, really, really likes him.

Maybe in this case the example is off, but that is only because Joe Scarborough is hiding his cards in a business that reveals dishonesty by commission or omission because the camera never lies.

The real question he is hectoring Woodward about is whether he is going to be safe from the man he called Hitler.

The answer Woodward gave him was a maybe.

It’s the truth. Joe’s question was about CBS and Liz Cheney, but it was really about him.

I want to be perfectly clear around what my official position is towards the United States government threatening me from the presidential level on down for speaking out as an American about what my conscience dictates I must speak out about.

F@#k off.

Joe and Mika took a different path.

Scarborough made a bee line to Mar-a-Lago in an act of panic, documented by Dylan Byers at Puck News. Fear is powerful, contagious and polluting of everything that is good and worthy, noble and true.

Read these paragraphs that are seminal towards understanding the officer corps of the United States Army and the Armed Forces of the United States as American institutions. In the case of the Army, its history predates the independence of the United States:

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?

Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefields many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world’s noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.

His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy’s breast.

But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.

In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people.

From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs of the glee club, in memory’s eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through mire of shell-pocked roads; to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country. Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as they saw the way and the light.

What will happen to the US military when it is thoroughly politicized?

What happens when someone like Pete Hegseth takes command at the Pentagon?

He will remove dozens of general officers from command by fiat and whim. Trump may order the US military to deploy into the country.

What happens next is unknown.

What happens if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is confirmed? 

His war on sugar is a good thing, and so is banning pharmaceutical advertisements, but can’t these things be done without resurrecting polio and small pox? 

What will happen when a science denier becomes the head of heavily politicized public health agencies that have lost the trust of the American people?

Again, what happens next?

This was the question asked when Mark Lazarus, the CEO of the hastily named “SpinCo,” a bundle of heterodox cable assets carved from the $164 billion-dollar Comcast behemoth, came to visit the 30 Rock newsroom last week.

I think it always helps when trying to think about money and size to try and contextualize it around a better and broader frame of reference.

Comcast is proximate to the NFL in value.

MSNBC by itself would be closer in size to the Italian Serie A soccer league. It’s a professional sport — a real one, a valuable one, and maybe even a great one — but it’s not the NFL. Not even close.

Lachlan Cartwright, formerly of The Daily Beast, now at The Ankler, reported in detail about the meeting between Lazarus and the newsroom.

He reported on two questions — one by Katy Tur and one by Chris Jansing, which speak volumes about who they are and the excellence that exists within NBC News, which will soon be broken up.

The main reason this is occurring is fear of economic and political reprisal from Donald Trump at the exact moment when the opposite should be happening.

The “Morning Joe” capitulation is grubby, obvious and predictable. It is what it is. Self-interest isn’t complex.

The Comcast capitulation is about risk mitigation. I predicted it would happen, and said it would happen immediately after the election.

Brian Roberts, the CEO of Comcast, runs a company, not a political party. The cable news network was prestigious until it became a liability. It was fun until it wasn’t.

Comcast gets the “Today Show,” “NBC Nightly News,” the Olympics, and a vast entertainment empire. They don’t want the headache, and neither does any other entity of similar scale to Comcast.

What Tur asked was how would MSNBC do news gathering, while Jansing advocated for her team/staff, and talked about their low morale from the obvious stress of events and the sale of their employer and unstable professional situation.

It is a perfect revelation of their character. Tur, a real journalist, wants to know about how to do her job with no resources for your benefit.

Jansing is looking out for people, as would be typical from the superb anchor, journalist and youngest of 12 children.

They are both on your side. The price of keeping them in action is too high to pay at Comcast because Trump is easily piqued and surrounded by a hyena pack of competitive misfits and disordered personalities. They will compete to sate his revenge fantasies by delivering on them when someone at MSNBC isn’t “nice” to the most powerful man in the world.

The access era is about to yield to a golden age of niceness. The owners will be the same, absent all of the people with guts, integrity and conviction. What will be left behind are people like Linda Yaccarino of X and timid conformists.

MSNBC is a a tiny part of Comcast, but Roberts views it like a lethal pancreatic cancer cell. It’s terrifying.

It can kill the whole business because Comcast exists in a world of massive federal regulation where Trump is more powerful than any president has ever been. They aren’t nice enough at MSNBC.

Being nice is what matters now.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory or a movie plot.

This is Hungary.

It is happening.

Here.

Right now.

In America.

The danger for Trump in this moment comes from the law of unintended consequences. He profoundly underestimates the power of the First Amendment in America. He doesn’t understand that the information flow that threatens him most is bottom up not top down.

The truth of the matter is that MAGA has engaged the American media, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, and transformed them all by killing one, swallowing one, and trampling one.

None will ever exist again in the form they once did. For Trump, the man on top of the hill, that’s a bad thing because the next form of opposition he faces will be one he hasn’t crushed. It will be different in form, character and composition. Though more fragmented it will also be smarter, more principled and fiercer.

There will be no more news gathering at MSNBC, and there may not be any shows left that are remotely recognizable if Elon Musk buys it.

According to Brian Stelter at CNN, MSNBC isn’t actually for sale. It is and was at the exact second Trump won Pennsylvania.

All of this is the beginning. Just the first ripples of current pushing towards what comes next.

The bill is coming due, and it is going to be high.

People should appreciate that being a consequential president and a truly malicious one are not in conflict with one another in any way whatsoever.

Lincoln was consequential and great. After his martyrdom he was described by an early critic, William Techumseh Sherman, as the greatest man he had ever known because he had known no man who had ever possessed the qualities of greatness and kindness that Lincoln did.

What happens next is going to be a malicious experiment. The American president, who is among the lowest and worst of men, imbued with every character of smallness and malice that a person can hold, will soon exercise unrestrained power and the immunities of his office to do as he pleases. He will do exactly what he said he was going to do.

The American people, generally speaking, have a real lack of imagination around what that is going to look like, and how it is going to impact them. MAGA will become a true experiential proposition.

They aren’t going to like it, and from that, the Democratic Party can cut the anchor around its ankle and start moving forward again.

There will be fighting, along with retreating and maneuvering in the wilderness for quite a while, but if things go right, along the way, something will become very noticeable.

Donald Trump is defending something that will be crumbling before long because it is rotten, incompetent and corrupt.

Donald Trump will play more and more defense every day forward of January 20. When he is doing that, the opposition will be building.

Next, the builders will have their moment. They always do after the demolition team finishes its work.

---

---