Liz Cheney warns that if Trump wins, he’ll never leave office. I’d like to suggest the opposite: he will do his dictator-for-a-day thing, then resign on the second day.
He entered the race not because he really wants to be president again, but as an attempt to avoid his legal peril. If he wins, he can certainly make federal prosecution of him difficult. But the easiest get-out-of-jail card is a pardon.
I don’t doubt that he could push through a pardon of himself, given the current SCOTUS. But it would take time for that to work its way through the courts. It would be much easier to take the Nixon approach and resign so his toady VP can pardon him.
Yes, it doesn’t solve his state cases. But getting rid of the fed cases will be a big step toward a peaceful retirement as GOP kingmaker with plenty of time to focus on fleecing the gullible.
Please, I don’t want to debate if he will win here, there are plenty of other threads for that. And apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere, I haven’t read all of the longer-running threads.
Everything about Trump indicates he likes being president, he likes the power, he wants to crush his foes with an iron fist, and he wants to do it for as long as possible. Nothing points to a day-2 resignation.
Trump gets more attention by being President than he does by not being President. And Trump gets more money by being President than he does by not being President. And Trump has a bottomless need for attention and money. If Trump could he’d be President forever. He would never voluntarily leave the Presidency.
Zero chance that would happen. He’s seen his son in law sell state secrets for billions, has tons of opportunities to enrich himself and his allies, will be unshackled from anything that held him back in his first term. The idea that he’d resign is just wild.
He gets lots of attention as kingmaker without all the stress. I don’t disagree that he loves the power. But he’s already done that, and he loves his freedom even more. I think the temptation of the magic wand that makes those cases go away, with the added benefit of no stupid reports to pretend to read, will outweigh that.
No need to resign permanently. Schedule a minor medical procedure, make VP Toady acting president for 2 hours, and have VP Toady issue the pardon that day. Then Trump wakes up, and continues wallowing in his own crapulence.
If Trump resigns as president it will only because he managed to become king. Trump wants power to bend your life to his will. That requires him to get a position above anything the US offers. Trump is not looking for a get out of jail free card, he wants your soul; for you to be so devoted and loyal to him that you live and breath to serve his purpose, and that is how you live a good and faithful life.
Yeah, there was a lot of this kind of thinking after he was first elected President – he’d hate all of the duties and responsibilities that came with the job and would be looking for the exit having had his moment of glory. But what he increasingly found over the course of his four years is that he could just slough off the duties he didn’t care for onto underlings. And didn’t need to give a shit about the stuff he was “supposed to do” or feel bound by the stuff he wasn’t “supposed to do” – what’s anyone going to do, fire him?
A family member VP is the only way it is remotely possible.
But even then — no.
While Trump has an unusual personality, he isn’t a different species from you and me. Given power, most people, including DJT, like it, and prefer to keep it.
As far as Liz Cheney’s opposite idea — third term — nix that also. My go-to example is Putin giving up the presidency after his second term. Russia is a dictatorship now, but creating one was long hard work. If Putin couldn’t do it in just eight years, neither can Trump, who is older, probably less disciplined, and stuck with a country that has a longer democratic tradition.
During his first presidency, I felt like there was a reasonable chance that he’d step down.
The longer he was president, the more that people would dig through his private and business matters, find scandals and crimes, and raise the risk that he’d lose everything and end up in jail.
As President, he’d largely spend every day having people explain to him why what he wanted done was stupid and damaging to the country. With the cabinet having to be approved by the Senate, he simply wouldn’t be able to staff himself with fellow know-nothing idiots that follow seagull management practices that protect one from ever having to become informed or take responsibility for the outcomes of bad decision making. So he has to sit there and listen to people using evidence and facts, and browbeat him into making better decisions for the country. Lame.
Regrettably, it seems that he decided that his best defense against criminality was to roll the dice, abuse his position, and see if he could scrape through by making use of the powers of his office, rather than trading for safety and financial security by stepping down. So, that puts him a position where he effectively CAN’T NOT be the President. If he loses the position and stays out of the position for any significant amount of time, he’s liable to lose everything and end up in jail.
Stuck with being President, he seemed to settle into a process of simply ignoring policy and letting others do what they want. That’s where we end up with strange results like his administration both supporting (via Giuliani) and fighting (via Bolton) Nicolas Maduro; both supporting (via Manchin) and fighting (via Fauci and Moncef Slaoui) Covid-19; breaking laws (e.g. Mike Flynn) and catching law-breakers (e.g. Rosenstein and Wray); etc.
But, we did see him adopt an alternate strategy of simply ignoring the Constitution, failing to appoint people, and digging down through the ranks to find people to act as an alternate, “shadow” cabinet. This progressively gave him the ability to avoid the ridicule of being called an idiot every day by people who knew more than him.
There’s no particular reason to think that Trump will have forgotten this lesson. He’s liable to 100% ignore Senate approval of appointees, straight from day 1 and throw things into a Constitutional meltdown.
Trump can’t not be President. I have no question on whether he’ll be there on day 2. My worry is about day 1,462.
The OP’s idea is nuts. Or wildly wishful thinking.
There is nothing advantageous to trump about resigning ever. So he won’t do it. Being president gets him more, a LOT more, of everything he thinks is wonderful. With exactly zero responsibilities, since he’s 100% willing to ignore all of them.
He likes the idea of being president but I don’t think he likes being president. But I don’t think he’ll resign because he loves power and doing so kind of makes him look like a loser. Plus he’ll have free reign during a second term to a degree he didn’t have during his first. We’re in for a world of hurt if he’s elected.
My wish is that none of us have the opportunity to be proven right or wrong. I don’t see that Trump resigning and turning it over to a Trump wannabe is any better than him staying in office. The damage has been done at that point.
You all are right that based on past experience, the likely outcome is that he stays in office, and past performance is the best predictor or future behavior. But I can’t shake the feeling that he already achieved the fame he wanted, and now he’d be happier with lower stress.