Pyrrhus, the third century BC ruler of Epirus, was one of those guys who really knew how to win. Rome, Carthage, Macedonia; they all came, they all saw, and they were all conquered. How such nations must have hated him as he marched this way and that way, sweeping the old guard aside as if it were little more than chaff in the wind.

The parallels with the Republican primaries are obvious. Like Pyrrhus, President-elect Donald Trump took on all comers. He took on the experienced, he took on the entitled and genuinely did not care who he pissed off in the process.

He looked them square in the eye, blew smoke rings at them with sphincteral precision and then destroyed them with a rhetorical style of his own devising.

The verbal tweet.

Lyin’ Ted, Crooked Hillary. Low energy. Wrong.

(Rand, Cruz, Marco Rubio. Veni Vidi Vici.)

Exit Stage Alt Right

Not that the parallels end there. Because Pyrrhus is not so much remembered for the many battles he won as he is for the eventual toll they took. His victories depleted his coffers, inflated his ego, and laid ruin to the country of his birth. They gave rise to the adjective Pyrrhic; a defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

A Pyrrhic presidency. That has a nice ring to it.

Because let’s be honest, we’ve all been looking for a way out. We don’t want to be the good guys on this one. We’ve turned the other cheek far too many times already, we don’t want to co-operate, we don’t want to ‘wait and see’ or to give him a chance.

We want to scream at the wall. We want to run outside, punt ornamental frogs into the neighbor’s pool and then collapse to our knees vomiting up something that looks like ratatouille and smells like sour grapes. Dreams of recounts and faithless electors drift across our subconscious like clouds of weaponized methane as we lie awake at night fighting off waves of depression, restless leg syndrome, and moments of unladylike biliousness.

We want to return to the shiny-eyed optimism of 2008 and the prospect of a White House filled with a sense of moral responsibility and respect. Is a do-over really too much to ask?

Apparently not.

Daddy May Care

Trump probably isn’t going to last the full four years in office, most of us are coming round to that idea already. Still, there’s always the fear that wishful thinking is playing a part in all this. How can we be sure of ourselves? We lack objectivity, we lack perspective. We kick garden ornaments over fences in moments of crimson rage.

Which is why it is satisfying when a Harvard law school professor weighs in on the subject. That fear, that the next room we walk into might be filled with loved ones staging a political intervention? Experts can shift that faster than Gaviscon erases the memory of lunchtime burritos don’t you know?

Speaking to Joy Reid on MSNBC’s Am Joy, Harvard law school professor Laurence Tribe insisted that Trump’s close relationship with the people running his business empire —  Donald Jr. Ivanka, Eric — would be his undoing.

There is now no longer any question that such ties are clear, unambiguous violations of the emoluments clause, and that’s not good for Trump.

Because this 229-year-old constitutional footnote prohibits any officer of the United States from being on the receiving end of any kind of benefit, economic benefit, payment, gift, or profit from a foreign government or its corporations or agents. Trump’s laissez-faire indifference to the letter of that law regarding such matters is, by now well established. For Tribe, such an attitude is completely unacceptable:

“He thinks of himself as a babe magnet, but he’s an emoluments magnet. And all around the world, everybody wants to go to his hotels and not the competitors and wants to give him a variance or a special land use permit.” 

Harvard Law Schooled

That such an authority on matters of constitutional law is so quick to point this out might explain why so many Republican grandees seem happy with the outcome of this election. Trump’s eventual replacement with Pence might be something of a formality, a question of when, rather than if. Because it’s not like there is even an easy way out of this for Trump. Indeed when asked how he might conceivably avoid accusations of corruption Tribe did not equivocate, saying only that:

“There’s simply no way short of absolutely liquidating all of his cash and assets into a blind trust and not handed over to his kids. No way short of that prevents him from being a walking, talking violation of the Constitution from the moment he takes the oath.” 

So, that’s Trump fucked then.

Because there is no way in hell that he’ going to do anything even approaching that level of accountability.

He lacks the inclination. He lacks the temperament. Not to mention his complete lack of the self-restraint necessary to implement any kind of system that would prohibit him from enriching himself at the expense of those who helped elect him. It’s just one of those things he is incapable of doing. Like opening jars of peanut butter, or thumbing rides from passing cars.

Or, you know, other little hand jokes.

Eviction Notice

And whilst as of today, as President-elect, he can play such games of merry bullshit with the American people all he likes come January 20, things are going to be very different.

Because that’s when Liberals across the country can use the power of the constitution to evict a man wholly unsuited to the office of the presidency. That’s when we begin taking steps to ensure that his victory is, you know…

Pyrrhic.

Featured Image Via Inquisitr