In the (likely) event that Trump loses in November I think it’s safe to say he will be extremely bitter and will lash out at the country that doesn’t want him any more. One of my biggest fears is he loses in November and immediately starts issuing executive orders that overtly serve his personal interest. Additionally I believe he will likely go on an unapologetic pardoning spree of personal acquaintances up to and including trading presidential pardons for personal favors and post-presidency business deals.
What types of protections are in place to prevent him from spending his last 2 months in office doing this?
Can on incoming President simply reverse all previous executive orders? Could Biden make this threat after election to castrate Trump?
Will the GOP finally abandon him and step on his throat once he’s officially voted out of office and he is of no use to them anymore?
What can be done to protect classified information that Trump has certainly seen? My understanding is that once he’s out of office he will no longer have any authority to declassify information at his leisure. Can he be prosecuted if he “slips up” once he’s out of office and tweets classified data?
Can anything be done to prevent wholesale pardoning of family friends and business partners?
I feel like all of these are very real, and likely to happen. What is being done to limit the damage?
During the last days Nixon was in office the Sec. of Defense told the generals to check with him if Nixon tried to bypass the Secretary to launch military action. the same might happen again this year. Nixon was drinking a lot during those days.
I read somewhere (don’t have a cite) that during Nixon’s last days, in addition to the above, the guy with the football no longer accompanied Nixon everywhere.
My concern is that when Trump walks out of the White House, he goes directly to the airport and flies TrumpAir directly into Putin’s arms with as many secrets he can carry on his phone. All to save his worthless orange hide from the prosecutions that he knows are queued up and waiting for him.
I think it’s a fifty/fifty shot. On the one hand, Trump might pardon everyone. But I think it’s equally likely he will blame everyone around him for his defeat and decide that they deserve to go to prison and pardon nobody but himself.
I wouldn’t be so inclined to worry about this for a few reasons:
I don’t think Trump is technologically savvy enough to turn a phone into a portable hard drive.
I don’t think anyone, even the POTUS, can just plug a phone into a White House computer and produce secrets from it.
I don’t think Putin likes Trump except as a useful idiot.
I am reminded of at least one Fox News interview where Trump called in and just kept blathering endlessly, to the point where it got awkward for the hosts who had better things to do but couldn’t figure out a way to get Trump to shut up. Trump quickly wears out his welcome even in friendly territory. He wouldn’t last a day in Putin’s Russia. He’d say something stupid about Putin or Russia or both and he’d find out that in Moscow, McDonald’s hamburgers are made with polonium. “Da, American burger keep you warm for a day. Putin burger keep you warm for the rest of your life!”
I don’t necessarily think that Trump will go straight to the Airport and fly to Moscow as soon as he’s done, but the fact that this is a non-zero possibility and that if it happened it would only mildly surprise the world and not shock it beyond all belief…is no longer in itself surprising.
He’s got to go somewhere though, right? There’s too much legal jeopardy here…both civil and criminal. Whether or not you think he’s guilty or liable, or whether it’s a completely unjust abuse of the system, courts are in his future here in the USA.
What do you think, does he stick it out and fight? Or bail to a luxury penthouse in say…Dubai?
Putin doesn’t need to host Trump at dinners in order to allow him to live in a Moscow condo. You cannot buy the kind of publicity it would yield Putin if he were to have a former American president his permanent “guest”. It would be trivial for Putin to ignore and isolate Trump from Russian controlled media and restrict his internet access, essentially putting a golden muzzle on Trump. And Trump doesn’t have to turn his phone into a drive; All he has to do is take pictures of his PDBs and various other secret reports and briefings that land on his desk. That alone would be worth the trouble for Putin having to put up with Trump for a few years before Trump’s eventual death, of natural or assisted causes.
I almost think it would be worth Trump avoiding facing justice in America if he were to spend the rest of his worthless life as Putin’s forgotten and discarded puppet. (Of course, the rest of the Trump clan shouldn’t get off so easily and likely will not.)
It’s possible Trump ends up in some other country than Russia with or without the assistance of Putin. The one thing that I don’t see Trump doing is remaining in the US and spending the rest of his life facing indictment after trial after embarrassing defeat. No matter how much Trump relished legal battles in the past, this will be something much worse than he’s had to face. He is far too big of a narcissist and coward to face the consequences of his worst actions.
No foreign government except maybe Russia is going to have much interest in hosting Donald. He will be in no position to do anything for them in return. Perhaps Putin would revel in the propaganda value of hosting a disgraced former president but other than that, I can’t see where he has any value.
What I worry about is that the DOJ will honor a self-pardon and not challenge it in court. I think it’s an open question about whether a president can self-pardon. You know he’s going to do it on the way out the door, but I’m not sure how the Supreme Court would rule on a challenge to a self-pardon.
I hope that Biden has a team that will review every single executive order issued by TRE45ON. Every single one should be reversed, take the time to do it right and word them to stand up to any challenge. Donald’s term needs to be obliterated from the official record with extreme prejudice.