Sure, if they’re following the Constitution. But what if they don’t?
I’m not saying all this will happen, but your denial that it can happen assumes that the GOP will, when push comes to shove, obey the law. And there’s plenty of evidence already on hand that they’re willing to ignore it whenever it suits them.
No. He acted within the limits of his presidential powers in all of that stuff. What is being discussed is outside of those limits…by a long degree. Certainly, if a president has a slim majority of his party in the house and senate they can do more…we’ve seen that under Biden, though we’ve also seen the limits of a slim majority under him as well. We saw that under Trump as well, who didn’t do anything and everything he wanted.
Impeachment is a totally different thing. I guess you need to define exactly what you are talking about here because this isn’t what I was addressing. If we are talking about making Trump King or giving him a 3rd term, that’s a hell of a lot different than attempting to impeach a sitting president.
Again, there is a huge difference between failing to act to impeach a sitting president, especially for what you deem controversial or politically motivated reasons, and making him a King or whatever.
Nobody would put their name on a piece of parchment saying “We declare Trump is King of America.” It’s quite easy to defend that position, because we all know that coup plotters don’t spell things out like that.
What I would expect is another Jan 6th scenario. But the participants will have learned what works and doesn’t, so they’ll have more success in creating chaos and a constitutional crisis.
Out of that crisis will emerge a proclamation loosely along the lines of: “In light of the confusing, extraordinary situation (that we created), we find it very difficult to say what controlling authority is the current executive of US government, therefore to provide continuity and stability, Trump shall serve as Acting Temporary President for so long as the current crisis continues.” (spoiler: the crisis continues to Trump’s death and likely beyond).
“Yes, we know this is patently extra-Constitutional, but these are very confusing and uncertain times. It is our position that the Democrats are threatening even greater anti-Constitutional acts if given power. Therefore, while our actions are not strictly constitutional in the outdated, traditional, CRT-contaminated sense, ultimately we know this course will produce the most constitutional outcome. And we need to inform the Supreme Court that we have all respect for their constitutional role, therefore we are not ‘ignoring’ their rulings, but rather deferring compliance until the end of the state of emergency makes it constitutionally safe to comply. We call for a Constitutional Convention to expeditiously resolve this matter.”
My point is, they can’t by fiat. If they do, then the rest of the government will shut them down. The military is not going to take sides and support them if they are clearly going against the Constitution. The judiciary isn’t either. The state governments aren’t going to either. Certainly, the Dems (or Repubs) aren’t going to just go along with one party trying to do this either. And the people aren’t going to either. No one is going to go along with an attempt to just ignore the Constitution. Hell, I think there would be a lot of pushback if one party DID get the necessary votes and support to make a single change to the Constitution…say, get rid of the 2nd Amendment or modify the 1st. And that IS within the powers of our system…it’s designed for this. Trying to do it completely outside of that? No…I don’t see it ever happening, certainly not in Trump’s lifetime.
I’m saying they don’t have a choice. It’s not like they can simply decide, by fiat, to stop following the law/Constitution. If it were that easy if a party could just do that it would have happened already.
The Jan 6 whackados had zero chance of a successful coup…there weren’t any positive lessons to learn in that cluster fuck. The only reason it got as far as it did was no one took it even remotely seriously. But even had they seized the Capital and had, by some fantasy way had all of the Republicans on their side, it still would have failed because the armed forces wouldn’t have gone along, the state and local governments wouldn’t have gone along, the judiciary wouldn’t have gone along, and whatever was left of the Legislature wouldn’t have gone along…and the people wouldn’t have gone along.
And now, we’ve come full circle, where you’ve decided to just ignore the whole previous conversation. As I said earlier:
None of that requires “amending the Constitution”, all of it at least falls far enough under “the limits of his presidential powers” for the GOP Senate to again let him skate on it, and you’ve identified nothing that could intervene successfully to stop it, absent the GOP itself suddenly waking up and saying, “No, you can’t do that”.
You need to fundamentally realize: The GOP as it currently exists does not need a legitimate rationale to let Trump do all of this. They don’t care about the Constitution, and they certainly don’t hesitate to just lie when they need to. The only rule that currently exists is, “We can do anything we want to do that you can’t stop us from doing”, period.
If Trump does try to run for a third term, there will not be a “legal” solution to this, if the GOP has the power to block that solution, the law and the Constitution be damned.
You might get lucky and have the Secret Service, the FBI, or the military intervene physically to remove him from office, but Trump will have four years to purge exactly the people in those departments who would stand up to him. We already saw him trying to do that in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Give him the time needed to do a better job, and you might not like the results.
If Congress supports it and the Supreme Court looks the other way, it would take magic to stop it.
There is always the notion in that situation that Trump supporters who are ignorant of how the system actually works (most of them?) would happily vote for Trump, thinking he’ll just do what he wants, and then the GOP would get their actual candidate as VP, and then they can blame it all on the Democrats blocking Trump’s “rightful” election, without actually fighting it too hard.
I’m reading this on my phone, so give me a break…I forgot this whole conversation. 
Ok, so we aren’t talking about making Trump King or God Emperor anymore, just having sufficient support in Congress to monkey with the election directly then posit that the USSC would just go along with this on party lines? I still say that’s a fantasy, but yes…you wouldn’t need the change the Constitution to do this.
No…now we are back to ‘you can’t do this unless you change the Constitution’. Unless you are saying that well, collectively, are just ignoring the Constitution now because Republicans say so. Which is, again, fantasy.
If the Republicans monkeyed with the election in the way you posit, then I don’t see how Trump can purge anything…basically, all you’ve accomplished is giving him a term of office he didn’t win. He still has to operate within the structure of the government, just as he would if it didn’t steal the election.
As for liking the results, I didn’t like his one term in office…I certainly wouldn’t like him in a second, whether he stole it or won fair and square. I would like it a fuck ton less though if he stole it. And that’s the thing…if the Republicans did what you posit, this wouldn’t exactly be secret. EVERYONE would know, including our allies, but most especially the people. There is certainly a percentage on both sides who are fanatic faithful, but they don’t make up the majority of citizens in this country. The military wouldn’t go along with anything blatantly unconstitutional, neither would the states or local governments.
This whole house of cards that you’ve to build here only stands up until the first gust of reality hits it…then it all comes crashing down. Could the Republicans with a large majority monkey with the election results as you are positing? I doubt it because they would immediately come under public fire. Even if they were able to calm the public down with some plausible bullshit (which I doubt), and get Trump elected/re-elected for a 2nd term even though he clearly lost it wouldn’t mean anything more than controversial presidencies in the past were a bunch of folks thought the other guy ‘stole’ the election. Certainly, it’s not going to allow Trump et al to ignore the Constitution or purge those they don’t want and replace them with folks more amenable to their wishes.
Anyway, I feel like I’m getting into broken record territory…if you guys want to continue this fantasy stuff I’ll just step out as I can’t bring anything to such a discussion but discord, and I don’t want that. To me, most of what is being discussed are clearly fantasy that ignores how our system works and ignores that real people live in the country, not puppets or folk in lockstep who will just go along with any old bullshit that one party or the other does or says.
Everything that we’ve said would need to happen for Trump to become President for Life, or whatever term you want to use, are things we’ve already seen start to happen in the lead up to and aftermath of the 2020 election.
The DOJ didn’t act to curtail any of the nonsense uncovered during the Mueller investigation.
The Senate refused to impeach even with two blatant abuses of power staring everyone in the face.
147 members of Congress voted to reject the electoral results of several states, on no factual basis whatsoever.
The GOP senate entirely flipped on the “Can a President nominate a Supreme Court Justice the last year of their term?” question, for entirely partisan reasons.
Trump purged the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, and replaced them with sycophants. Someone in that new leadership played silly buggers with the deployment of the National Guard on January 6th.
I’m sure I’ve missed a few things.
Any one of those events should be a serious concern for anyone paying attention to the health of US democracy. All of them together would have been unfathomable even just five years ago.
Go ahead and say it’s all just a “fantasy”, but it’s a fantasy built on a foundation of facts, facts unprecedented in US history. Sure, maybe you’ll ultimately pull back from the abyss, but that’s not the sure bet it would have been five years ago, and people ignoring this possibility because “It can’t happen here!” just makes it that much more likely to happen.
I disagree with your list being clear evidence there is a slippery slope indicating that this is all ‘built on a foundation of facts’ that makes it plausible, but YMMV and all that. If you think that the above indicated it could happen and that this isn’t fantasy, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Thank you for the interesting discussion. It’s always good to get others’ perspectives on this stuff and see where their thinking is taking them. 
Probably a reality show, where contestants vie for the prize of holding the crown. And each week, the loser is executed in prime time.
I think 40% of Americans would love this.
They do, if they are the ones controlling the elections and counting the votes. Dictators in tin-pot countries routinely get 95% of the vote in their “elections”. I see that happening in the near future, as Republicans are all posed to take over the machinery of the voting process at the local levels. “Wrong” votes will simply be tossed. Totals will be altered. Any win by the “wrong” party will be challenged and tossed out.
In the middle of Fifth Avenue.
Oh, there would be plenty of physical opposition. This will be called “rioting” and will be put down harshly. In fact, they would welcome physical opposition, because this would give them the excuse they need to paint the opposition as violent thugs who are fighting the government and must be stopped. ANTIFA! SOCIALISTS! They are coming for you! YOU ARE UNSAFE UNLESS WE CRUSH THEM!
Quoted for truth.
The infuriating thing about “it would never happen” argument is that it’s so intellectually lazy
If the worst doesn’t happen, there’s plenty of time to mock the Chicken Littles who counseled caution. But, if worst does happen, there will be no reckoning for the opposing position. Everyone will be reacting to the crisis, and the least important conversation on anyone’s mind will be “I told you so.” We just move onto forecasting the next worst-case outcome (and those same guys will be telling you it will never happen).
So if you want to win internet predicting contests, take the side of the ostrich sticking his head in the sand. He doesn’t have to do anything or admit anything, he gets to look calm and reasonable, and when everything goes in the toilet, nobody’s looking at him anymore.
This is correct. In fact, based on the information that’s come out in the past week, we can confidently infer that this is what the coup was supposed to look like. The rioters were never supposed to storm the Capitol and menace Nancy Pelosi. They were supposed to tangle with Antifa, which would have been the pretext to deploy the National Guard and other security forces, which would have led to a 9/11 type environment giving lawmakers cover to go along with things that would have otherwise been risky.
But it didn’t happen. The rioters had nobody to tangle with, so they invaded the Capitol. The National Guard didn’t see the street battles they were told to intervene in, so they stood by and waited for orders. Fox News hosts didn’t know what to do, so they just ran with the prearranged Antifa story (while they were frantically texting Meadows to get Trump to stand down.
That was the real plan. Had Antifa actually showed up, then Mike Pence might have had the nerve to throw the count, and in the dust and chaos, enough lawmakers may have gotten on board to make it work.
The next time, there will be a Republican VP who will do what Pence didn’t. It will be part of his vetting process, it will likely be in the public record. Regarding Antifa, someone in Trumpworld will work out that detail, whether it means crafting a plan that doesn’t depend on Antifa, or figuring out a better approach to provoking a response. They didn’t fail by much, and they will try again.
You know what? “King Trump” could actually work.
In many countries there is a separate head of state and of government, with the former role often being largely ceremonial.
So…Trump becomes King. All the people whose understanding of the world comes via facebook and fox can go worship him. He can say he’s #1 all day long without having to do any actual work, which was always his desire.
It also makes the “deep state” rhetoric simpler: he can just complain about the actual government.
With the disgusting clown show happening at the head of state level, maybe government could be allowed to become boring and bureaucratic; and so essentially free to focus on actual legislation.
I agree it sounds far fetched. Has it ever happened before? In any country?