He can't fire them. He quits. Or something.

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Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2017

He has managed to become so reprehensible, and he has made the presidency* so utterly toxic, that the real leaders of American business, and the real owners of the country, are running away from him as though he's a leprous beggar. He's been president* for less than 200 days. In a purely academic sense, or as seen from the perspective of a person from Mars, this is quite a remarkable achievement. The ship, to borrow a legendary Irish newspaper headline, is deserting the sinking rats.

He has had his crisis. He has failed in every sense there is in which to fail. I, for one, am not willing to wait around for the super-hurricane or the mass killing terrorist event to realize that not only is the president* unfit for the office he holds, but he has no intention of ever becoming fit for the office he holds. He wouldn't know how to do it even if he wanted to, and he's shown no indication that he wants to. The only available avenue within the institutions of government is to minimize the damage he can do, defang his presidency in the 2018 midterms, and render him unelectable as far in advance of the 2020 primaries as possible. All of this would return us for a time to the relatively powerless presidents immediately prior to the Civil War which, since we're re-litigating all the important arguments of the 1850s anyway, at least would be consistent.

(Obviously, this scenario leaves out whatever Robert Mueller comes up with, and what the consequences of his findings are. Things are proceeding apace there, too.)

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The problem is that the only way all that works is if Republican officeholders en masse run away from the man as fast as these CEOs have. So far, we haven't seen anywhere near enough of them doing that. There is a lot of bold talk deploring white supremacy, and the Klan, and white supremacy. That and six bucks will get you a latte. The tweet by Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, is a good example of this approach.

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We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity. — Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) August 15, 2017

Say his goddamn name. Don't tell me how much you deplore racism in the abstract. That does not make me feel good as a citizen. Tell me you deplore racism in the specific human being who's now president* of the United States. For anyone whose moral compass still points true north, that's the proper response. Otherwise, shut up.

Then, once you've named his name, distance yourself and your party from the polite policy manifestations of the racism that the GOP has tolerated for far too long, and that played such a big role in putting this small fractal of an American into the White House.

On Tuesday, as the shock waves of the president*'s public "episode" were resounding around the country, a federal court in Texas threw out a couple of that state's ridiculously gerrymandered congressional districts, a part of the general effort to shine up Jim Crow tactics for the new millennium, a project that has had the enthusiastic support of local and national Republicans for more than a decade. From the Texas Tribune:

The judges found that Hispanic voters in Congressional District 27, represented by U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi, were "intentionally deprived of their opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice." Congressional District 35— a Central Texas district represented by Democrat Lloyd Doggett of Austin — was deemed "an impermissible racial gerrymander" because lawmakers illegally used race as the predominant factor in drawing it, the judges wrote.

Here would be a good time to wonder how Chief Justice John Roberts thinks the Day Of Jubilee he declared in Shelby County is working out.

The racial gunpowder that the Republicans have been storing up since Harry Dent wrote a memo to Richard Nixon has finally found a bright orange fuse. It's not enough to deplore white supremacy from within the safety of your gerrymandered districts. It's time to distance yourselves from the president* who refuses to distance his presidency* from it, and from the policies that made that president* not merely possible, but inevitable. My god, at least have the moral courage demonstrated by the guy who runs Walmart. Grab your bibles and consult your St. James, folks. You know, that part about faith without works?

UPDATE (3:35 p.m.)—You see, this is just not the way you want to go here. From the NYT:

The former aides are starting a group called Look Ahead America to identify "disaffected" rural and working-class Americans who either do not vote or are not on the voter rolls, in order to register and mobilize them ahead of future elections, according to a prospectus being distributed to possible donors. Look Ahead America also seeks to discourage or invalidate "fraudulent" votes by deploying poll watchers with cameras, and through what it called a forensic voter fraud investigation to identify "votes cast in the names of the deceased, by illegal immigrants or non-citizens," according to the prospectus, which was shared with The New York Times.

Let us move along to the customary fig-leaves, shall we?

Their new group is registered under a section of the tax code — 501(c)(3) — that allows it to raise unlimited funds from donors without publicly disclosing their identities, but also bars it from engaging in partisan politics. The prospectus declares that "our targeting is not based on political party affiliation or to benefit any particular candidate," though Mr. Braynard conceded that the people his group hoped to engage were not dissimilar from those who mobilized by Mr. Trump's campaign. Mr. Braynard stressed that the effort to clamp down on alleged illegal voting is secondary.

I do so despair of the rebranding.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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