This quote is the latest of many in the same vein. But as far as I know, Trump can’t just not leave. If he loses the election, come January 20th, a new president gets sworn in whether he likes it or not. He may (or may not) get his more fanatical followers to do some dumb shit but what is all this scared talk of a constitutional crisis? Please explain it to me as if my advancing age has dulled my facilities because I swear I’m dumber than I used to be.
It’s not about not leaving. He can delegitimize the election to 40% or so of the population.
He can fuss and scream, but at noon on Inauguration Day, Secret Service will physically drag him out the White House.
11:59:00…Oval Office: Lead Secret Service agent glances at his watch. “Mister President, in one minute’s time, your presidential term will officially cease. Please follow our lead to the helicopter waiting on the lawn.”
Trump sits defiantly at desk, arms crossed
12:00:00…“Mister Trump, as of now you are officially ex-President. Please follow us to the helicopter. This will be your only warning.”
No response
12:00:18 “Okay fellows, everybody grab a leg or an arm.”
** sounds of brief physical struggle **
It’s probably better understood if you think about it as a process that is already well underway, rather than something he’ll do in November.
It’s like, you know how he keeps doing things, and everybody says “ahh look at this fucking guy, this is awful,” and then he gets away with it, because it turns out that to actually do anything about it, the American people would need the cooperation of somebody who is just on Trump’s side and doesn’t do anything? It’s more of that.
There are wild but not completely impossible scenarios where Trump is claiming victory after the election, and at least a significant contingent of people who matter are actually on his side. Without getting into all the details of those, it’s very transparently something they’ve been thinking about, so they have some contingencies already worked out. And it’s already a fucking mess, with the state of the USPS and the barriers to voting that are already in place, so I think at this point it’s more likely than not that he won’t go “quietly” as compared to every other losing incumbent in history.
The important takeaway, I think, is that people who point to the fact that if he loses, the rules say that XYZ will happen, are very bigly missing the fact that there have been a lot of those predictions made already about the Trump presidency, and they’re usually wrong, because they are premised upon a functional / non-captured government.
I’m hoping that along with the kicking, there will be much screaming.
What’s stopping him from having his (and it is his; not ours) Justice Department proclaim massive irregularities, seize ballots, and arrest state Secs. of State, electors, and even Biden and Harris.
It’s been suggested that was one of the main reasons for pushing Amy Coney Barrett through so fast. Not that they would have waited until after the election if her getting a seat wouldn’t have made a difference, but having the SCOTUS leaning that much further right will help his cause if/when it comes down to that.
In these scenarios there is doubt that Trump actually lost, which I guess could be a thing as it has happened in the past (I’m thinking Bush v Gore). But if Gore had won the court case, Bush would no longer have been president.
So my question now is: Who counts the votes and declares a winner?
You can be certain, right now, October 19, there will be the requisite “doubt” that Trump actually lost. That’s the world we live in now. You don’t have to have the doubts, and I don’t have to have the doubts.
Trump and William Barr and Mitch McConnell will have them for us. As far as who counts the votes… yeah, that’s where we get into it. I would recommend you have a look here or here for some specific discussion, but my view on it is a little broader.
Trump is a big baby who has managed to get himself to the point where he’s now the president. He’s going to do what a baby does, and there’s no relevance to “norms” or “rules” when it comes to what he’s going to do. It won’t come down to any kind of clever scheme that comes from a deep reading of procedures and precedents and bla bla. He’s going to try to whine and scream and strong-arm his way into what he wants. He won’t get it if the systems and the people are strong enough to resist it, but he will if they aren’t. I don’t think the specifics really matter, because let’s be honest. If Barr files the most hacky, transparently fraudulent petition ever to the Supreme Court, and calls it “a writ of Deep State interference,” and the Supreme Court says yep, that’s real now, you’re the president, then honestly what else is there? Just a crisis, and some sort of conflict.
No matter how many layers down you go, you’re just going to eventually find a rule. And what does he give a shit? He’ll break it if he gets help doing it.
The debacle, if Trump loses is going to follow the election and end on inaguration day. If that happens, I expect it to get plenty ugly. You-ain’t-seen-nothing-yet ugly. I see lots and lots, really lots of ballots being contested and flat out rejected.
As far as not going quietly:
-he’s already alleging massive voter fraud. I don’t see why that would end if he loses (no matter by how much.) The question is, who will he be appealing to, and what will be their response. Will he be so crazy as to directly appeal to his supporters to take up arms? I dunno. Or will his appeal simply be attempted court challenges. And how will the judiciary respond? I dunno.
-he has plenty of opportunity for mischief-making between election and inauguration, in terms of executive orders, pardons, just plain irresponsible and inflammatory statements… How far will he take it and how lasting will the effect be? I dunno.
-if he loses and is out of the White House, what type of influence will he continue to have - re: the public, AND the Repubs? Hopefully little, but I dunno.
I forget if I picked this up here or off of Facebook (I’m about 90% sure it came from here so one of you needs to step forward and take credit because I forget).
This is how I hope it goes down at 11:55am on January 20th, 2021.
Spoiler Alert, it’s the scene at the end of Fargo when Jerry Lundegaard is getting cuffed and arrested.
That’s probably true, but let’s assume that Bush had the support of 90-95% of his party even after exhibiting pretty disqualifying behavior and telling said voters - not millions but tens of millions - that if he loses, it could only mean that there was rampant election fraud. Remember: 80-90% support of the party, which means the nominee’s voters are also probably voters that members of congress have to beg for support - and beg for forgiveness later if they go against their will.
Trump can’t just declare on election night that he’s not leaving; the seeds for that outcome have to be sown and fertilized in advance, but that’s exactly what he’s trying to do now. He’s doing everything he can to declare that there are problems with mail-in votes. He’s trying to get party loyalists in states to consider bucking the popular vote if they’re in a position to do that. It’s not like he’s going to lock the doors and barricade himself in the White House - he can’t just do that. But he can cast doubt on the election, which is fraudulent and in violation of popular will without a clear and compelling case to justify his concerns.
He’s already been doing that for a while. He’s been asking 50,000 supporters to form an “Army For Trump” to act as poll watchers. I saw an article a few hours discussing how local police departments are going to handle armed ‘poll watchers’.
I can’t say what will happen after the election, but I think a lot of voters will see armed Trump supporters at their local polling places, likely attempting to intimidate Biden supports into not voting.
Maybe everyone that’s planning to vote for Biden should wear some MAGA gear to create some confusion.
I’ll do almost anything to make sure my vote is counted…but not that.
To risk being a mansplainer:
The formal electoral vote count is on January 6 at a joint session of Congress presided over by the vice-president.
The good thing is that Donald J. Trump has no statutory role when it comes to vote counting.
The bad thing is that Mike Pence is, so far, a toady.
See:
Make sure it’s pirated MAGA gear. Wouldn’t want them making an honest buck from the trick.
So in the “Trump doesn’t go quietly” scenario, what role would McConnell and the GOP play?
Well, again, it depends on whether you’re asking what’s traditionally supposed to be true, or what could be true. The role of the Senate and the House are supposed to be that after all the votes are collected, they meet and open the certificates and papers, and their appointed counting-people do the official count.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that the rules for this are a clusterfuck:
The law has been criticized since it was enacted, with an early commenter describing it as “very confused, almost unintelligible.”[2]:643 Modern commenters have stated that the law “invites misinterpretation,” observing that it is “turgid and repetitious” and that “[i]ts central provisions seem contradictory.”[3]:543 For example, one key ambiguity in Section 4 (now 3 U.S.C. § 15) involves a situation where multiple slates of electors are sent from a state, and the House and Senate cannot agree whether the law requires the slate certified by the governor to count, or requires that no slate should be counted.[4]
So, their role, to put it bluntly, would be to ratfuck everything in the way that they have been doing thus far. And there is way more opportunity out there for them to do this than you would think if you’d only been listening to, for example, Congressional Democrats for the past few weeks. None of these rules have ever been tested by someone with these kinds of fascistic strongman tendencies. It’s a little bit of a fool’s exercise to try to “game it out,” as my DC friends like to say, because all it takes is one ambiguity to be exploited in bad faith to completely cripple an institution. If a McConnell-Pence Senate has anything in front of it that they can use to say “we have a genuine Constitutional question about what to do,” well, Donald Trump has already told us that’s why he needs his justice confirmed.
This article puts it well. (The Atlantic gives you a few free articles before asking for more, will summarize if paywalled.)