It may sound like a crazy prediction, but when it comes true and I can point to this post, I will win the Internet.
We have become accustomed to a nonstop shitshow in the White House, but that will go to eleven if and when he loses the election. It might be so nuclear that his Cabinet ousts him with Pence’s blessing. Quick impeachment and removal is also a possibility, but anything at the level to get Congress in agreement (as is also necessary with the 25th Amendment) would probably be enough of a nightmare the Cabinet members will prefer to escape it as well, perhaps with assurances they could keep their grifting positions until Jan. 20.
Or Trump may resign in a huff, spouting his unhinged conspiracy accusations on a neverending red state tour (with breaks at Mar-a-Lago). I don’t believe he will return to New York, although he’s such an idiot who knows. I think his base animal instinct for self-preservation will make him leery of entering any legal jurisdiction not predisposed to be very favorable to him. A federal government headed by the Democrat who beat Trump in the election might be leery of sending federal agents into a red state to get Trump. I mean, look how long it took the feds to get up the nerve to go after that Bundy family of ranchers. This would be on a whole other level to say the least. So Trump might be able to stay out of the hoosgow by traveling on gilded, TRUMP branded tour buses through contiguous red country (sorry, Alaska!)
Even if he does not officially resign, I think he will leave DC and not even bother to pretend to do his job any more. I would be surprised if he ever came back to the city at any point after the holidays. But even if he is in the White House on the morning of January 20, he will not go to the inaugural. Either he’ll make a show of boycotting it because he claims the election was rigged by “illegals”, perhaps even resisting leaving (the U.S. Marshals will take care of that contingency at the stroke of noon, of that I am confident), or he will just tweet something nasty about the President-Elect and go to the rally he scheduled at noon and demanded FOX News cover instead of the inaugural of “Sleepy Joe” or whichever other “loser” is being sworn in by the Chief Justice.
I don’t think he particularly likes being president, so the actual giving up of the office wouldn’t bother him that much. But the having to give it up would make him furious.
To which his natural response wouldn’t be to off himself, but to try to hurt his enemies as much as possible while making himself look good to his supporters.
For sure! Lots of ornate, gilded stuff lying around.
For those who don’t want to count our chickens before they hatch: sure, okay, fine. But can’t you go with any hypothetical for if he is defeated? Isn’t that what most of any Democratic primary candidate’s speeches are about?
If he loses, it won’t be the end for him. He’s not going to kill himself. He’ll be able to do exactly what he wants to be doing: Riling up rubes and making money off their anger. That’s all he wanted from the 2016 race too.
Good point. But do you agree that he might stay out of blue states as he goes around throwing those rhetorical bombs? “It’s very sad that I can’t risk going back to New York, where Hightax Andrew Cuomo* is just itching to lock me up on totally phony charges. But I love the poorly educated people out here in beautiful flyover country!”
*I didn’t make this up. Per Wiki, this is actually Trump’s nickname for him. :smack:
Trump would never commit suicide. He’s way too in love with himself for that. And a consummate coward.
If he loses the election, he will say that it was part of the plan, he has accomplished everything and more, and then go out on a Make Trump Great Again tour with the same idiots that followed him before. Same bullshit. That’s what he wants to do anyway. In the mean time, a lot of people with the initials D.A. will want to have a word with him.
The morons that support him will be the same morons. They will still support him, and will never learn, they voted for him in the first place. It’s just too much of a leap for these people to actually become aware of what the fuck is going on.
I think this period of his presidency will be the most dangerous. He will have literally nothing else to lose. I expect as snfaulkner indicated he will do whatever he can to enrich himself on the way out, but I also expect that he will be doing whatever he can to overturn the election. Daily tweets about how the system was rigged against him. Non-stop law suits every step of the way, calls for resistance among his supporters etc.
Oh yeah. And Mitch McConnell will have his back. And don’t forget, it’s the states that are in charge of counting and certifying their votes. Expect that historically red states that break blue will be flagged for ‘irregularities’.
I expect we’ll be litigating the 2020 election early into the summer of 2021.
Yes, election results that break blue will be declared illegitimate.
Though it will be McConnell’s instinct to back Trump’s play to remain, much will depend on the reaction of the major donors. If Trump has managed, through his ideas on tariffs and on hot wars, to tank the economy, Mitch will quietly be informed that it’s time for the rancid clown to move on. Depending on who the Democratic candidate is, the big-money boys may believe they’d be better off with a sane Dem than with the proven-deranged Donald.
Of course if it’s Bernie, all bets are off. In that case, no matter how screwed up the economy is, the donors will tell McConnell to decline to certify the electoral votes–and just leave the dotard in place.
After doing a little more reading on this, I feel a bit better that the Senate (McConnell) cannot unilaterally decide to reject the vote.
I expect there will be an unusually large number of objections in 2021, but I can’t see how there would be any outright rejections.
So the more likely scenario would be certain states outright stuffing their ballot boxes, the House voting to reject, and the Senate voting to accept. It would probably be the Deep South states since their governments are mostly run by corrupt Republicans who want Trump to stay in power no matter what.
Since I firmly believe the Democrats will screw this up royally and Trump will be reelected I have to ask, why would he leave DC for good after the election but before the inaugural?
