Trump is done. It's time to start thinking about President Pence. The New York Times and Washington Post have War Rooms in a furious competition to expose Kremlingate. The intelligence community has the Kremlingate facts ready to go. Many there will see it as their civic duty to expose major crimes by Trumpistas. The combination will be fatal.

Trump is in a mad race against time to discredit both the media and the intelligence community before his people are exposed and charged. This is accelerating Hair Force One down a runway that the media and intelligence people are rolling up fast and still hoping to take off. A crash is inevitable.

So, with Trump out, what should Mike Pence do?

Rule One: simplify policy. Dumb Don was all over the place. He didn't have coherent sentences let alone coherent policies.

Rule Two: show all Americans how they can benefit in the short, medium and long terms. Anything that doesn't do this, Pence should forget.

Rule Three: Publius says that all policy must focus on the fact that American Business Needs Four Guarantees:

1. The state must guarantee us that we can move our goods more efficiently than any competing nation.

2. The state must guarantee us that we can move our information more efficiently than any competing nation.

3. The state must guarantee us that our labor force is the healthiest in the world.

4. The state must guarantee is that our labor force is the best educated in the world.

Let's get to some specifics.

One, move the US firmly into the Information Age. Use GE's information transition as the model for all industrial and trade policy. All jobs, trade and industrial initiatives must increase the information intensity of all US outputs so we gain Ricardian advantages in all our markets worldwide. If this means outsourcing to other countries, accelerate this process so that we suck down all the high value advantages. Move the obsolete jobs elsewhere. Fast.

Two, get us back on track in our markets so that we can sell more. Revive the Trans Pacific Pact immediately and move the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the EU forward. Fast.

Three, upgrade US education so that it makes our labor force the best-educated and most information-intense in the world.

Four, dissolve Medicare and Medicaid funds into an insurance voucher system issued with tax refunds/reports from the IRS. Tie the value of the vouchers to gross income: the lower, the higher the voucher and vice versa. Require that all health insurance companies accept these vouchers for payment. Let the insurance companies negotiate prices. The cost of Obama Care will go through the floor. Simple and uncomplicated. Pence will be loved.

Five, use Publius' Smart Policy, Making Money From the Undocumented, to turn the vast undocumented labor pool into a money-maker for all Americans, grow the economy and increase our standard of living.

Six, make our hydrocarbon self-sufficiency the center of foreign policy. Demote the fast-dissolving Middle East. Forget Russia. As Publius showed in Managing Russia's Implosion, its GDP is smaller than Italy's. It counts for nothing. Promote sales opportunities in Europe and Asia.

Seven, focus relentlessly on the Nine Dash Line as Publius recommends to save our supply chains, our companies, our jobs and our standard of living. In short, our nation.

Eight, implement Publius' Smart Policy for Curing Our National Addiction to guns. It's cheap and simple because the insurance business and the liability bar will regulate gun ownership and use at no cost to us.

Nine, use Publius' analysis of North Korea, What North Korea is REALLY Worried About, to demand that The Center of Everything (China in Chinese) fix this problem and fast. Once The Center has made its move, we can talk about removing THAAD.

So, there you have it. Everything Pence needs to do on a page.

March 3, 2017 Follow-Up

Well, that didn't take long. Two days after Publius ran this, Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from Kremlingate inquiries. This is just the beginning.

Watch for the GOP to begin the rush to sauve qui peut. Predictably, many GOP senators are for the moment resisting a Watergate process held in public for all Americans to see. But, as more Kremlingate details emerge out of GOP control, the instinct for self preservation will hit. Trump is disposable, but their livelihoods are not. The GOP will cling to power with all its might.

The only way to do this will be to smooth the way to President Pence as quickly as possible. Watergate took just over two years from the break in to Nixon's resignation. No one wants to go through that again. Better to Dump Trump now to get a clean break and a new start.

Intelligence Committee hearings in secret won't cut it. To gain maximum advantage from the Pence transition, public hearings will be GOP's cornerstone, the only way it looks good.

The longer the GOP holds out the worse it will get. The smarter pols will grasp this and force a move.

March 4, 2017 Follow-Up

You can't make this stuff up. Trump today is loudly announcing that he too is a Kremlingate suspect and that the FBI tapped his phones!! Why would he even touch this?

The GOP is now in an appalling situation. Either, Don Trump has admitted that he is a Kremlingate suspect and that the FBI told him that it had demonstrated to a federal judge that it had probable cause to tap his phone. Or, he has gone barking mad and is inventing crazy stories. All at 6:35am.

So, if the FBI says, as it usually does in the case of an ongoing investigation that it does not comment on ongoing investigations, Don is a suspect in a criminal/intelligence investigation.

And, if the FBI says "no," Don has had a fit of paranoid dementia.

It doesn't much matter which one is the case. The GOP has a massive problem on its hands. Don Trump cannot stay in office. To protect its brand it has to move.

But how?

Expect something like this. All the living former Presidents gather under the leadership of a Republican, likely George W. Bush, to tell the nation in a national broadcast that it is time to invoke the 25th Amendment. This would get as much unity as we are likely to see these days and move Don out of the way.

June 1, 2017

Putin is following the cry of sauve qui peut that is ripping through the fast failing Trump administration. (See Publius' March 3 Follow Up above.) With Michael Flynn invoking the Fifth Amendment so he can get immunity and preserve his military pension, Putin knew that his number was up. He just admitted that Russia did try to manipulate the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But, hoping to minimize damage to himself, he attributed the effort to "patriotic" Russians. Which, in Kremlinspeak, means the FSB.

If Jared Kushner is told that his position is weak enough that he faces jail time, likely he too will move fast to cut a deal. And that would eliminate any remaining Russian influence for at least a generation. Putin had to move.

Expect the former FBI Director, James Comey, to do everything he can top preserve his future income stream with his testimony. Others in the intelligence community will follow Comey's lead. There is too much at stake for them not to. Unlike Trump, they are not rich and have nothing on which to fall back if things go wrong.

August 19, 2017

Like Dumb Don, Steve Bannon, Don's newly fired top strategist is doing everything he can every moment of every day to make Publius look like the leading light in U.S. politics.

Bannon bluntly acknowledged seven months after Publius that, “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over. We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”

That it took Bannon this long -- he had an inside seat and should have known long before Publius -- to figure out what was obvious to Publius only days after the inauguration tells us a great deal about Bannon's intelligence. He doesn't have a lot of it.

It also confirms Publius' main thesis in Dumb Don, that Don has no way of knowing how limited are the abilities of those who he hires. His own limitations are far too great for him to make any kind of sensible hiring decision.

Bannon was unable to use Publius' Trump Management Protocol (TruMP) for the simple reason that, as Publius showed, no one can use it. So any effort by anyone to work with Dumb Don is doomed. Bannon was monstrously stupid to think that he could work without TruMP.

#MikePence #JeffSessions