President Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 with two simple promises: draining the swamp and building the wall.  Last I looked, the wall isn't being built, based on Friday evening's Senate vote, and the swamp waters are rising.  It seems that the D.C. swamp is growing deeper, and rapidly.

How does this bode for the president's next two years and his potential re-election?  If the swamp gets deeper between now and 2020, can he be re-elected?  We are told to "trust the plan," but where is that getting us?

Many of us still hang in there, because where else can we go?  If not Trump, then who?  The Republican bench is thin.  The few making noises about running for president are themselves not at all different from any of the Democrats getting ready to challenge Trump in 2020.  Names such as Jeff Flake, John Kasich, and Ben Sasse don't inspire confidence.

Democrats are in far worse shape, with their leading contenders farther left than either Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, each striving to be the next Hugo Chávez.

Looking at the landscape before Christmas, I see a deepening swamp.  Instead of draining, the water level is rising and, at its current rate, will soon be overflowing its banks.

Michael Flynn, illegally spied upon during the Trump transition, set up by the Comey FBI, then squeezed financially dry by Robert Mueller and his merry band of partisan lawyers, is the most recent swamp casualty.  His biggest crime is being an early Trump-supporter, and for that reason alone he was set up for ruin.

As Gateway Pundit pointed out, "Mike Flynn and Tony Podesta did [the] same work for Turkey, both filed retroactively – Flynn's life is in tatters as Podesta walks free."  So much for equal protection and the rule of law.

There are clearly two tiers of justice – one for the Trump circle and another for everyone else.  There are those who are in the club, and those who are not.

There is not only General Flynn, but also Paul Manafort, on the hot seat for the crime of working for Donald Trump.  "The Podesta Group somehow managed to file forms with the federal government retroactively that were 5 or more years overdue that Paul Manafort was charged for not filing," Gateway Pundit wrote.  Unequal justice once again.

Then there is Michael Cohen.  He's a New York City lawyer, a fixer, who also had the unfortunate luck of working for Donald Trump.  Now he is headed to prison for three years.  Granted, he didn't pay his taxes, but does anyone believe that if Hillary Clinton were president now, the federal government would have any interest in Cohen, Manafort, or Flynn?

As the swamp waters rise, the drownings mount.  These three are examples, guilty of the unforgivable Deep State crime of associating with Donald Trump.  You see, it's not only about stopping Trump; it's about sending a message to anyone else in Trump's orbit to disappear, lest he be next.

It's a further message to any outsider not from the establishment club never to dare run for president and challenge the Deep State.  The goal is to make it loud and clear that Trump and his kind are not welcome – just as the KKK sent a message to blacks in the 1950s that their "kind" was not welcome in polite society.

This message was delivered in a tweet by Obama hack David Plouffe.  It's more than just ruining Trump.  It's about never letting a Trump presidency happen again.

What happened to the border wall?  Attend a Trump rally, and one of the chants is "build that wall."  Also chanted is "lock her up," but that's not happening, either.  Republicans ran Congress for two years and had ample opportunity to appropriate funds for the wall.  They managed to fund Planned Parenthood, despite campaign promises to the contrary, but couldn't follow through on the issue that got many of them elected on Trump's coattails.

Despite last-minute meetings and threats of a government shutdown, as of Saturday morning, there is no budget deal or wall funding, and the government is partially shut down, just in time for Christmas.  Congress is headed home, and now is the perfect time for the media to blame all of this on President Trump, with little pushback from any Republicans.

Score another point for the Deep State.  Few in Washington, D.C. want a border wall.  This is a truly bipartisan consensus, as Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi have the same interest in Trump's wall – namely zero.

Democrats, even in the minority, run Congress.  All they have to do is say "shutdown," and Republicans cower in fear, giving Democrats everything they want.  As Mark Levin notes, 75 percent of the government is funded for the next year, immune to any shutdown.  House Republicans, after dithering for two years, were finally shamed into appropriating money for the wall.  Too bad the Senate couldn't do the same.

Instead, the administration is giving Mexico $10.6 billion in aid along with $5.8 billion to Central America.  But Congress has nothing for the wall.  In my wistful dreams, Mexico uses the money to build a wall along its U.S. border, fulfilling Trump's promise to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it.  How Trumpian that would be, but the odds of that happening are the same as the odds that Mueller is secretly investigating the Clinton Foundation.

What else is happening in the swamp?

There is a new acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker.  He is as inconspicuous as his predecessor, Jeff Sessions.  Recent news is that he will not recuse himself from the Russia probe, but so what?  Is he in charge of the Mueller investigation, or is Rod Rosenstein still running the show?

Has Mueller been told to wrap up his investigation and issue a final report on Russian collusion, as Rudy Giuliani keeps promising?  Or is Mueller on a jihad to go after everyone in Trump's orbit, waiting until they jaywalk and then threatening them with personal and financial ruin if they don't flip on Trump?

James Comey, one of the instigators of spygate, is out giving speeches, bragging about how he skirted the law he was sworn to uphold, entrapping General Flynn.  He has forgotten details about Hillary Clinton's illegal handling of email, and that's OK.  Jerome Corsi forgets details of a two-year-old email, and the weight of the U.S. justice system is about to crush him.

FISA warrant applications, which Trump promised to declassify months ago, remain under wraps.  Tens of thousands of sealed indictments remain sealed.  Perhaps they have labels on them saying: "Do not open until Christmas (2025)."

Justice Department white hats, such as prosecutor John Huber and Inspector General Michael Horowitz, with their teams of hundreds of lawyers, were said to be bringing pain to the Deep State. Huber didn't even testify before Congress last week, as he was supposed to.  Where are their reports?  I don't see any Deep-State pain, only celebration, as they appear to be winning the game.

Trump's economy is on overdrive, and the Deep State won't abide that.  This is why interest rates have been slowly creeping north and will continue to do so ahead of the 2020 election.  No better way to put out a brisk fire than to sprinkle water on it slowly, with assistance from the Deep State Fed.

Last Wednesday, the Fed announced an interest rate hike, with more next year, sending the Dow down 720 points.  The media will dutifully blame Trump for any economic downturn, even one orchestrated by the Deep State.

Like a sinking boat, the Trump administration is taking on water.  Despite Trump's tenacity and vigor pulling the oars, even the most seaworthy boat will sink if it takes on enough water.

Maybe Trump has a plan.  Perhaps he is "pacing," as Rush Limbaugh calls it, saying and doing one thing in public while big things are going on behind the scenes.  Yet as time goes on, we see little evidence of the latter.

Trump has only his base of deplorables.  Washington, D.C. and the media are unified in their opposition with a single-minded objective to destroy him.  If Trump doesn't fight back in the manner of which he is more than capable, the swamp waters will soon flood the White House and the hopes and dreams that his voters had in 2016.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., MPS is a Denver-based physician and writer.  Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Image credit: James Ledbetter via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.