ArcaMax

President Donald Trump is afraid of getting impeached again.

He said as much earlier this week.

"You got to win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be — I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me," he said. "I’ll get impeached."

He spoke those words, coincidentally, on the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, which formed the basis of his second impeachment.

It was a startling pronouncement from someone given to endless expressions of a hyper-inflated ego. This is a man who, throughout his long public and political life, has seldom been associated with such descriptors as modest, prudent or vulnerable.

Yet Trump admitted in a notable and rare acknowledgment of his own limitations, in his book "The Art of the Comeback," that his past business difficulties, culminating in corporate bankruptcies in the 1990s, resulted from a "feeling of invincibility" that led him to become "a little cocky."

Perish the thought.

Whether he arrived at the conclusion himself or at the urging of advisers, Trump understands he is in danger of being taken down by overconfidence. Not just his own but also that of his loyal MAGA movement.

It's no surprise, then, that Trump in recent days has instituted something of a full-court press on the housing affordability crisis, calling for such measures as banning institutional investors from buying single-family homes. And if that succeeds in making housing more affordable for Americans, that might well save his bacon.

Yet Trump's administration is also stumbling from crisis to crisis, as unwelcome surprises, such as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, seem to inspire desperate political gambits.

That thought came to mind as Americans woke up on Jan. 3 to Trump's announcement that the Army's Delta Force had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and were taking them to the U.S. for trial.

Remember his denunciations of "forever" wars and nation-building attempts? Well, it took MAGA influencers a matter of minutes to forget them.

Now it was time to celebrate the "Donroe Doctrine," which unlike the Monroe Doctrine was not a doctrine at all but rather an attitude that the entirety of the Western Hemisphere is a collection of potential colonies that Trump can at will bring under the flag of the United States.

Trump seems to be on a tear, cramming as many issues as possible from “Project 2025” on the American public, at times seemingly contradicting his past principles and reversing laws and policies we associate with the so-called American Century.

What exactly is the objective in Venezuela? Taking the nation's oil? Running its government? Helping it restore some semblance of democracy and good government? Hell if anybody knows, but Colombia and Cuba might be next if they're not careful!

Yet, as much as he might seem to have been on a roll lately, Trump understands that his base, while it still supports him, is wobbly, and whatever moderate swing voters he was able able to pick up in 2026 are falling away, particularly in light of the shocking shooting by an immigration agent of a protester in Minneapolis.

Among the dark clouds on the horizon revealed in a recent NBC News poll is the finding that most voters feel the country is on the wrong track, particularly with regard to the economy. There's much at stake in the November midterms for both parties, not least of which is a loss of control of Congress and then investigations into Trump and key political allies.

But nothing is certain, as D.C. veterans know. U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters of California, the most outspoken Democrat so far, has displayed a mix of caution and determination on another possible impeachment, saying in a statement that "even if Republicans refuse to act, Democrats cannot remain silent or passive in the face of actions this extreme from this Administration."

This era will end. The only open question is whether it ends at the ballot box or through the very constitutional mechanisms Trump now openly fears.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at clarence47page@gmail.com.)

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