I’ve been saying for a while that I didn’t think Trump would finish out his term. No, I don’t expect him to be impeached, and I hope the Democrats won’t try.
A health problem might do it. Trump is a walking heart attack. Or a stroke during one of his tweet rages.
But a new possibility occurred to me. It’s so Trumpian it’s downright scary.
Trump cannot let himself lost the 2020 election. He simply can’t. It would destroy him. He’d much rather be impeached, since he could spin that as partisan hatred, the stuff he thrives on.
I know there’s been crazy talk about him refusing to leave office if he loses. That won’t happen. The reverse might.
My prediction is that if Trump is obviously, hugely losing in the polls before the election he will resign. Bang. Just step down. Make Pence president and the official loser. Trump won’t care that this will dynamite the Republican party. He’s never been a Republican. He’s always a party of one. As long as he doesn’t lose, he wins.
Trump won’t be president on Nov. 3, 2020. Count on it.
He didn’t pull out of the race in 2016 when his polls were in the tank. He had adequate cover to do so. The guy fights just to fight. His narcissistic defenses are too airtight to let fear of a loss stop him. He’s probably ok with losing because the “stolen” election will create an outraged right and a prime audience for Trump TV. I’ll take your bet.
The guy’s a comPLETE L-O-S-E-R but in his mind (whatever he has of one) he’s a “WINNER” so I doubt he’ll step away on his own. Hopefully he’ll simply drop dead, first (Pence, too).
I don’t see him quitting. I thought he was one primary away from quitting all through the last election. He’ll get the nomination, the Democrats (NB: I am a Democrat) will mange to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and we’ll be stuck with Trump another four years.
The problem with your prediction is the part about “if Trump is obviously, hugely losing in the polls before the election”. This assumes a degree of voter rationality for which there is no evidence, and it’s exactly what confounded most of the 2016 election predictions and created so much surprise and consternation when he actually won. I base this on the fact that some very recent polls just within the past day or so are indicating that the public release of the Mueller report has barely moved the needle on Trump’s support numbers. Far too many people just don’t care.
Even if he resigns as you envision that doesn’t automatically remove him from ballots. He could resign right now and still legally win the nomination and general election. Once he’s got the nomination and is on the general election ballot, he’s on the ballot until he withdraws from the election. That withdrawal has to be in accordance with various state laws. It depends on the multitude of state laws how long before the election the option even exists for the party to replace their nominee. States with early voting push that cutoff pretty early. Trump resigning at the last minute still leaves him on most, if not all ballots.Given that he’s resigned before that election that leaves him facing what could be an electoral drubbing for the ages instead of merely losing.
That replacement process generally leans towards the state party organization making a choice by state laws; I’m not sure if any of them have special caveats for the President/VP ticket. Without those special provisions that means when replacement is even possible it could be literally anybody who expressed a willingness to file as a candidate with the FEC in order to take the slot on the ballot. There’s a deep, state by state, dive into election law that’s needed to even clearly frame the dynamics of what happens. Pence might get the nomination. He might not.
Color me skeptical of a prediction that relies on the election system working differently than it does in reality.
But the Presidential election is different. If Trump were to resign (and declare he would not accept the re-election if he wins), I’d assume the electors would still win and cast their votes for the VP candidate as President. I’m not sure it would matter at all who was the listed candidate.
Trump very much enjoyed running for president, even when nobody thought he had a shot. Once campaign season gets going and he is basking in the adulation of his troglodyte base he is going to be all in.
No offense intended to the OP, but if anyone thinks Trump would ever resign from anything, let alone the presidency, I have to wonder if they’ve been paying attention to this grand psychodrama that’s played out over the past few years. Not gonna happen. He will have to be dragged kicking and screaming, if he has to be removed at all.
I’m all for him being dragged kicking and screaming, but when it comes to removing this failed game show host of a president from office I think all that KFC gravy running through his veins will succeed where the American political process has failed.
His natural death in office would be a blessing. An assassination would give him undeserved martyr status and I definitely do not want to see that. Given his size (239 lb- ha ha ha ha) , unhealthy habits, and mental instability he is a prime candidate for stroke or heart attack.
I don’t see him quitting voluntarily, he will be dragged out kicking and screaming after losing the election. He may try to give an executive order suspending the results of the election and I would not put it past Republicans to keep kissing his ass like they always do. What I do expect is for him to pardon himself on the way out the door and I hope the incoming AG has the guts to challenge a self-pardon and put that fucker behind bars where he belongs. Life in prison is what he deserves, not death as again it would make him a martyr.
But… didn’t the quack that used to tend to him as well as his current Navy doctor both proclaim that he was in amazing superhuman health, health that was on a par with his superhuman intelligence, so healthy that they just couldn’t believe what they were seeing (or something like that)? I believe that Kim Jong-Un is the only other human who has ever been certified to be in a similar state of health, with metabolism so perfect that he never needs to shit.
It would be easy for him to feign ‘serious health issues’ and use that as an excuse. He does have some experience with that type of thing, after all.
Some posters have invoked the fact that Trump carried on in 2016 even though his numbers were poor to presume he would do the same in 2020. I think they overlook his differing motivations. In 2016 it was all a way to brand himself and get richer. Winning the presidency was not what he was after. Now that he has it, his problem is how to get out of it without losing.
He’s going to go right from the presidency to the courtroom. He’ll want to be President as long as possible because for some strange reason indicting a sitting President just isn’t done.
All the talk about his health issues makes me roll my eyes, because it’s just so much wishful thinking (much like the Muller report which everyone claimed was going to bring him crumbling down, while I insisted all the while that it would wind up amounting to nothing, which it did.) Trump is 72. Big, burly guys routinely make it well into their 80s. (I think to make it past 90 you have to be a little bantamweight type like my grandpa, who turned 90 last year and shows no signs of slowing down at all.) The taller and heavier you are, I think, the harder it is to get to that point. 80, though, is not such a stretch.
The fact is that if we want Trump gone, we have to vote him the fuck out. Waiting around for his health to decline is not an option.
Up until very recently, I predicted that if/when impeachment time rolled around, he would commit suicide rather than step down; now, I honestly don’t think he has the cognition to follow through on something like that.
…and then we get President Pence, even if only for a matter of months…