From economic “Armageddon” to impeachment and everything in between

At the end of every year, we see a flurry of predictions for the coming year. None were as amusing as last year’s apocalyptic hysteria as the left contemplated the calamities they envisioned for 2017.

President Trump, they assured us, would destroy our and the global economy, “punish” journalists, quit Twitter, take over Voice of America, and of course, be impeached by year’s end.

Economic “Armageddon”

Pretty much everyone on the left predicted a Trump-made recession, but Paul Krugman one-upped them all when he predicted plunging markets that would “never” recover.

Greg Gutfeld nails this one:

In 2008 Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics. Isn’t it time he gets another? Remember what he said way back on Election Day? Quote, “It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump. And markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? A first-pass answer is never.” That’s pretty awesome for a garden gnome. But he’s no garden gnome. He’s a Nobel Prize-winning economist. A garden gnome could run circles around this bearded butthead. And every time he gets it wrong, he gets a raise. So he must be loaded now, as the stock market broke 23,000 and filings for unemployment benefits plunged to the lowest level since 1973.

Krugman also predicted a “global recession.”

From Politico:

The economic fallout of a Donald Trump presidency will probably be severe and widespread enough to plunge the world into recession, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned in a New York Times opinion piece published early Wednesday. Calling Trump the “mother of all adverse effects,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist predicted that the GOP nominee’s administration could quickly undo the progress that the markets around the world have made in the eight years since the financial crisis. . . . . “Now comes the mother of all adverse effects — and what it brings with it is a regime that will be ignorant of economic policy and hostile to any effort to make it work,” Krugman wrote. “So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened.”

Nancy Pelosi feverishly predicted local and national economic “Armageddon,” and a range of economic geniuses predicted all kinds of calamities.

From Investor’s Business Daily:

To borrow a recent phrase from House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Trump’s policies would cause “Armageddon” for family finances, the American economy, and the stock market. . . . . “If Trump wins we should expect a big markdown in expected future earnings for a wide range of stocks — and a likely crash in the broader market (if Trump becomes president).” Eric Zitzewitz, former chief economist at the IMF, November 2016. “Under Trump, I would expect a protracted recession to begin within 18 months. The damage would be felt far beyond the United States.” Former Clinton and Obama chief economist Larry Summers, June 2016. “Trump would likely cause the stock market to crash and plunge the world into recession.” Simon Johnson, MIT economics professor, in The New York Times, November 2016.

You get the idea.

Social and Mainstream Media

In 2017, President Trump, we were assured, would “punish” journalists, quit Twitter, and take over Voice of America for propagandist purposes.

From the New York Times:

[H]ow can the news media — including The Times — hold Mr. Trump accountable without becoming his adversary?

Mr. Rutenberg is not so sure the media can. “That’s going to be really hard,” he said. “The problem is that when Mr. Trump leans into a fact that isn’t true, or uses to his advantage some bad reporting himself, you have to fact-check it and it automatically ends up looking like you’re picking a fight, like you’re the opposition, when you’re just doing your job.” The worry, he said, is that Mr. Trump will employ a tactic as president that he used throughout the campaign, of punishing journalists whose work he dislikes. NewCo Shift predicted that Trump would quit Twitter. President Trump leaves Twitter. Ever since Twitter launched, I’ve usually included a Twitter prediction. This one sounds crazy, but it strikes me there are a few ways this might plausibly happen. Perhaps Trump will come to his senses and stop trying to run the country through a series of tweets. OK, that’s not very plausible. More likely is Trump will end up in some kind of a feud with Twitter over something utterly ridiculous, claim he’s the only reason the service is viable anymore, and decamp for Facebook, Snapchat, or who knows, maybe VK (that’s the largest Russian social media network, FWIW). Or maybe someone slips a cure for narcissism into his evening flute of Trump Champagne…. [emphasis in original] And my personal favorite: Trump will take over Voice of America and use it to spew propaganda around the globe. From the Washington Post: Trump now wields the power to appoint a new chief executive of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America, a 1,000-person news operation with a taxpayer-funded annual budget of $218.5 million. . . . . Voice of America principally serves foreign audiences, and its radio and television broadcasts reach 236.6 million people worldwide, in 47 languages. They play a role in shaping impressions of the United States and its leaders in foreign countries — which is a polite way of saying that Voice of America could be used to disseminate propaganda.

Impeachment

I’m not sure these predictions are predictions at all. They seem to be that intoxicating brew of wishful thinking and fantasy that fuels the progressive left.

While not an actual prediction, the Norwalk Reflector wrote a lovely bit of satire stating that Trump would be impeached not just this year but by March.

—President Trump will be impeached by March. The reason for his impeachment is foggy right now, but it will likely stem either from his decision to give Alaska to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a birthday present or the fact that the wall project along the U.S.-Mexican border will be running $50 billion over budget due to Trump’s insistence that it be built with solid-gold bricks. Trump will respond to the impeachment by denying that he was impeached. He will then deny the existence of the word “impeach.” The accuracy of that denial will be confirmed by the website Breitbart. After he is forcibly removed from the White House, Trump will deny that he was ever president. Breitbart will then post a story that Trump himself never actually existed, and the disgraced former president will vanish in an orange poof of logic. . . . . I will be locked up in a journalism gulag for predicting President Trump’s impeachment. Breitbart will report that I never existed. The fact-checking website Politifact will rate that report “half-true,” and CNN will spend half the year trying to find me.

Like all good satire, there’s a kernel of truth in there. There were a lot of serious predictions that Trump would be impeached this year.

Via CNN:

The man dubbed “Prediction Professor” for accurately calling almost every presidential election since 1984, including the 2016 election, now forecasts the impeachment of President-elect Donald Trump. “There’s a very good chance that Donald Trump could face impeachment,” Allan Lichtman told Erin Burnett on “Erin Burnett OutFront.” Lichtman, a political historian who teaches at the American University in Washington, says he uses his own system of 13 true or false statements to judge whether the incumbent party will retain the White House. However, when it came to his bold prediction of a Trump impeachment, he told Burnett it’s based on his instinct.

“Instinct” apparently means if I wish really really hard and click my heels three times it will happen.

According to an “expert” cited by the Independent, it is “highly likely” that Trump will be impeached in his first 12 to 18 months.

Donald Trump is “highly likely” to face impeachment within 18 months of taking office, an expert in American politics has warned. . . . . Professor Angelia Wilson, from the University of Manchester, believes the trail of scandals in the President-elect’s wake has become an “embarrassment” to the Republican party, leaving him vulnerable to impeachment by members of the party seeking reelection to the House. “I think it is highly likely that he will be impeached in the first 12 to 18 months,” she told The Independent. “Whether it will be about the Russia dossier or other scandals that are undoubtedly there, he has become a liability for the Republican party. At some point they will need to distance themselves from him in order to solidify reelection for the House.”

If all else fails, Trump will step down or be removed by the 25th Amendment by the end of 2017, right? Right???

I still believe (and pray) Trump will resign by year end to avoid worse humiliation – e.g.indictment by Mueller, or 25th amendment removal. — Tony Schwartz (@tonyschwartz) October 12, 2017

He'll be lucky if all we do is impeach him. I predict in 6 months Trump will be holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy. https://t.co/Ne9DHyO7Ri — John Aravosis (@aravosis) February 15, 2017

Wait, what? “Holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy”?

Which brings us to:

Miscellaneous Bizarre Predictions

Forget Neil Gorsuch, who’s up for Supreme Court Justice Judge Judy Sheindlin? Surely, this is tongue-in-cheek.

Judge Judy Sheindlin will be nominated by President Trump to fill the vacancy left by the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia almost a year ago. Judge Judy has had one of the top-rated daytime TV shows for almost 20 years. She has a star of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Before TV, she was even a real judge. That’s huge.

Apparently, psychics are all the rage on the left. When the polls and pundits failed in 2016, the Chicago Tribune turned to psychics. Really.

While he will keep more manufacturing jobs inside the U.S., the price of consumer goods will rise as a consequence. Meanwhile, one Cabinet pick after another will flame out — as many as seven will leave their posts within two years, [Susan Rowlen, who does psychic consultations in Oak Brook] said. “He’ll go through people in his Cabinet like we go through underwear,” she said. World events will offer plenty of challenges too. She predicted more countries leaving the European Union, outbreaks of diseases yet unknown to the public and further crises with Syria and North Korea. Russia, though, won’t be much of a threat, she said. That’s not exactly how Andrew Anderson sees it. The Hoffman Estates man who describes himself as a psychic medium said Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin will reveal itself to be more tangled than either man has owned up to. Trump also will be a calmer and better president than his many detractors believe, Anderson said, and his unorthodox leadership methods will be adopted by others. He predicted that Trump will be re-elected despite a blizzard of bad publicity. “He will be the most sued president in history,” Anderson said. “There are more lawsuits coming.” Kathryn Forestal, who operates Readings by Kathryn in Chicago, had a different prediction. She said Trump will not make it through even one full term, leaving via impeachment or voluntary retirement or some other unusual route. “He’s very erratic,” she said. “He’s going to do something to break the law, and that’s going to get his empire tumbling down.”

That’s not all, a blind Hungarian mystic predicted that Trump would never take office and that Obama would be the last U. S. president.

So much for psychics.

What’s a list of hysterical leftie predictions without Michael Moore? Oddly enough, his predictions are among the least crazy. Still wrong, still hysterical, but not so bizarre.

Via Vulture.com:

A message from Michael Moore to the rest of the country: Please take the president-elect at his word. Moore — who has a pretty good record as the left’s leading Trump prognosticator — told Variety about how he imagines Donald Trump’s first days in office will shake out. The good news: Trump has been up-front about his plans (if only we were listening). The bad news: He’ll actually follow through with them. “What you’re going to see is, on day one, he’s going to rescind a dozen or more of Obama’s executive-branch regulations,” Moore explained. “On day two, Republicans will start printing laws the way you print fliers for a homecoming dance. Before the liberals and the Democrats can get their heads screwed on straight, they’ll have 20 laws passed. Building a wall. Creating a Muslim ban.” Everything Trump has promised will come to fruition, Moore said. [Emphasis mine]

If only.



