The impossibility of impeachment and removal has been addressed above. Even if that was overcome, the 22nd amendment provides that, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”
In the hypothetical where Speaker Trump ascends to the Presidency via impeachment and removal after January of 2023, he would be eligible to be elected President one more time. I suppose there are shenanigans you could try to pull, like making him Speaker again and removing the next elected Prez and VP via impeachment (therefore allowing Trump to become president without being elected).
I would actually love to see that (from a safe distance). McConnell has tolerated Trump because he is a useful idiot, and controls the other useful idiots that vote his party into office. But if Trump made a move into McConnells personal fiefdom , it would be Thunderdome, armageddon and world war three all rolled into one. Brain vs Brawn. The march of the morans vs the Master tactician and manipulator. Two men enter one man leaves. Hopefully they would destroy each other and take the rest of the GOP with them.
Indeed. Those relying on “it can’t happen here” and even on “the Constitution forbids it” are living in a fool’s paradise.
Authoritarians are not constrained by Constitutions or by Senate Norms or by any of the other supposed guardrails. During the Trump Interregnum, we saw those things violated again and again—and that was a training-wheels period for would-be American autocrats.
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Funny how often the ‘THERE’S NO WAY!!!’ arguments tend to ignore those four little words (“of the members present”).
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There’s been talk about a recent speech Trump gave (via video) for a rally in Wisconsin, in which he barely opened his eyes—this source is an annoying site, but it’s the most complete report I could find:
Right, so all they have to do is win a majority in the House, convince McCarthy to strep down, elect Loser Donald Speaker, win all 34 Senate races, convince at least four Democrats to not bother showing up for the impeachment trial, and get their bloc (including the seven Republicans who voted to convict Loser Donald) to vote unanimously to convict (twice), and Donald gets to be president again.
There really isn’t a path for impeaching Biden that has any realistic chance of happening, but that doesn’t preclude bad things happening if Trump were to actually try to get into Congress. The issue would not be that he’d have power NOW, as Biden would still be able to veto anything and they couldn’t override (even if they win a majority in both houses.) The issue is that the Speaker position could force the Republicans to get in line.
To me, I’m more concerned about Republicans winning either house at all, because it makes a lot of things basically impossible, making it easier for a Republican to win the White House in 2024. If they’re still in Trump-kissing mode, that’s a huge problem. If they’re past that but run a slicker version of Trump, that’s a huge problem.
Trump would make those things worse, but they still need to happen first. Stop them, and we don’t need to worry about stopping Trump.
Plus anything Trump does now to make the 2022 race about him has the advantage of helping bring out Democrats and anti-Trumpers to vote in higher numbers.
And you’re missing the “of the member’s present” clause:
House and Senate both flip to GOP.
House elects Donald Speaker, impeaches Biden and Harris.
McConnell coordinates with his caucus, calls the Senate into session at 1:00 am with no Democrats present. Immediately calls for a vote on the impeachment and 100% of the Senators present vote Aye. Donald is president again. And it is 100% constitutional.
And the Senate Democrats are dumb-ass enough that McConnell could easily pull that off.
McConnel cannot call the Senate into session in the middle of the night – when the Senate adjourns at the end of a legislative day the motion will specify the date and time when the Senate will come back into session. If the motion does not specify, then the Senate convenes at whatever time has been previously established in the organizing resolution for that session. Either way, the Majority Leader does not have the authority to call the Senate into session unexpectedly.
I should footnote: the Senate can be called back into emergency session if both party leaders agree. But of course that would defeat the “secret impeachment” scenario.
That would be a Senate rule, right? Changeable by a majority vote of the Senate?
I don’t think McConnell is (quite) that evil, but if his reign as Majority/Minority Leader has taught us anything it is that he very nearly is that evil.
He just has those eyelid display implants. They can be used as a teleprompter, he can watch movies and, with the addition of the optional forward facing camera, he can see where he’s going without having to open his eyes.
I think it’s not realistic to talk about Trump doing anything like this. The only Trump can do is make noise.
The more realistic question is whether the Republicans will do this in order to put Trump back in the White House.
Are they capable of doing this? Yes, probably. All it takes is a willingness to break some laws and traditions. And they’re already past that point.
So the question is whether the Republicans want to do this. And that’s what I find unlikely. I don’t see how it benefits the Republican party as a whole to have Donald Trump back as President. He has been hurting the party since 2015.
But does he hurt the party? They did better when he was on the ballot (2016, 2020) than when he wasn’t (2018). There are likely millions of voters who have loyalty only to him and by virtue of his coattails gained seats in the House in 2020 and barely lost the Senate.
The problem when talking about what “the Republicans” want is that there is a stark divide between the party leadership and most elected officials who realize that Trump’s interests are not in the long-term interests of the party, and the party’s voters and activists who are slavishly loyal to Trump and demand the same from their elected officials. Trump has always been well aware that Republican politicians would dump him in a heartbeat if they could. That’s why he has focused on whipping up the base into a frenzy over Republicans that show any sign of deviating from Trump.
If Trump motivates 15,000,000 people to vote for him while he motivates 16,000,000 people to vote against him, he’s a net minus for the Republicans.
The Republican party knows those Trump voters are dumb. They’re supporting Donald Trump after all. So what the Republicans would like is to get rid of Trump and replace him with somebody who can lead the sheep to the voting booths. But who is smart enough to do it without raising a strong counter-wave.
The Republicans want stupid voters. That doesn’t mean they want stupid candidates.
Yes, the problem of course is if you are from a Red District those 15,000,000 people will be voting in your primary while the 16,000,000 will not. So even though he’s bad for the party you still have to kiss the ring because you need him on a personal level, and can’t be seen to do anything that opposes this ascendancy to godhood.
Or simpler yet, sic the Proud Boys and 3%ers on the Dems for a little direct action. You know they’d love to if they thought they could get away with it.
But that’s the whole point of gerrymandering. You want to have as many districts as possible where the Republicans have as narrow a majority as possible over the Democratic minority. If it works out as planned, that slight Republican majority outvotes the slight Democratic minority and the district elects a Republican.
But in a situation like that you can’t afford to upset the balance. It only takes a couple thousand voters motivated by a single issue (like hating Trump) and that slight Democratic minority becomes a slight Democratic majority.
That’s more like a Trump plan. Have the Republicans in the House elect him Speaker. Then appear at a rally and say something like “Most people don’t know this but the Speaker is third in line to being President. And really I’m first because Sleepy Joe and Whatshername are illegal. I’m the legal President. Maybe some patriotic Americans will do something to those illegals and put me back in the White House where I belong. I’d even pardon the people who did it because it’s not a crime to stop criminals.”