He loses the 2020 election, and becomes the most annoying ex-president ever with a hyper-active Twitter Finger and a martyr complex.
The Democrats nominate an unelectable candidate, Trump wins a second term, and you get four more years of constant impeachment fever before he leaves and begins his reign of Twitter terror.
Trump dies in office or has such severe medical issues that he is forced to resign. Or, he walks and talks himself into a political corner then his ‘health forces him to resign’ rather than admit he failed at something.
What won’t happen is Trump refuses to hand over power, or declaring the election invalid, or any of that nonsense. He can’t do it even if he wanted to. He is surrounded by people who dislike him and distrust him, and the minute he even threatened to do such a thing in private it would be leaked and everyone would go insane.
Trump is a weak president in that he is surrounded by people who will not let him step an inch out of line without blowing the whistle on him.
I wanted to vote for the first option but “leaves on his own terms” didn’t sound quite right. Dragged out kicking and screaming after losing in 2020 would be more fitting.
I don’t see him being removed from office (unfortunately). I do think he’ll lose the 2020 election (I certainly hope he does) but I don’t think he’ll go quietly (like normal people do) whether it’s in 2021 or 2025.
I think you need to separate out “Trump refusing to leave office,” and “Anyone going along with him,” into two different probabilities. The former is, I think, extremely likely. The latter, not so much. If Trump loses in 2020, we’re pretty much guaranteed to regular Tweet rages about how the election was “stolen” from him, starting in November, and continuing on until the day he finally dies.
His comforting (for the US) departure will be to die in office.
Well, not so comforting if Pence replaces him.
But it beats a raw military takeover.
The scary part is, how does he go, and helped by whom?
A ‘soft’ coup will have him suffer a stroke or whatever, helped by a subtle chemical or laser beam. A ‘hard’ coup will see him (and several minions) die tragically in a plane or limo crash, or fall from an open window, or eat toxic cheeseburgers.
What is worse: a flagrantly treasonous POTUS, or a military coup removing him?
(Don’t bring up Deep State. If such existed, he’d never have grabbed the Oval Office.)
Please explain how a competent, nearly-omnipotent Deep State conspiracy beholden to a nefarious Obama-Clinton-Podesta-etc cabal would allow critical state vote counts to go for DJT, thus giving him the White House. No wait, don’t bother. I’m not religious.
He doesn’t need any help. The guy is a walking heart attack waiting to happen. He’s old, he doesn’t exercise, he’s obviously hot tempered and volatile, and he eats worse than I do, and I’m notorious for my bad diet. We don’t need any CT to see him just die one day, and I seriously doubt anyone is going to try and off him in that way.
There isn’t any Deep State…it’s total bullshit. He got the Oval Office because he was able to manipulate ignorant people to vote for him on the promises of bringing good, high paying jobs with great benefits and low skills back to the US, to revive our coal industry which was being killed by liburalz (instead of the market), to get rid of dirty immigrants and illegals and make Mexico pay for the wall, to make China pay for stealing our jobs (instead of all the real stuff they did and do), to hammer North Korea and Iran and bend them to our will, etc etc. And people fell for it. No CT necessary.