One friend told me she needed Congress to prohibit Donald Trump from running again so she wouldn’t be frightened for the next four years.

This morning, I heard two members of a panel shout at an exhausted congressman being interviewed on an Albany radio station.

They overwhelmed the congressman with questions, they wanted to know at that very moment exactly what he and Congress would do to remove Trump from office by impeachment or the 25th amendment, and right now!

The congressman tried to plead for less politics and more communications, but he was shouted down,  talked over,  and refused to listen. I remembered why people hate the media.

But what struck me was how frightened the panel members were, it was clear in their shouting and voices, in their urgency.

The attack on the capitol on Tuesday has triggered yet another round of fear and even panic about Trump’s plans and the damage he could cause over the next two weeks. Liberals don’t spend much time celebrating their victories, they are masters of finding defeat in victory.

And I have learned this year that progressives are almost always frightened, it doesn’t always have much to do with what is really happening.

On my blog today, or on that radio show, barely anyone mentioned Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock’s victory in Georgia, which will give Democrats control of the Senate and offer the change for real change in America.

Wasn’t that what we all were fighting for?

The people who love Trump are bonkers, and so are many of the people who hate him – he has a gift for that.

It’s important to cool down a bit and consider what it is he really can do in his remaining days and what he won’t do. There are a lot of clues and guides.

He has given us a rich and predictable track record.

First off, President Trump will not be impeached, declared unfit by his cabinet, or otherwise removed from office until January 20, when the Constitution says Joe Biden must take over. That is when Trump will leave or already be gone.

For one thing, Congress can’t move quickly enough to prepare for and investigate and launch an impeachment proceeding. There isn’t the time or the will.

Nor is there sufficient support from the Republican Party or Trump’s cabinet to support removing him under the 25th amendment.

It just isn’t going to happen. Move on.

Nearly being held hostage by a rampaging mob shook up a few Republican senators and Congress members and awoke some consciences. They’ll get over it, they are career politicians.

Still, most of the Republicans in Congress voted to support his claim that there was widespread fraud in the November election. Does anyone really think they will support tossing him out of office now?

Truth is truth, and facts are facts, Trump is falling apart and isolating himself, but he is still beloved and supported by many people, including many elected representatives in Congress.

The country is very much divided, and that will require lots of thought and attention. Running Trump off is not a good start, no matter how outrageous Wednesday was.

It makes sense to think about things that have happened and might realistically happen, rather than things that fuel fear and confusion.

It would also be helpful during this unprecedented and unsettling time to consider facts and, as Sherlock Holmes always said, what is probable is likely to be true.

Donald Trump will not seek re-election in 2024. His base remains supportive, but he has seriously damaged his brand and standing with his open support of the mob that attacked the capitol.

Beyond that, a new generation of mini-me Trumps – creepy and very ambitious Senators like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, and more serious established Republican figures like Vice President Pence, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and Senators Marco Rubio, Ben Sasse, Tom Cotton, and Rick Scott are already raising money and sizing up campaign staff.

Many of those people have already broken with Trump and would have no compunctions about challenging him. He doesn’t have a record to defend, unlike in 2016. The people tossed him out once, they would do it again.

In recent weeks, we have seen mounting evidence of his growing mental imbalance.

Also, Trump will be four years older, and unlike Joe Biden, the inside of his head is not calm and focused.

I believe he will continue to deteriorate, which is what almost every shrink who writes about it has written. He has to adjust to a host of investigations, lawsuits, and the life of a defeated loser stuck in Palm Beach, Florida, in a prison of an old mansion.

If his health holds, he’ll be around, but you won’t see him in the White House. Trump pretended to be a great president and wants to be called a great President. But his record makes clear that he doesn’t actually want to be a great president.

Trump will not start a nuclear war or be permitted to start a nuclear war, invade a foreign country, or otherwise seize control of the government. He has never been inclined to start wars; perhaps his greatest achievement has been to stop the endless wars that the United States has been conducting for a good chunk of my lifetime. He is all about isolating America, not expanding it.

Beyond that, the idea that he could blow up the world is an irresponsible myth, promoted by hysterics to people who promote hysteria.

Every Washington reporter – I was one – knows that whenever there is any question about a President’s motives or stability, the Pentagon puts procedures in place to block impulsive or extreme and unbalanced moves by a disturbed President.

This is practiced in drills even when the President is sane; they are certainly talking about it right now. If Trump decided to invade a foreign country or launch a nuclear weapon, other government officials would instantly be notified.

Generals also have the legal authority to refuse to carry out orders they believe are illegal or wildly irresponsible. The idea that some officer in a mountain cave would just hit a button and blow up the world is a Hollywood myth.

There is also no evidence of any kind that would support the idea that Trump is pathologically dangerous in that way. He has never moved towards genocide or mass arrests, concentration camps or murder squads, the favorite policy of the truly dangerous.

Trump is transactional, and almost certainly, a sociopath; he is not homicidal.

And he never does anything that will burnish the narrative he has created for himself, in this case, someone who has halted our endless wars, kept the “generals” at bay and saved the lives of generals and soldiers.

Yes, he will authorize the killing of a “terrorist” enemy when he can, that fits his narrative. He is also well known to be a coward as well as a germaphobe. Ending Western civilization would terrify him even more than he is terrifying others.

There are two excellent sources on Trump’s state of mind and capabilities. The best is perhaps from his niece, Mary Trump, who explained in her remarkable book Too Much And Never Enough why Trump didn’t even try to manage the coronavirus or address the civil unrest following George Lloyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis police.

Either one of those things would have been simple to talk about, and almost guaranteed his re-election. He didn’t bother to do either one.

In fact, he doesn’t address much of anything but his own image and sense of self and needs for attention and approval. A war is way above his ability; using Twitter to fire up a mob of white nationalist supporters is simple for him – he can do it all in tweets and doesn’t have to leave his bedroom.

His Twitter and Facebook accounts have been blocked, he can certainly cause trouble, but he always – always – telegraphs what he is doing. And the generals at the Pentagon hate him as much as he hates them.

The attack on the capitol should not have been a surprise to anybody. He talked about bringing his most violent and disconnected followers to Washington to block the congressional election certification for months now.

The capitol police are about the only people in Washington who missed it.

Taking their guns and flats to the U.S. Capitol and raiding Nancy Pelosi’s office was about as close to heaven as these people will ever get. Trump paved the way and made them happy.

Instead of managing coups or complex government actions like combat, and in the face of the worst loss of his lifetime, he withdraws to his comfort zones – Twitter, of course, and Fox News and several new cable channels who share and embrace his lies and conspiracy theories.

He can watch stories about himself all day and apparently does.

He rants about others, celebrates almost anyone who supports him, lies and relays false narratives again and again, and rages about the weakness of others even while demonstrating his own.

He can never, says Mary Trump, escape the fact that he is a terrified little boy. Terrified little boys do not start wars; they prey on the vulnerable and the weak-minded and hide most of the time.

The Pentagon Generals are watching Trump like a hawk; no missiles are going anywhere without phone calls to Mike Pence and other key government officials, including the Speaker Of  The House and congressional leaders.

For him, there is never any other options than being positive and praising himself, projecting strength and brilliance, no matter how false, and refusing responsibility for any mistakes or wrongdoing.

Nothing else matters, nobody else matters.

When his gang of Proudboys and devoted followers stormed the capitol, Congress took it personally. Suddenly, the lies came home to roost.

He doesn’t seem to care, but it was yet another dreadful mistake in a year full of them. if you believe he cares about what we think of him.

He doesn’t. He cares what they think of him, and they love him to death.

Mary Trump reminds us – we’ve seen the truth of it – that Donald Trump is not capable of organizing anything more complicated than a tweet or interview with a friendly reporter or cable channel.

He makes noise, frightens people, bullies them, seduces them with his certainty and entertaining skills, which many people confuse with strength. He is not strong.

He fails at just about everything he does but draw attention.

Donald Trump will leave Washington on January 19, pouting off to his castle. I am certain he will be happy to go.

He may make a lot of noise from there and cause a lot of trouble. But the Republic will still stand; it turns out that our democracy is a lot stronger than we thought it was, and then he thought it was. It turns out that we are willing to fight for it once we are awakened.

We are awake.

Beyond Mary Trump, the second-best source of understanding about what Donald Trump will or won’t do and can or can’t do is a fascinating book entitled The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists, and Mental Health Experts Assess A President, a collection assembled by Dr. Bandy Lee of Yale University.

The book is essentially an effort to warn the country that anyone as mentally unstable as Donald Trump should not be entrusted with the presidency’s life and death powers.

Trump has proven that there are many mentally unstable people in contemporary America, and they have found one another and rejoiced in having someone who speaks their language and vice versa.

But there is a difference between being mentally unstable and dangerous on a global scale. Trump pulled off a horrifying assault on his perceived enemies this week, but it was not on the scale of 911; it was not planned as well, not as murderous – no legislator died or was injured or held hostage – and not nearly as effective.

Washington is being transformed into a fortress; it will not happen there again anytime soon.

Communities across the country have been alerted to the danger, Trump’s primary communications tool has been taken from him. He seems to have neither the will nor energy to do worse in the short time remaining. He is under the biggest microscope in the world, everybody knows it when he turns on the TV or gets his hairpiece fluffed up.

Nor does he have a genuine motive. The election drama is over; there is no time or the means to create another similar situation. And he got what he wanted. To 40 percent of the country, he is not a loser but a victim.

Nor will the people around him permit him to do much damage without screaming for help and shouting out warnings. Trump’s world is one leaking sieve as he weakens and falls. And prepares to leave.

In his chapter of the book, Dr. James Gilligan points out that Trump’s real issue is not whether or not he is mentally ill – he clearly is. The issue is whether he is dangerous on the scale many people fear.

“Dangerous is not a psychiatric diagnosis,” writes Gilligan. “One does not have to be “mentally ill” as both law and psychiatry define it, to be dangerous. In fact, most mentally ill people do not commit serious violence, and most violence is committed by people who are not mentally ill.”

For decades now, America has been at war, killing many more people than Donald Trump has ever dreamt of killing. This is a function of power, money, and policy, not mental health, although some would argue with me about that.

The association between mental illness and violence is tenuous, says Dr. Gilligan. He points out that only 1 percent of the perpetrators of homicide in this country are found to be “not guilty because of insanity.”

The rest are judged by the courts and society to be mentally healthy but evil.

Sometimes, a person’s dangerousness is so obvious that one doesn’t need a shrink to spot it. Trump’s “dangerous” is right out in the open; he brags about it and displays it almost every time he opens his mouth.

In Trump’s case, we have thousands of public records, books, interviews, tape recordings videotapes, and his own public speeches, plus countless “tweets” of his numerous threats of violence, incitements to violence, and boasts of violence that he himself acknowledges having committed repeatedly and relentlessly.

I’ve read many of them this year.

The capitol’s attack illustrates how Trump is dangerous – punishing anyone who believes he is disloyal, the mark of the sociopath and inciting other people to do his dirty work.

The most revealing moment of the capitol assault was Trump’s urging his amped-up followers at a rally to get over to the capital and shake things up.

He indicated that he was going, but he never showed up. He never even tried to hide what he was doing and even blew the rioters a kiss of love as they raged through the capitol.

Hitler would have been at the front of the march up Pennsylvania Avenue and happily gone to jail.

Thanks, love ya, maybe you ought to go home now, and thanks for coming by.

According to his aides, Trump went to the White House, not the capitol, and retreated to his bedroom, watching happily as people fought for him and went after his enemies.

His cowardice surfaced Thursday afternoon. As talk intensified about removing him from office, Trump suddenly published a video that sounded like a real President, which is how we know he didn’t write it but had it shoved down his throat.

In the two-and-a-half-minute video, he called for tempers to cool (after heating them up for months), acknowledged there would be a new administration on January 20, and promised to focus on a “smooth, orderly, seamless transition of power.”

He also said serving as “your president” has been the honor of his lifetime.” I am actually sorry that he refused to be my president, or acknowledged people like me in any way.

So we know he got scared at the outrage surfacing all around him, and all over the world.

He watched cheerfully and approvingly for hours as his storm troopers terrorized the people he believed had failed to protect him, who were not 100 percent loyal, and who would not overturn the election so he wouldn’t be a loser.

I’ve been reading about Donald Trump for months now; stacks of books about him surround my desk. I am no psychic, but I have a pretty good bead on him. I’m proud of this work; it was helpful to me and perhaps to others.

It is so much better for me to understand someone than to hate them. And I love taking on challenging tasks.

Trump isn’t really that complex, and he always responds to the same things in the same way, another sign of the deeply disturbed sociopath. In his New York iteration, he was lighter and had more fun.

He wasn’t taken seriously, although he was probably seething about that.

One trait of sociopaths is that the more power they gain, the more troubled, and thus the more dangerous they become. When he won the presidency, he went over to the dark side, and that side just keeps getting darker, say the shrinks. But this might make him less, not more dangerous.

He doesn’t seem to be gaining strength to me. He is almost incoherent now.

But what people miss about Trump is that what bothered him so much wasn’t that he lost the election – he obviously hates the job and doesn’t even pretend to do it – it was the appearance of losing.

Not being seen as a loser seems to drive much of his life.

For two months now, actually longer, he almost daily warned that if he lost the election, it would be because it was rigged and was stolen.

Using every one of a President’s powerful communications skills – he is the first President to grasp the power of TV and social media  – he prepared his followers to believe the election was fraudulent if he lost and that it was stolen from him and them.

Anyone who was surprised by Wednesday’s assault on the heart of our democracy was just not paying attention.

Thus, even in defeat, his followers could still connect to him, follow him, share their sense of grievance and loss with him, if not even deepen it.

Trump succeeded. It worked.

Almost all of his followers accept and believe the election was rigged. Their support for him was never fact-driven, any more than a teenage girl’s love of Justin Bieber was anything but sensual or emotional.

It’s really the same thing, expressed in different ways for different people. If you look closely,  you can see the sensuality at Trump’s rallies. He is adored, not simply followed. He and his followers are always making love to one another, even as their testosterone almost pours out of their eyeballs.

Trump doesn’t need to attack Iran or blow up the world. In his mind, he won, he pulled it off. They got in the capitol. They were luckier than they imagined, busting into the building like that, stealing momentoes, peeing on the floor, overwhelming the stunned police.

Trump can and will say to the end of his days that he is not a loser, and millions of people will back him up. They showed everybody that they won’t take it lying down, even if they have no idea what it is.

Trump got even with the many disloyal people who refused to go all the way with him and scared the wits out of the country.  He wiped many of the few friendships he had in Washington. But sociopaths can’t make friends is the problem.

No one seems inclined to punish him or even banish him for his now treasonous crimes. No politician in history has been more rationalized and excused than our President.

A war would not be better than the assault on the capitol.

Trump got everything he wanted out of it.  Now that he isn’t a loser, he can and will now turn his attention over to his grand and dramatic departure – it will be spectacular in one way or the other – and retreat to Mar-a-Largo with 300 million dollars in the bank, his showcase wife and loyal followers all over the country begging him to come and rally with them.

Who needs a nuclear war?

I would encourage the twitchy and fragile progressives and liberals he has traumatized to consider this: Donald Trump has been defeated and failed in every possible way for the past four years and most dramatically in the past year.

He shines when it comes to seducing people and scaring everybody else.

He blew a sure-fire election, blew handling a pandemic, blew handling a troubled economy, blew dealing with racial tension, blew saving his party’s control of the Senate, blew overturning the presidential election, never got Mexico to pay for his wall, never got an infrastructure bill through Congress, never got even with Facebook and Twitter for blocking him, and never even made sure those Confederate flags keep flying over military bases.

Truthfully, he really doesn’t care about those things.

They are all just different ways of summoning the Proud Boys – they exist in many incarnations all over the country – to come to Washington and terrorize the people he has always hated and had nothing but contempt for.

This is the thing about crazy people. I know.

They don’t think the way we do, victories to us often defeat to them, and vice versa. They don’t see the world the way we do. I don’t believe Trump can stay healthy for very long, his fuses just burns too hot and too bright.

Whatever his destiny, it is not being the President of the United States. The circus isn’t going away, but it is going. If you believe in a liberal democracy, as I do, there is more to cheer than worry about.

The capitol will be fine, despite those sad and tragic deaths. Biden will take office; the big news for people who want a kinder country was the Georgia election, not Trump.

For the first time in years, it might be possible to help save the earth, support voting rights, bring health care to the people who need it,  feed the hungry, ease the suffering of the refugees,  and bring competent and honest people back into government.

There is a lot of good stuff to worry about. I’m not spending the year fearing Trump, much as I will miss him.

I will, God forgive me. He helped me find my better angel. We’ve gotten close, in some bizarre  but important ways.