Assume Trump figures out he isn’t able to run in 2028 (which who knows if he will accept not being able to run again or not, or if our legal safeguards will prevent him from running again).
But lets say he realizes he cannot run. If that happens, I think he will (at least I hope he will) try to sabotage the republican party. I think he wants to feel like the republican party cannot survive without him, since that would feed his narcissistic ego. The harder the republicans fail in 2028, the more it would feed his ego.
So I wonder if he will intentionally try to make the republicans lose as much as possible in 2028 in the hopes that it makes him feel like the republican party is nothing without him.
I don’t think so. If the public overwhelmingly rejects the GOP in 2028 it means they rejected MAGA, and since Trump is MAGA, it means they rejected him. That’s not something Trump can handle. He’ll blame all the rigged elections and the radical left “Dumocrats” who wouldn’t let him overhaul voting laws.
Nahh not that he will do very much to help them either. But at that point the outcome of the election does not get decide if Donald J Trump remains in power so it will be of only passing interest to him.
The one thing that might get him to turn on the GOP is if he forces their hand by dementedly insisting he is going to run for a third term even though it’s obvious to everyone, even the GOP base that he’s not going to get away with it. If that forces the GOP to actually stand up to Trump, because their electoral hopes depend on it, then he would sabotage them. But the chances of that are remote. Not the dementedly insisting he is going to run for a third term part but the cowardly simpering fascists in the GOP actually standing up to him.
I don’t think Trump will be alive in 2028. I will be surprised if he makes it to the end of 2026 before he has a massive health event that ends his reign. But for the sake of the hypothetical, let’s say he is alive and coherent enough that the media can continue to sane-wash him.
I think yes, he will absolutely take the Republican party down with him when anyone tries to tell him what he can and cannot do. He has already established numerous times that he believes he is owed an extra term because of fraud. If he ever gives up power, he will certainly spend the rest of his life fighting off lawsuits and indictments. And those Epstein files are still out there, with his name all over them. He must die in office or else he certainly dies in jail. So he won’t go. If anyone tries to convince him that he cannot run, he’ll denounce them (as he is happy to do to anyone he disagrees with) and he will substitute his own version of reality where he can run. Or better yet, where he doesn’t have to run because of the fraud that he knows will occur and because he is owed a term and because he knows everyone is going to vote for him anyway. The Republicans will not survive this and the party itself might have to disband completely and rebrand itself as something else to wash the Trump stink off. Trump would be delighted to lock them all in with him as he burns everything down and if he is alive, I’m sure we will see it. Even in death he’s going to give them the shits for a long time because he has a lot of enablers who know exactly who he is, what he has done and who has done it to. Once that knowledge becomes public people are going to want justice. And since the Creep-in-Chief won’t be around to be on the receiving end, his lackeys will have to suffice.
Just look at how many Republicans have decided to retire rather than run again. They see the writing on the wall and they are jumping ship before it’s too late.
All this crap does is give people an excuse to sit and wait while he shits all over this country. I have been hearing for a decade now, and I don’t care to hear it any more.
Nothing can be greater than Zeus, not even the child/heir of Zeus.
He’ll endorse whichever guy in the GOP primaries who provides him with the largest/most concrete guarantee of indemnity. He’ll even deign to appear spasmodically on the campaign trail to that end. But, apart from acquiring his indemnity 45/47 doesn’t want any successor to succeed or surpass.
No, it will go more or less the same as the past 10 years. He’ll demand bribes and tribute. He’ll support whoever gives it to him, and attack whoever doesn’t. Yes, this might sabotage or damage the Republicans in this way, but it won’t be purposeful. It will be gleeful indifference, perhaps with a side helping of punishing the disloyal.
He’s really not a complicated beast. It’s true he has a few different behavior modes, but all of them lead in the same direction: extract, extort, retaliate, but extraction always takes priority, whether it’s fame or money or power.
His behavior during the Biden admin should be a clue. He was quite vocal at that time, though I think his prospects of running again capped some of the things he’d risk saying and doing. If he can’t run a third time then there will be no such constraints. I think anyone who thinks his influence will diminish when out of power is kidding themselves. Or they have some bizarrely overinflated expectation of Republicans growing a spine and standing up to him.
He’s a cult leader, he will retain the power of the cult, and he’ll be able to cow the majority of Republicans until the magical day that we’re all waiting for.
Purposefully, no. In the sense that an unpopular incumbent president always acts as a drag on the nominee from the same party, yes. (Compounded, no doubt, by the fact that Trump isn’t going to be willing to stay in the shadows and let the new guy distance himself, the way GWB did with McCain.)
Ah yes. We don’t have to worry about (whenever) ‘cause he’ll be dead from hamberders or in jail or totally bankrupted by then. I remember. Give people a break they were trying to manifest, OK?
He’s going to try to run. Laws and precendent don’t seem to dissuade him. His ‘deal’ with the DOJ to shield him and his family in perpetuity is pretty stark evidence how he feels about the law. When he runs, he will not intentionally sabotage the GOP, but he unintentionally will. His endorsements of MAGA candidates running against incumbent Republicans - especially those he feels have not shown sufficient fealty - will weaken the party, enough (I hope) that in key states and districts, the Republican nominee loses in the general election. It won’t take very many to make a big difference. The run-off in Texas today between Cornyn and Paxton may be a bellwether.
This. He will put in the effort because it means they will be indebted to him. Will his efforts have a positive effect or negative on the Republican’s chances? I don’t know. But I do know that as long as there’s something in it for him (and the Republican nominee will almost certainly promise him something major), he will put in the effort.
I know, that’s my thread. I believe Trump had a stroke in August of 2025 and since then he has been kept alive by unethical gerontologists and medical experiments, which continue with a visit to Walter Reed today:
And of course he says his health is “perfect”, explaining why this is his third trip to the hospital in 13 months.
In any case, to bring it back to the topic, I think if Trump is still alive in 2028 all he will know how to do is sabotage things and the closer one is to him, the more likely they will experience this.
