All these fanciful/exotic ideas for what Trump will do after stepping down. (Assuming.) Trump leave the country? Never. His adoring fans are here. I expect he’ll go back to Mar-a-Lago, install himself in the Presidential suite and spend his final years rage-tweeting at President Biden and telling anyone and everyone who will listen how great a president he was, how unfairly he was treated, and how much worse America is now. He’ll taunt the press by claiming he’s “considering” running for office again but never will. He’ll endorse congressional candidates who will mostly go on to lose. When he dies, it will be the most strained, awkward and perfunctory state funeral in modern media history. The living ex-presidents will all attend out of courtesy but will not speak.
Obama should speak.
He should say “Don’t worry folks, I’ve seen the death certificate, it’s real.”
FTW! I would pay to see that!
“…but just in case, I have a wooden stake here.”
or
“…but I want to see the long form.”
Brilliant!
Trump will be dumped by conservatives as soon as he is out of office. They will all claim they thought he was nuts all along but they couldn’t do anything because everyone else drank the Kool-Aid. They will all make that claim and their voters will buy it uncritically.
The only way Trump stays in the game is if he can control conservative voters. If they are dedicated to him and what he says then republicans will still have to play his game.
I suspect it will be more like “Donald Who? Never heard of 'im.”
You can pretty much tell who the real conservatives are because they already dumped him. Hardly any of them were really with him ever. At least in the future we can shout down the phony conservative credentials, but there will remain a hardcore group of asswipes who stick with Trumpism. I seriously believe drastic steps are needed to rid our society of those people but they’re the only ones who would go along with treating people the way I have in mind for them.
Assuming Trump loses this year, 2024 will see a huge primary battle on the GOP side between the would-be inheritors of Trump’s mantle (Trump, loving the attention, will dangle the prospect of an endorsement to anyone who comes calling) and others promising various refutations of Trumpism. I think it’s going to be a replay of 2012 – the nomination process is going to be a clown car and whoever makes it through the end of it may be too weakened to mount an effective general campaign.
If Trump loses this year and he’s still alive in 2024, he will run again.
No way. He’ll tease the press and love every minute of the attention, but he won’t put himself in a position where he can lose again. Better to find an excuse for not running, and blame others while insisting he could have won.
Trump seems to be immune to humiliation. He just blames somebody else and declares he really didn’t fail.
Lack of attention is something he cares about. When he finds he doesn’t get as much attention as a former President as he does as a future candidate, he’ll make future candidate his fulltime career.
And there’s another big factor: money. As long as Trump is still running for office, he can hang on to all of his campaign funds. But once he officially retires, he has to close down his campaign organization. Which means he has to open the books, show how the money was spent, and give away any money that’s left.
I know he’s supposed to do this, but do you really think he will? Who’s gonna make him?
This. It’s amusing that people still think that Trump HAS to do anything.
If he loses in November, pay attention to campaign organizations. Trump2020 was incorporated (or whatever the official designation is for created, organized, reporting as eligible for donations, etc) in 2016. His rallies in various cities were campaign events. He has been campaigning for 4 years. If we see Trump2024 set up in early 2021, he’s going to spend the next 3 years continuing his rallies, and he’s going to run. If we get to July and there’s no organization set up, we’re safe.
Given Trump’s history, it wouldn’t be surprising at all if he set up a shell campaign. He’ll simply state that he’s being smart and keeping his options open and obeying the law, while doing his best to use whatever campaign money is left for self-aggrandisement.
I think you missed my point. I said Trump will avoid doing this by declaring himself a candidate.
If Trump loses, Biden will be President, so Biden’s Attorney General will not be inclined to overlook Trump’s transgressions.
Trump is not only not immune to humiliation, it’s probably his most deeply abiding fear. We saw it from the very beginning, when he sent his hapless press secretary out to insist that his inaugural crowds were, in fact, even bigger than Obama’s. An enormous amount of his cognitive energy (such as it is) goes toward protecting himself from humiliation by rationalizing failure or shifting the blame for it elsewhere.
That’s my point. Trump doesn’t get humiliated by something like that because he refuses to admit it happened.