Last week's column predicted that the two subordinates everyone assumes will be competing to receive Donald Trump's stamp of approval, and hence the GOP nomination for president, Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will ultimately fall out of favor, not so much because of their deficiencies but the sheer impossibility of remaining on good terms with such a treacherous, mercurial sponsor.

The left always compares Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler, but the more apt comparison has always been to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Not in the sense that Trump is remotely as bloodthirsty or tyrannical as Stalin was (and certainly not a communist), but there are similarities in terms of personality and tendencies, in how both constructed political fiefdoms centered around their whims and preferences and ruled those fiefdoms through fear and retribution.

Just as Stalin sought absolute authority ("totalitarianism") and demanded complete loyalty, Trump's desire for absolute authority and complete loyalty within the MAGA movement ("I am MAGA") makes it difficult for him to pass the torch to any conventional politician, including Vance or Rubio; to the contrary, he would seem more likely to try to humiliate and diminish them for his own amusement (as Stalin routinely did his acolytes, who lived in constant fear of his capriciousness and........

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