This internecine war within the American ruling class is a delight to behold, and is music to the ears of all good Socialists the world over.

Please do not shed any tears for megalomaniac, oligarch, and psychotic Trump. Laughter is a more appropriate response to his mounting difficulties.

Conscious Marxists are aware that NO SECTION OR TENDENCY of the American, or any other, Ruling class is to be trusted, supported, or favoured.

Trump represents the crypto-fascist wing of the American ruling class, but his fellow capitalists find him a political liability, nuisance, and embarrassment. He is not only bad for business, he is also making the USA a laughing stock around the world.

His demise is assured as the current cockfight between his administration and the rest of the American political elite, egged on by the military/intelligence/police puppetmasters, can only end in his impeachment.

But such a dramatic denouement can only intensify and accelerate the class conflict and divisions within a highly combustible American society.

Let us hope the American proletariat has the last, and decisive, word.

It is instructive that Robert Mueller has be appointed as a special prosecutor on this investigation. Mueller is another servant of the oligarchy, as eveidenced in his involvement in the cover-up of the crimes surrounding the 9/11 attacks. Whether there was any Russian involvement in the election is or is not inconsequentiual, it is important to obfuscate the actual intentions of the oligarchs in their continual destruction of democracy and the aspriations and goals of the working class, namely, the completion destruction of capitalism. They are afraid they will be the ones put on trial for their crimes or, worse, dragged out in the streets and hanged publicly in a manner which befell Mussolini toward the end of World War II.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. If the maniac Pence becomes president and considers himself to be the hammer of god or something, there's no telling what kind of insanity would reign.

Excellent article by Andre! The article by Patrick today is a nice factual report compliment to this one, which gets to the core of the inner political battle raging to determine the form and key players of capitalist rule/ attempt to shore up U.S. hegemony, at any price, including world war and outright undisguised dictatorship.

"Kristof notes approvingly that during the 1974 Watergate crisis, President Richard Nixon’s defense secretary, James Schlesinger, ordered the military not to obey orders from the White House unless he signed off on them. Schlesinger also, in the words of Kristof,"

No, Kristof wrote:

"Nixon’s defense secretary, James Schlesinger, secretly instructed the military not to carry out any White House order to use nuclear weapons unless confirmed by him or Henry Kissinger."

https://www.nytimes.com/201...

Kristof is mostly detestable, and of course a jingoistic shill liberal intervention fantasies. However it does the WSWS no good to make up quotations from him. He wrote something significantly different, with a very different meaning.

The parallels between this piece and Alex Lantier's on France (also today) are striking.

An incisive and - I would say - beautifully written analysis. Thanks Andre

" “prepared secret plans to deploy troops in Washington in the event of problems with the presidential succession.”

This will involve the use of COG, Continuity of Government developed by Rumsfeld, Cheney and of course Oliver North. It was used successfully after 911. COG involves assembling leaders of industry, business and the political class to hidden and remote locations where they can carry out the workings of government and especially the police state which of course would ensue.

The coming soon direct rule of the American plutocracy is bound to awaken the " sleeping giant " working class more quickly than any impassioned and eloquent speeches for socialism.
Very true, the crisis of capitalism is also a profound crisis of the human species, of human civilization on the only planet we've got.
Socialism or barbarism ? Socialism or nothingness ?

Yes Mr. Ron Ruggieri .we dposit all our hopes in the sleeping giant. Of course the latter has to shred all links to corporate controlled trade unions. Sleeping giant has to start with its action committees at each and every work place and from there to go up to the apex body, i.e. the leadership of the revolution about whom we do not know. We have to wait and see the process of evolution of a revolutionary party wihin the US under these trying circumstances. Party of the world revolution, ICFI in association with its two revolutionary instruments, Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for social Equality provide guidelines to ensure working class not to derail by being infuenced by the pseudo left and the machinery of the US state controlled by the country's factinalized oligarchy. I fervently hope US' youth and students will accomplish their role in building the IYSSE as the youth organization of the revolutionary party that is to be based on the sleeping giant. President Trump might go handing the show over to Pence. but still the struggle between factional fight of the ruling oligarchy will continue leaving the destiny of the working class, youth, students in the invisble hand of the US capitalism/imperialism. This is unacceptable to the US working class and its international counterpart that is longing for hope and change in real terms. Victory to socialist revolution in the US. Down with highly divisive capitalism/imperialism. Thank you comrade Andre Damon for your analyical article of high quality.

wow. an explosive article. They can't impeach Trump, and if he won't resign, they are willing to go with a military coup. They already have used up all the bullsh#t sanitizing presidential assassination.
But can they then go to war with Russia or Syria after a military coup? They would have to concoct a false flag event of some kind that would Shock and Awe the American people to fear and hate the horrible Enemy. But Murdock is a Trump supporter and he owns Fox news and the Wall Street Journal as well as other Truth organs. Would he and everyone else go along with a war that might be much more destructive than the Vietnam war that resulted from the assassination of Kennedy. Could they get everyone on board with a military coup AND a war? Possibly, but it seems like a stretch.
But Andre and WSWS have done a great job in enlightening the people as to the possibility.

The political crisis in the United States has been going on for years now except in more recent years it has taken a far more dangerous precedent in all directions. For now it remains to be seen as to whether or not the ongoing decay that we are seeing would help galvanize political consciousness for the broad working class population.

And this "wisdom" is promoted by Prof Bomb Libya Cole.
"So if you’re thinking (dreaming) that crazy King Donald will be deposed by our vaunted checks and balances, consider first that if the political system really worked, a narcissistic man-child like Trump could have never gotten to the presidency, and second, that the Constitution is a shoddy and inadequate contraption unsuitable for ridding us of narcissistic man-children."
In short, in case to save their Constitution, they need to destroy it.

Cole is really contemptible.

He is hardly alone in this case.

And what would come after Trump, should these machinations succeed in ousting him? A government run by military junta? A president Pence? Anyone who thinks the Republicans are emboldened to carry out their anti-social agenda under Trump haven't seen half of what would result from having the nutty religious zealot, austerity-minded Pence in charge. Although that may be exactly what they have in mind, come to think of it. As one wag in a comment section I was reading yesterday put it - "Trump is merely the delivery system, Pence is the payload."

If we end up with a president Pence and the Christian sharia he will bring with him, we can thank the Democrats.

Good. As bad as Trump is, inept, crass, naive, his replacements are even worse. Pence, Ryan; be careful what one wishes for. The country is in deep trouble for many reasons besides Trump.

Whenever I read comments like yours I have to wonder if you believe that quasi-fascists like Trump should not be held accountable for their actions. Personally I believe that he should be held accountable as should every individual who commits egregious offenses while sitting in the Oval office. And if Pence becomes president then the next not-so-radical step is to go after him too especially if he, like Trump, commits war crimes against people who are living in foreign lands.

But didn't you read the article, or see what's going on in Washington?

Those leading the charge to facilitate the soft coup against trump - hard, if necessary - are not holding him accountable for his real corruption and war crimes (in fact let's make it clear that to sit in the Oval Office, to be the president of the US empire, necessarily makes one a war criminal, which points to the need for a systemic, social revolution more so than removing one puppet after the next, or voting for one party over the other).

The Democrats, in cahoots with freakin' murder inc. and the MIC and anti-Russian players in think tanks, the media, etc., are the ones doing this, for strictly nefarious, oppurtunistic, partisan, and geopolitical reasons.

To make alliance with them is an absurd strategy for the working class, and unthinkable for genuine socialists.

Of course we are opposed to Donald Trump. Seriously? But we also don't buy for a second the unsubstantiated allegations at the heart of the current witch hunt, nor naively think that Trump is the problem, and his impeachment is the solution.

Capitalism is the problem; revolution is the solution.

Yes, despite your belief, I have indeed seen what is going on in Washington, D.C. where an orange haired, quasi-fascist buffoon is wreaking havoc upon this country as well as slaughtering countless numbers of innocent people overseas. And no, despite your bizarre implication, that does not then mean that I am a Democrat. Trump should be impeached; if not, then the 25th amendment should be invoked which would remove this mentally unbalanced individual from office. If the Democrats [and the Republicans] chose to impeach Richard Nixon then both capitalist political parties could do the same to the megalomaniac, tweet-obsessed, inarticulate Trump who is currently the president of this country.

And to borrow from your fatuous word, yes, I am serious.

To replace one mentally unbalanced individual with one even more mentally unbalanced?

Yeah but its just so funny to watch the liberals conveniently pop up out of their ostrich holes only when a guy like Trump has ruined the veneer of bourgeois democracy for them. If only these people were so vehement in their insistence on holding "every individual who commits egregious offences while sitting in the Oval office" accountable when people like Obama and Bill Clinton were doing it. Nope. Just silence during those eras. And only now, when they try to disguise their desperation to hold onto the collapsing vision of a pure "democracy", are they willing to declare that all these people be held accountable. Starting with Trump, of course.

At this point, everyone in the bourgeois system is a "quasi-fascist" making bullshit overtures to the working class while representing an ever militarized imperialist class of elites. Trump is an overtly fascistic xenophobe and it serves a revolutionary movement far better for such an obvious person to be there than to have the masses fooled into believing that his being "held accountable" is, in any way, a victory for the working class.

If we bury the revolutionary atmosphere now with these bandaids of "justice", then we will have to live through a catastrophic collapse before the masses are ready for action. Very few people, relatively speaking, are going to care much once Trump is impeached. Just you watch. "The Resistance" will fade into cliche memes on social media... far more than it already has.

An accurate summary of the pseudo-lefts.

Trump was a Trojan Horse for Mercer, the billionaires and the political class allied with both. Now that he won, they have no need for a clown and would prefer moving to Pence, a militarized society and eventually a Constitutional Convention, which they are coming close to achieving, to amend the Constitution.

Excellent point. "Christian Sharia" describes it very well.

A government run only by the people these liberals deem fit.

There is a joke in Russia, based on the Yeltsin's rule experience - "democracy means a rule of democrats" (a word "democrat" also turned into a curse one, because in Russia back then people who called themselves "democrats" were/are but pawns of Western imperialism)