Last week I said that the longer Trump stays in office the worse it will be for his reputation, for the Republican party, and for the United States.

It should be clear to everyone now that Trump lacks the emotional, judgmental, and intellectual qualities needed to lead the United States as President.

In the last few weeks, Trump has (1) arm-twisted House Republicans into passing a Health Care bill that was worse for most Americans than the bill that previously failed to pass, so that he could claim a win in an area in which he is so ignorant that he described health insurance in terms that only apply to life-insurance; (2) he fired his FBI Director, who was in the process of expanding a federal probe into Russian intervention in the US election and potential ties to the Trump campaign, in a callous and unconsidered fashion, expecting everyone to embrace this, having his staff lie about Comey’s status with his own FBI employees and then fabricate a false story about the firing that he then abandoned the next day; (3) he has threatened to wipe out protection for federal lands and national monuments; (4) has embraced heinous dictators and congratulated them on doing a great job; (5) has — along with his daughter and son-in-law, both of whom he appointed to high-level posts in his administration — continued to financially benefit from business dealings both overseas and at home that he promotes while in office; (5) invited the Russian foreign minister and Ambassador to the U.S. (the latter a known spymaster) into the Oval Office, giving Russian state media access to the event but excluding all U.S. press; and (6) apparently gave the Russians sensitive information derived from secret sources, either without grasping the significance of this or recklessly disregarding any consequences.  He also had his cabinet members issue blanket denials, then tweeted, less than 12 hours later, that he had in fact shared terrorist information with the Russians during that meeting.

Let’s be frank — if a fictional story was written that had a U.S. President acting in this way, it would be dismissed as not credible.   No one would expect behavior like this to be tolerated, much less defended, by other GOP and political and societal leaders.  If such behavior ever occurred, one might expect that such a president would be bundled off by his handlers for obvious defects in judgement and reckless and dangerous behavior.

But what are we in fact seeing?  No one is impeding this President, who continues to generate ever more egregious and frightening grounds for his removal from office.

Eventually, this will lead to Trump’s departure from the White House.  The only questions are how long it will take, and how much damage he will to do to himself and our country before that happens.  It certainly appears that the longer it takes, the worse it will get.