Photo by Scottsdale Mint

Without Democrats left in the Senate, House of Representatives, White House or on the Supreme Court, the Trumpublicans can now turn to the business for which they are best suited: that of devouring their own.

Even before January 20, 2025—that great day when all the Jan 6 rioters will stream out of their prison cells to attend yet another march on the Capitol—MAGAistas can begin their internal knife fight to decide who will be the heir to the great Trump throne (think of some gilded toilet that you might find in a suite in Atlantic City).

Who might be those pretenders to this kingdom or who might be the victims of the purges?

* * *

Let’s start with Trump himself: in forming his new government, he had one role, which was to be the pitchman/frontman/greeter/game show host of the glorious revolution whose election would furnish his followers—Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Don Jr., Robert Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk, Marjorie Taylor Greene, etc.—with keys to the empire.

After that—and once they are in power—Trump is of no use to anyone.

“Sorry, Don,” he will be told, “that’s not how things work. You can keep your X account, and we’ll give you a jet (Air Force One) so you can tool around to a few rallies and check in with your pals in Moscow, Budapest, and Pongyang. But we’ll handle the rest.”

* * *

Plotters and schemers such as Musk, Kennedy Jr. or Jeff Bezos don’t hang around with a psychotic and delirious old man in diapers because it’s fun or because they’re all in the same literature of the Constitution book club.

They are there because they smell blood in the water—and the chance to take over the U.S. government as if it were yet another subsidiary on their family office org chart.

If Trump thought it was hell being charged with 91 felony indictments or having to perp walk his way across lower Manhattan to state supreme court, wait until he’s locked away in his White House padded cell (with limited access to Newsmax) while his many chamberlains sharpen their knives and take control of the Federal Reserve without so much as a whisper in Don’s direction.

I would say Trump could console himself in such isolation by reading Hamlet or Macbeth, but literature has never brought Sound Track Don much solace.

* * *

Another person who will find piano wire tightening around his neck will be errand boy J.D. Vance, who will be dissuaded from believing all those Fox News stories about how he’s now the heir to MAGA fortune.

Vance’s job in the 2024 election was to reassure suburban women that King Donald wasn’t the sexual predator that they suspected he might well be.

Vance’s other election task was to secure a seat in the presidential Macdonald’s booth for Don. Jr., Tucker Carlson, Peter Thiel, and the 2025 Projectors, who otherwise feared that they could be cut out of Trump’s estate (because the likes of Stephen Miller, Melania, and Mike Pompeo were lurking in the shadows with some blank codicils they bought at Staples).

* * *

Even Trump’s happy, smiling, back-on-stage immediate family is set for a Succession-style cat fight over who is the legitimate heir to the mad king’s domain.

In case you are behind with your binge watching, Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka despise their stepmother, Melania, and scoff at her claims that Barron (as the only son of Trump’s current marriage) is the rightful claimant to all that glitters in Mar-a-Lago.

Meanwhile, Don Jr. and Ivanka each think of themselves as the rightful successors to daddy’s levers of power. Don Jr. believes he is closest to the MAGA base while Ivanka knows she shares daddy’s little secret.

* * *

Beyond Trump’s immediate and treacherous family, there’s a planeload of public officials—Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, and the dog-shooting Kristi Neom are a few who come to mind—all of whom think that Trumplandia is a decaying empire (despite the feel-good moment of the 2024 election) that is theirs for the taking.

The professional pols will conclude that their succession planning need only involve coming out on top in the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary in 2028—something they can handle.

Let Musk be the one to cut Social Security benefits for oldsters or let Kennedy Jr. explain to all those MAGA moms why their children now have polio, while the likes of Haley or Cruz can be on their shiny white horses in New Hampshire, kissing babies and explaining the “right way” to eliminate inflation or seal the border.

* * *

According to the 2024 campaign storyboards, on “day one” of his new administration King Donald will suspend the constitution, lock up his political opponents, assume dictatorial powers, and march ten million illegal immigrants into the Texas sunset.

The new colossus will deal with inflation, shout down the encroaching high waters of climate change, bring peace to Ukraine and Gaza with “one phone call”, and, finally, (to secure his legacy in the pantheon of western leaders) drive transgenders from the temples of girls’ locker rooms.

Then he will dispatch his new attorney general, presumably Aileen Cannon, to various courthouses hearing cases involving her patron—where she will inform the commoners that her liege lord is only subject to the laws of god.

In theory, Trump will then be freed from the shackles of bailiff Jack Smith and excused from the levy due to the un-sinking witch, E. Jean Carroll.

At last squire Don will be free to enjoy the fruits of his kingdom (all those PAC contributions which he can use to pay off meddlesome women).

Except that by “day two” Trump will be a bird locked away in a gilded cage—only of use to his villainous and plotting chamberlains with his portrait on their shiny new coins of the realm.

* * *

Against his palace plotters, Trump will only have one weapon (from his daytime TV career) that he can wield—that of firing his disloyal footmen whenever his suspicions are aroused (no doubt daily for the paranoid president).

I guess he could also have them beheaded, as per the immunity opinions of his vassals on the Supreme Court.

Either way, Trump Part Deux will one endless internal bloodbath.

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” are the words of Henry II, just before his meddlesome rival Thomas Becket was run through with swords.

I know Trump is not a reader of history (he needed an aide to explain Pearl Harbor to him), but Becket is remembered with more affection than is the vengeful Henry II and, by the way, Macbeth is a cautionary tale of what happens when you use deceit and lies to seize power.