Trump can’t fire Dr. Fauci because his approval rating would collapse. Trump can’t shut down the post office, for obvious reasons.

Yet Trump has us wasting our time focusing on these imaginary threats, even as he gets away with other very real things.

Stop being so gullible.

Most of you read Palmer Report because you see that I'm usually proven right about these things in the end. But please look at why I end up being right. Most of you think politics is a matter of who's holding the magic wand on any given day. It's really all about LEVERAGE.

Trump wants you to think he's this rampaging cartoon maniac who's capable of doing literally anything on any given day. In reality he ALWAYS makes a point of not doing the specific things he knows would finish him off. Instead he THREATENS to do those things, to manipulate you.

Trump knows Fauci and the post office are important to you, so he threatens to take them away. It doesn't matter that he knows he can't do it. He's counting on you not knowing that he can't do it, so you'll waste your time fighting to keep them. He laughs at you for your naivete.

Meanwhile, as you're fighting a righteous yet imaginary battle to keep three things that he was never going to be able to take away from you anyway, you're too distracted to fight him on all the PPE and bailout money he's stealing. Why do you think he distracts you to begin with?

Conservatives understand leverage and negotiations, because nothing is precious to them to begin with. All they have to do is make empty threats against whatever liberals care about most, liberals cave, and then conservatives get whatever they want out of the deal.

We've got a great negotiator like Pelosi, who isn't going to let Trump have another dollar of funding for anything until he caves on the post office. But we make it harder for her, by acting like Trump can magically take the post office away, which gives him leverage.

Because Trump sees we're so scared of this imaginary scenario where we lose the post office, he can go into negotiations acting like the post office is on the table when it isn't. Then Pelosi has to cave on something else just to get him to let go of the post office thing.

Because Trump sees we're so scared of this imaginary scenario where we lose Fauci, he can make the next few news cycles all about whether Fauci will be fired. Meaning those news cycles won't be focused on his deadly negligence.

We've been naively handing Trump leverage, over and over again, by falling for every single one of his impossible threats, for three years. ENOUGH. Stop being Charlie Brown and the football. Stop being so gullible about what is and is not possible. You're only helping Trump.

When Trump doesn't fire Fauci, and doesn't shut down the post office, you'll all feel righteous for having "defeated" him on it. Even though they were never in danger, and you wasted your time on imaginary battles, while Trump pulled a bunch of other crap right under your nose.

Trump, Pence, McConnell, these guys aren't all that bright. They just understand that winning in politics is a matter of negotiation and leverage, while everyone on our side thinks winning is done by magic wand. So they often win, even when we start with the winning hand.

We think we're being "vigilant" when we obsess out loud about Trump canceling the election, or staying in office after he loses. No, we're just being stupid. These are laughably impossible things – but we telegraph to Trump that he can use these empty threats to gain leverage.

Trump knows he cannot fire Fauci, because it would end his already-faint hope of reelection. The more time we waste this week demanding that Trump not fire Fauci, the easier we make things for Trump this week. All he has to do is keep threatening to fire him, then not fire him.

I don't care how arrogant this sounds: I'm always proven right on this stuff, and most of you are always proven wrong. There's a reason for that: I'm more sociopathic than you are. Leverage is the stuff of sociopaths. It's why you listen to me, even if you think I'm a dick.

Most of you are so sure he's going to do this or that thing, and then you're shocked when he doesn't do it. That's because you're not willing to think like he thinks. If it's something that he thinks could truly finish him off, he never ever ever ever does it.

When I point out that he won't do X because he knows that doing X could finish him off, you insist that he's going to do X anyway because then he'll just save himself by waving a magic wand. You're delusional if you think he can magically do whatever he wants. Not remotely true.

If Trump had directly fired Mueller in 2017, like most of you were so sure he would, he'd be out of office by now. If Trump had pardoned Manafort or Flynn, like you were so sure he would, he'd be out office by now. He knew it too. That's why he didn't do these things!

I've spent three years wishing Trump WOULD do one of the suicidally reckless things that would have finished him off. The rest of you have sat around cowering in fear that he might do one of these things, because you mistakenly think he magically can get away with anything.

Trump knows that if his approval rating drops low enough, the GOP will have no chance of keeping the senate, and McConnell will oust him in a heartbeat, in the hope of improving those odds. That's how politics actually works, not through just magically doing whatever you like.

There are consequences to EVERY SINGLE THING a politician does. Trump's actions in the first two years cost him the House. Trump's actions this past year have landed him an approval rating that gives him very little chance of a second term. CONSEQUENCES.

What you're thinking of are justice and fairness, two concepts that don't exist in politics. Never have, never will. But consequences? Absolutely. If there were no consequences, Trump would have a high approval rating and he'd be on track for a second term.

But because most of you still mistakenly think Trump can just wave a magic wand and get himself a second term anyway, you fail to understand that Trump has spent the past three years putting himself in a terrible position that will likely cost him everything. Consequences.

If a bank robber is fleeing with the loot in hand, and the police are closing in on him, he hasn't "gotten away" with anything. He's on the run, and his odds of survival are shrinking. That's Trump right now. Any other perception of him is a fictional one.

So if you want to waste your time thinking of Trump as a guy with a magic wand who's "getting away with it all," then that's fine, but it makes you and me enemies. Because you're only empowering him by pushing that notion. And I'm trying to take him down.

Let's not be enemies