# Donald Trump \[what will it take to force him to resign?\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 23, 2018, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578 "2018-12-23T18:59:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/41 "2018-12-26T13:44:37Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > That’s not necessarily true. High wages and low unemployment can depress corporate profits and thus lower stock prices. It’s not completely cut and dried, but as a general rule, the stock market cares about the owners of capital and not the producers except in their role as consumers. True, though a competitive labor market also means consumers with higher confidence and deeper pockets. But I think the very recent plunges have much more to do with the raising of the target rate as well as Mnuchin’s bizarre and incompetent statement the other day. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/42 "2018-12-26T14:11:11Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > High wages and low unemployment can depress corporate profits and thus lower stock prices. Except wages are pretty much stagnant. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/43 "2018-12-26T15:04:37Z")
> [@gkster](#): > > I would love for 45 to end up in a “quaint little dachau on the Danube”, as long as it’s a little Dachau concentration camp. Which is only 32 miles from the Danube. ---
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/44 "2018-12-26T15:28:21Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Except wages are pretty much stagnant. Mm. Not quite stagnant; wage growth improved starting the second half of this year, giving some reason for optimism. It’s showing signs of slowing back down a bit, though growth remains nonzero. It’ll be … ahhh … interesting-as-in-car crash to see what happens to employment and wages as the economy enters a downturn. I’m sure if Trump gets his way and fires Jerome Powell it’ll all be smooth sailing. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/45 "2018-12-26T15:35:23Z")
‘Pretty much’, ‘not quite’… The point is that profits are going to shareholders and CEOs, and not to the people producing the products. What ‘trickle-down’ people fail to understand is that consumers don’t consume when they don’t have money to. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/46 "2018-12-26T15:38:42Z")
He isn’t going anywhere. Unless he gets it into his head that the whole of the country and the party are a bunch of ingrates who don’t deserve him. Plus if that happened he’d probably resign by tweet (not valid) and by mid morning reverse himself 'cause that’s how he rolls, calling out all the weak losers who went online to welcome the news. > [@scr4](#): > > Impeachment is technically possible, but it won’t happen unless a majority of Republican voters supported it - otherwise Republicans in Congress will have no incentive to vote to impeach. > > Even after everything that’s happened in the past 2 years, Trump has a ~87% approval rating among Republicans. It would take a **major** change in public opinion for that to drop down below 50%. The weird thing is, 60% of the Republican primary-going base voted against him at the start… but split themselves among a half dozen people variously approximating normality, and with the GOP primary system heavily weighed towards plurality winner-take all to get a frontrunner fast (and prevent the eccentric-of-the-week show… how’d that work for ya, Messrs Steele and Preibus?), he became unstoppable and a bandwagon effect set in. Now that he’s their guy, they’re all in, because they realize it’s their best chance to fill the judiciary with unapologetic reactionaries, roll back safety nets and regulation, revive anglonationalism, boost neoisolationism and in general reaffirm the point of view that it’s a world of winners and losers and if the losers suffer there is no moral burden compelling the rest of society to change that. Then again, think about this: the top Republican also-ran was Ted &^%$# Cruz, and Jeb Bush was left in the dust early. The base voters were \*not \*particularly demanding kinder and gentler compassionate conservatism this time around. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/47 "2018-12-26T15:53:57Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > He isn’t going anywhere. Unless he gets it into his head that the whole of the country and the party are a bunch of ingrates who don’t deserve him. In other words, we can expect his resignation momentarily? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/48 "2018-12-26T16:14:24Z")
> [@digs](#): > > And, did you purposely use the wrong word to point out I used the wrong word? If so, ‘philatelist’ was brilliant. If not, ironic. [del]I was just being goofy. err I mean[/del] it was totally intended as sophisticated multi-layered wordplay. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/49 "2018-12-26T16:22:36Z")
There’s only one circumstance under which I can see Trump resigning, but it’s probably not what you (the OP) are looking for. Let’s say he wins in 2020, but then the Democrats win the Senate in 2022 in a large blue wave midterm. At that point he might decide I’m tired of this and decide to resign. That’s about the only realistic scenario I see. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/50 "2018-12-26T16:45:06Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > ‘Pretty much’, ‘not quite’… The point is that profits are going to shareholders and CEOs, and not to the people producing the products. > > What ‘trickle-down’ people fail to understand is that consumers don’t consume when they don’t have money to. And just because a business is making a good profit, they aren’t going to hire more people, increase wages and lower the product cost. ---
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/51 "2018-12-26T17:02:37Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > ‘Pretty much’, ‘not quite’… The point is that profits are going to shareholders and CEOs, and not to the people producing the products. > > What ‘trickle-down’ people fail to understand is that consumers don’t consume when they don’t have money to. My point is that wage growth has occurred recently so it’s not necessarily accurate to say that wages are stagnant. This is distinct from the issue of the unequal distribution of corporate profits, as profits could remain quite high even while wages grow much faster than they have. From the perspective of a business owner, paying higher wages will never pay off _in terms of the employee purchasing more of the business’s goods._ Enipla, that’s absolutely true. A successful / profitable business has more flexibility with respect to compensation when the labor market is tight, however, and may well pay higher wages to attract better talent. (Which is why we need a healthy labor market — including disentangling health insurance from employment and offering generous unemployment benefits.) ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/52 "2018-12-26T17:26:40Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > If we had a popular vote, both candidates would have adjusted their strategies to \*win \*that popular vote. But since we have an electoral college vote, they optimize their strategies to win that electoral college vote. It’s as simple as that. Saying that the candidate with the fewest raw votes “lost” the election is like saying that a football team with five field goals should beat an opponent with four touchdowns because they had “more scores.” You play to win by the rules of the game, not by some imaginary other set of rules after the fact. To further your analogy: You have the team that won according to the rules, yay! Then that team claims that they are better at scoring than the other team. Fans and players of the maligned team point out that in fact, even though they lost the game, they did in fact get “more scores”. Reply is that, since the team won, who got “more scores” is irrelevant. Repeat ad dedium. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/53 "2018-12-26T17:32:13Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > … But since we have an electoral college vote, they optimize their strategies to win that electoral college vote. … Well, one of them did anyways. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/54 "2018-12-26T17:47:20Z")
Putin, that’s who. ---
**Author:** ![sps49sd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@sps49sd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sps49sd)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/55 "2018-12-26T18:25:39Z")
Tell him he was the greatest President ever, that noone can compare, and he should declare victory and resign for health, or spending time with family, or whatever reason. Then we’ll have Pence, who would be much more competent than Trump at getting things done. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/56 "2018-12-26T19:30:23Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > If we had a popular vote, both candidates would have adjusted their strategies to \*win \*that popular vote. But since we have an electoral college vote, they optimize their strategies to win that electoral college vote. It’s as simple as that. Saying that the candidate with the fewest raw votes “lost” the election is like saying that a football team with five field goals should beat an opponent with four touchdowns because they had “more scores.” You play to win by the rules of the game, not by some imaginary other set of rules after the fact. I think it’s more like a baseball or basketball team who has a better regular season record than their finals opponent, then wins three of the seven finals games in a blowout and loses four close games. That team did lose the championship by the rules of the game, but it would be hard to argue that the winning team was actually better. ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/57 "2018-12-26T20:44:02Z")
I can’t believe no one has answered the OP with this: Trump would resign if he thought he would benefit financially from resigning. Say things start to go badly for him next year – whether it’s from a weakening economy, Dems running the House or some other reason. When his GOP enablers start waffling, he’ll realize his Presidential brand has peaked, and that he can make more money as an outlandish outsider unburdened by even the pretense of avoiding conflicts of interest. As long as he stays out of prison, that is. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/58 "2018-12-26T21:22:31Z")
He’ll resign when the cast of _Fox and Friends_ tells him to. He doesn’t listen to anybody else. ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/59 "2018-12-26T21:46:38Z")
I don’t believe there is any chance in hell of Trump resigning. It’s possible that he will be _removed from power_, but he will have to be dragged kicking and screaming every inch of the way. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578/60 "2018-12-26T23:00:21Z")
> [@Akaj](#): > > I can’t believe no one has answered the OP with this: > > Trump would resign if he thought he would benefit financially from resigning. > > Say things start to go badly for him next year – whether it’s from a weakening economy, Dems running the House or some other reason. When his GOP enablers start waffling, he’ll realize his Presidential brand has peaked, and that he can make more money as an outlandish outsider unburdened by even the pretense of avoiding conflicts of interest. > > As long as he stays out of prison, that is. Trump “realize” anything? I agree with the “benefit financially from resigning” part, but I’d amend the realizing to “When advisors and Fox News and the Kochs and Putin all drum it into his head repeatedly.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-what-will-it-take-to-force-him-to-resign/826578.md?page=4)