The current makeup of the House is 219-213 with three vacancies. That means that the Republicans can’t afford to lose more than three seats and keep the majority. They’re likely going to lose several dozen and there’s no amount of running to the courts and yelling “I declare fraud!” that can prevent that.
There is no guarantee they will lose several dozen seats in 2026. People are stupid and in spite of recent events, MAGA has not lost its appeal to millions.
As I don’t have a crystal ball it’s always possible I’m wrong and you are right. Frankly, I don’t see it happening.
A quick search reveals the absence so far of the term “martial law” in this thread.
I think the Republicans have lost interest in “winning elections” as the primary strategy for remaining in power. They’ll use it when it looks like the most effective route, but if it starts to look blocked to them? They’ve seized enough of the levers of power to do whatever they decide to do, get other branches they also control to say “that’s legitimate”, then stare down the rest of us, like what YOU gonna do about it?
It’s not feasible. The military isn’t big enough for an armed takeover of the states. Not without starting a draft and rationing and rationalizing heavy industry and the government taking more control over the economy than we’ve seen since WWII, and Trump and the Republicans are nowhere near popular or competent enough to implement such a thing.
Thank you for saying that. I do tend to visualize worst-case scenarios and then think that, under the current political situation, that’s what we could be staring at. I’d sleep better thanking they can’t go this route.
I meant to address this. He won’t be running as a candidate. He’ll be running as a 2-year incumbent. With the full force and effect of the propaganda machines at his back. That’s a very different thing than running just as Schmoe Candidate – and why I believe it could be successful.
Much smaller and weaker militaries have forcibly taken over nations.
Our military struggled to maintain control of Iraq with 1/10th of our population. Just trying to occupy New York and LA would push the Army to its limit and you’d be looking at massive civil unrest, desertion, defection, and mutiny that would tear the military apart and degenerate into a civil war.
And a far smaller force than the whole US military, and without the willing help of the local police and much of the population, and with a much less passive population than the US. And the people originally in power were removed or killed, so to be valid your comparison would have to start with Trump having the Democrats imprisoned or executed and the widespread bombing of American cities.
I’m aware of your longstanding belief that the entire Republican party and every single soldier and LEO and other person to ever don a uniform in this country is a fanatical Uruk-Hai killing machine that dreams of murdering brown people for Jesus and will slaughter innocent helpless civilians by the millions the minute they’re given the order.
What we’ve actually seen is that the people available to Trump for his “crackdowns” are incompetent boobs who can be chased off by grannies in pajamas and hipsters in inflatable frog costumes. The idea of Trump imposing nationwide military rule and succeeding at it is pure fantasy.
Tell that to all the people who have been rounded up and imprisoned and/or deported.
Warning for two poster who can’t stop hijacking threads.
You will only post in this thread if you can stay on topic.
It is one thing to say that there is a big danger of such drama – bigger than it has been since 1876 (Hayes-Tilden). It is another thing to absolutely predict such drama.
I can see the Republicans making a real effort to keep Trump from being the 2028 nominee. The way to do it would be for a name-brand Republican, like DeSantis or Cruz, to declare as a candidate right after Trump says he isn’t running (something he does off and on).
As for Republicans removing Trump from the presidency during this term, I think most of Trump’s cabinet would rise up against this.
On the contrary, it’s far less drama than imposing martial law or trying to thread a needle of untried, untested methods.
We have in fact used the 25th Amendment, most notably when Nixon was impeached and voluntarily resigned from office. Trump would not voluntarily leave as Nixon did, but it’s a small procedural step to involuntary removal, all done by the Senate. Congress could impeach (House) and vote for removal (Senate), no cabinet required. Many of Trump’s cabinet aren’t even legitimately appointed. They can “rise up” all they want, and it will have the same effect as lawyers being illegally appointed to prosecute James Comey. None.
This is in fact the least radical, controversial or oddball way to slip Vance into the presidency to get a 2-year head start as running as an incumbent – something neither Cruz or DeSantis can do.
Only indirectly so. The 25th wasn’t used (or, AFAIK, even threatened to be used) to directly remove Nixon from office.
But, the 25th had made it possible for Nixon to name a new vice-president (Gerald Ford) when Spiro Agnew had resigned the year before – without the 25th, the VP office would have been vacant, and had Nixon left office without a VP, presidential powers would have been transferred to the Speaker of the House, Carl Albert, who was a Democrat.
It’s believed that the fact that the presidency would remain with the GOP if Nixon left made it more palatable to Republicans to press the case against him.
I have some minor quibbles about the combination of these points. Oh, not the generalities, it’s very plausible - but it only seems to work if we’re talking about Trump being gone from social media and/or other communication. Because if still able to communicate (however poorly) Trump being Trump would happily torpedo Vance and any others who were a part of pushing him out of power.
Telling his cult to stay home, or do a write-in for him (tickle his ego!), or what have you. Pending a sudden health condition that renders him fully vegetative or dead, I just don’t think that he could be counted out of influence even if it’s only say 10% of his MAGA base (say 3% of all total voters). Yeah, the Republicans can get a LOT done with the right leadup, preparation and suppression, but Trump’s secret sauce is also toxic to their own base if he’s there to direct it.
Note - I’m not saying (or even says Aspenglow’s saying!) that the Republicans/MAGA will secretly off Trump, but any solution that involves removing him from power needs to come with a Golden Parachute so enticing that Trump stays bought, and I’m not sure there is one.
An alternative scenario, is if they instead decided suddenly that their last 7+ years of obstructionism on his behalf were because they were just “misled” and impeach and imprison him, that would take him out of easy circulation. Still likely to alienate the “Only Trump” voters though. But it may be an easy (or easier) way to work on the pivot to Vance as a “Trump, but without the baggage” option.
OTOH, as pointed out upthread, he’s losing people including his former MAGAfans like MTG, and a lot of his actions smell vaguely of weakness/scrambling. The GOP may well be seeing the calculus differently than I am. I do not deny OP’s premise that they may, finally, find that Trump is just too toxic, random, and easily led by the last person to get his ear to continue to tolerate.
Thus the alternate scenario I mentioned.
IMHO the problem with this scenario is that Democrats will realize what is going long before it gets to the point of actually voting for impeachment and conviction. When that happens, they will likely insist on impeaching and convicting Vance along with Trump, which would put Hakeem Jeffries in line to be POTUS. At that point, Republicans would have to shelve the idea.
All true, and I appreciate the detail. But the point is, it has been used, and while not for this specific purpose, precedent has been laid. That’s much easier than charting a whole new course, where outcomes are far less certain and more likely to lead to violence. I don’t think Republicans are opposed to violence – except to the extent it could be used on them. And trying cute stuff could certainly have that effect.
When Trump was at his apex, I do think Republicans had to be far more careful to not poke the Insane Clown Posse bear of his supporters. But a year into this second term, the ardor has cooled a lot. He has a hard, inpenetrable knot of supporters who will rage about anything done to remove him, and a small segment of those are willing to go out and commit violence on his behalf if it is done. But I think the majority are keyboard kommandos who will piss and moan and roar – but little else. Just as they did little whenever Trump exhorted them to come out in large numbers to intimidate New Yorkers or Floridians during his arraignments and other court proceedings.
And let’s remember, quite a number of his “supporters” on social media were recently revealed to be nothing more than foreign bots and actors – something I’ve long suspected was the case. So Trump could try to torpedo Vance, but I think it’s much less likely to work now than, say, 5 years ago.
I think Trump’s true level of support is regularly overestimated, especially if the true Masters of the Universe (Musk, Thiel, Leo, SCOTUS and many more very monied interests) throw their full weight behind getting rid of Trump and inserting Vance – something exactly like you posit here:
Clearly they will need to put their fingers to the wind to determine the most sanguine approach, but they have a few at their disposal.
In any case, I wouldn’t trust Trump to abide by any terms of an agreement requiring him to stay bought. As you point out, there probably isn’t one. He lies more easily than he breathes.
This is a really good point, and the reason I wanted to discuss it: To see where the pitfalls for Republicans might be. It does make more sense from the Democrats’ point of view to force Republicans to prevail with Vance in a primary rather than just handing him the presidency.
I don’t personally see either Cruz or DeSantis as better than Vance in terms of popularity. And I just don’t see who else they’ve got who would be more popular with the MAGAs or Republicans in general.
My Speculation About How Republicans Will Run the 2028 Election is that they will run it the way they are trying to run today’s election in Honduras.
Trump interfered with the election by making threats as to what would happen if his preferred candidate lost.
Trump tried to walk over opposition party messaging with a high profile pardon promise.
Election day goes OK – No major voting problems were initially reported by electoral authorities..
Then, if Trump’s preferred candidate does not win, we see a effort to reverse the legitimate election results that comes close to success, even if it fails.
Whether what I wrote in the last sentence comes true, in the Honduras election, we do not yet know. Later this week we’ll see.
This will indeed be interesting to watch and learn the outcome. Good post, and worthy of note. Also to see how Trump handles it, irrespective of the outcome.