More likely they’d do something like station cops in the polling areas with orders to beat and expel/kill anyone “suspicious” (aka, anyone non-white or female), and to watch over people’s shoulders to make sure they vote “correctly”.
I gotta be honest DT, I know the usual suspects will be along at some point to tell you this is an insane and impossible idea because the rule of law or Constitution will prevent it. And yet, given all the crazy crap that has happened since 1/20/25 I’m going to say there is a better than 50% chance you have it exactly right.
Not sure of the how, but I’m pretty sure they will find a way to prevent elections in '26 and then '28.
Occupying all the polling places in blue-leaning precincts would be too inefficient. Much easier to just omit holding any elections at all.
I’ve been saying DJT is chomping at the bit to have a reason to invoke the Insurrection Act and impose martial law in blue states/cities. That could be the means to cancel elections.
Disagree. Most authoritarian states hold sham elections. My prediction is that they will weaken the oversight of elections and their results in any way they can, circulate alternative facts and narratives about the results whenever they can. Possibly they will create a federal body to “oversee” / “coordinate” elections on a national level, with the rhetoric of promoting free and fair elections, which of course will become less so.
One of the things USAID did is observe foreign elections; perhaps that is one of the skills they are trying to make sure people are less conversant with.
Yeah, and these people are generally attached to the narrative of democracy. They just don’t like the reality. So, they’ll rig up some system that hands them the win rather than abolishing elections altogether.
Trump is absolutely the sort who’d give himself a 100% “victory” and pretend it was real rather than anything more subtle, though.
My prediction: Trump will be assassinated within the year. The left is blamed. Republicans already have control of the government, and then they’ll have cause and outrage. With the useful idiot out of the way, the Real Bad Shit can start.
This could be the era of “Hey, Chicken Little! Hold my beer.”
I was hoping someone would reply and tell me what a stupid idea mine was. I got to thinking about Trump attending the Super Bowl, and wondered what would happen if someone killed him. The theories I came up with next were so horrific, I can only assume it’s the opposition’s actual plan.
Well I read your prediction post above and pretty much thought, “Yeah, that’s likely how that would play out if it happened.” So not a stupid idea IMO. Scary, yes.
I won’t say it will happen but it won’t surprise me if it does. And while the left/Dems/progressives would undoubtedly be blamed I think there are other groups who might actually try it. Yet, I’m not sure this is the place to name who I could see making such an attempt.
There’s absolutely no way in hell they’d pass up the chance to both thumb their nose at the rest of the world at the same time as insisting that everyone should follow their instructions. I expect boycotts, but anyone that does show up is going to be both insulted and lectured by one of America’s biggest idiots (et al).
The agenda will be “Climate change is a hoax” and “Vaccines are worse than viruses” and maybe “Exporting goods is evil, except when we do it: Buy American”.
I realize that these are statements rather than neutrally-framed discussion topics, but I very much expect that’s the way it will go down.
I hope it ends with New England seceding .
It’s going to end very badly for people in the 3rd world who will have no clean water, vaccinations, etc. Although China will likely step in to fill the gap. They understand that nothing sells like good will. So it will likely also end with the USA being shut out of Africa and other areas as countries turn to other sources for aid.
How is this going to end?
In tears. It’s all going to end in tears.
What we’re going to see this year is court orders being ignored and/or un-MAGA judges being forcefully removed and replaced with Cannon clones. The only guard rail attempting (for some judges) to resist fascism is the judiciary, they will be made to knuckle under or be terminated with extreme prejudice.
Inflation will be supercharged due to tariffs, but the government tracking of inflation will be suspended. In the MAGA bubble, the economy will be nothing but sunshine, lollipops, and rainbow-colored unicorns. Ditto for unemployment. DJT will take control of the Fed and interest rate will be set to zero. MAGA people will think that $10 per dozen eggs is better than $3 because 1 is a smaller digit than 3. Storm troopers will shut down any news outlet that dares suggest that the DJT regime is anything but the epitome of goodness and just rule.
Congress will grant DJT the same powers that the Reichstag gave to Hitler, perhaps after Congressmen who object will be executed.
Finally, DJT will be added to Mr. Rushmore, and the existing faces will be altered so that they give Penceian adoring gazes to the Orange God.
If they pull it off for '26, '28 is pretty much a given. Cancelling that first election is the big step, because even now, people across the whole political spectrum expect there to be elections.
But once they get that first one, the rest are easy. “Oh, we have a precedent for that now, so let’s just apply that!”
It’s just like Jan. 6 2020. No ever imagined a mob would try to stop the peaceful transfer of power, until it happened. Now, we kind of expect it, if those people don’t get their way any other way.
It’s not just an issue of goodwill, and you are correct that China will use US retreat to gain greater influence as they have been doing in Africa for the last quarter century. Although not generally appreciated, USAID is actually a highly effective intelligence-gathering apparatus which gives detailed on the ground assessment of agricultural, industrial, and sociopolitical conditions in countries where extremism can foment or regional powers like China or Iran can expand their influence in opposition of American policy. Indeed, in terms of intelligence yield and influence to prevent the expansion of extremism and terrorism, USAID is far more effective than the Central Intelligence Agency without the blowback of covert activities. USAID also functions as a conduit for epidemiological surveillance of emerging pandemic threats well as subsidizing American farmers by purchasing grain and other staples for distribution to receiving nations. So, effectively shutting down the agency doesn’t just hurt the poor people of developing countries; it harms US national security and economic interests.
Stranger
Seeing how Trump shut down a lot of resourses that could identify hot spots in his first term, and how he has now shut down pretty much all medical research in the US, USAID would be the next step to prevent bad news about a looming epidemic.
To Trump, no news is good news. He wanted to stop COVID testing because it was all bad news.
That is the most charitable interpretation of his motivation behind effectively dismantling our entire intelligence, counterespionage, and counterterrorism apparatus, not to mention putting what is at minimum a pro-Putin sympathizer in charge of the entire national intelligence community. I’ve never really bought into the conspiratorial claim that Trump is literally a Russian stooge because he is too stupid to keep his mouth shut but quite frankly he could not be doing more harm and feeding into both Russian and Chinese strategic objectives if he were actually being controlled by Putin. It is beyond galling that the slightly more than one half of legislators that make up the GOP contingent of the legislature are not calling for impeachment on those grounds alone, but here we are.
Stranger
The many soft power benefits USAID brings are well worth the 0.2% of GDP America spends on foreign aid. It’s not just that savings are a false economy. It is also that COVID cost the global economy some $15 trillion or so. Cheap insurance at the price - before going into goodwill, American farmers, scientific research, health promotion, intelligence, jobs, intelligence recruitment, identifying and influencing important government officials and foreign policy.
Sure, they probably waste some money. I’m sure many lean Democrat, but so what? Audit it first if serious about improvement. Otherwise, don’t meddle with things you don’t understand.