Cassidy Hutchinson

It has been almost 18 months since Donald Trump left office, and continued to contest the 2020 election in the media. I have wondered why we haven’t heard about any plans for a Trump presidential library, but now I think I know: Trump wanted to wait until the completion of his second term to announce a library.

With the testimony of White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson on Tuesday, Trump can kiss that idea goodbye. The J6 Committee is closing in on Trump, and they have woven such a convincing narrative that anyone with half a working brain can see that Trump is not only an overweening egoist and probable sociopath, he is a freaking sicko who cannot be allowed into the White House again.

Ms. Hutchinson, a composed and poised witness, was Trump’s Monica Lewinsky. She dropped the bomb—or bombs—with compelling (if second hand) testimony of Trump’s manic actions. Her testimony added to the already extensive list of conspiratorial and criminal acts Trump committed up to and including January 6. Bob Woodward went so far as to tell CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Hutchinson had “written Trump’s political obituary.”

From a PR perspective, Trump would do well to trot out plans for some kind of library, somewhere, to remind people that he was the 45th president and isn’t done yet. The plans can be grandiose or sketchy. Trump is a real estate developer and knows that game well. The library would not only serve as a deflection tool, it might help to bolster the perception that the Orange One is still in control of himself and his actions, something that didn’t come through in committee testimony this week.

Speaking last night at a real presidential library, the Reagan in California, Rep. Liz Cheney said, “As the full picture is coming into view with the January 6th Committee, it has become clear that the efforts Donald Trump oversaw and engaged in were even more chilling and more threatening than we could have imagined."

The applause was deafening, and, as Lawrence O’Donnell noted, “these were Republicans!”

??Bill Huey is president of Strategic Communications and the author of Carbon Man (Kindle, 2010).