Here’s a possibility. Maybe Trump has been told about Republican plans to steal the 2026 and 2028 elections and declare Republican victories. And he’s just assuming that the Republicans are making these plans to benefit him. But the Republicans are making plans to move on past Trump and ensure the election for the next Republican President.
I think they’re going for both.
Plan A (for Amendment) relies on not being secret. The amendment process takes time and they’re rapidly running out of same.
Plan B (for Benedict Arnold) doesn’t have to be secret, but I take your point. Why doesn’t it need to be secret? Nobody believed his first attempted overtrhowing of the government (and, for the curious, yes, Congress is part of the government) would happen. They’re probably thinking Nah, it won’t happen again. Even if Congress wanted to prevent it, there’s only so much room and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more than the two thousand traitors who entered the Capitol the last time.
You’re forgetting who’s currently in charge.
And let’s talk about Plan C (for Corrupt foreign-owned dictator). What’s going to happen when he decides, à la Nicaragua, elections, “because the dumocrats are stealing them,” shall not happen? Blue states, of course, won’t cower to that, purple states likely won’t, but the maga states?
You have to remember that a lot of solid red states have Republican governors and Senators who have their own political ambitions. Some of them have been thinking about becoming President in 2028. Can Trump really rely on their support?
Sadly, their political ambitions require them to remain in their current office. Ticking off Trump has proven to be detrimental to that plan.
What’s ticking me off is we’ve come to the point where this is an actual discussion in the United States of America.
Have any of them actually said they will run against him? At this point, potential Republican “bravery” just doesn’t mean jack, and it is silly to seriously think it will happen.
The issue has been why Trump announced he was going to do something instead of keeping it secret until after it was done. The same principle applies in general.
Any Republican who announces he’s planning on running for President at this point is making himself a target for Trump’s anger.
Smarter to keep your ambitions secret and wait until Trump is weaker.
I’m not talking about bravery. I’m talking about personal ambition. Are you saying politicians lack personal ambition?
I think the war in Iran has shown us in great detail how shit Trump is with a plan. He won’t do anything resembling work. He’ll just declare himself President for Life and let the media do the work for him by declaring it to be a “Constitutional Crisis!” instead of just treating him as a squatter. There are posters here who are convinced that at 12:01pm on January 20th, 2029, Trump will be unceremoniously ejected from the White House whether he likes it or not. I respectfully disagree with those posters. Too much of the system in the US relies on reasonable people doing reasonable things and behaving in the manner of an 18th century gentleman. The system is not built to deal with someone like Trump, who just steamrolls safeguards and somehow manages to convince an entire party that he is their king. The system cannot deal with someone who does not respect it. So Trump will simply say that he is President for Life because that’s how things should be and it does not matter what the counterarguments are because he’ll just shout them all down as fake news. The media wants this as much as a drug fiend wants a fix. “Trump moves out on time and new President moves in without issue” is fucking boring and nobody wants to tune in to that. “CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS DAY 1 OF 1000” is what will sell. There is a very deep rooted belief in the US that the country requires constant bloodshed to function and there are so many ignorant, angry people who are utterly convinced those people over there should be on the receiving end. Trump doesn’t need a plan, he just needs chaos and that is the one thing he is actually good at.
No, but we are still 27 months away from the next presidential election. There aren’t any Democrats who have declared that they are running yet, either, and they don’t face an incumbent party leader who will brook no rivals.
It’s unlikely that anyone, from either party, will declare a candidacy for ‘28 until after this fall’s midterm election.
I agree. I’m just wondering if Trump’s 2028 talk is as dumb as it looks on the surface or if I’m missing some subtle point that causes it to make some modicum of sense.
But I disagree with the rest of your post. The thing is that if Trump just declares that he’s still President after January 20, 2029 it doesn’t mean anything. There will be somebody else who actually is President. Either another candidate, Democrat or Republican, who got elected to the office or the next person in the line of succession, probably the Speaker of the House. That person will get sworn in and they will legally be President.
Will Trump protest? Sure. Will he claim that he’s supposed to be President? Sure. Will it work? No.
Trump tried to claim he was legally President back in 2021. He failed. Nobody acted the way you predicted.
Lest we forget, Trump has demonstrated – unambiguously and ad nauseum – that he believes that a crime committed in plain sight simply isn’t a crime.
Why couldn’t this … be that.
It may also help postpone and/or attenuate his lame duck status, as long as there’s a sliiiight possibility of this not being his last term some people may refrain from fully considering him a lame duck.
This is a possibility.
My feeling is that Trump doesn’t recognize the existence of a legal code as some impartial system. I feel he sees everything as a power struggle between people. I think this is the same way he sees finances.
In Trump’s mind it’s all a contest of strength. The stronger person takes money from the weaker person and the weaker person has to give money to the stronger person. The law works the same; it’s just a tool that strong people use against weaker people. It has nothing to do with who actually broke a law. Strong people can do whatever they want, including declaring that weak people have committed a crime and punishing them for that crime. Even when the strong person committed the same act and wasn’t punished for it. In Trump’s mind that’s acceptable; it just demonstrated one person was strong enough to get away with the act and the other person wasn’t.
This is why Trump is so open with his crimes. He wants people to see that he is strong enough to break the law. Committing a crime doesn’t count if nobody knows you did it.
The reality is that most other people can see what Trump cannot. Trump is actually a weak person. He’s not getting away with his crimes because he’s too strong to stop. He’s getting away with his crimes because the Republican party has chosen not to stop him. Trump doesn’t understand that all of his supposed power is just being indulged by the people who hold the real power. He’s a toddler whose parents have chosen not to discipline him.
What can he do to them? What are they afraid of?
The answer to that kind of question regarding Trump is always the same - Money.
Trump, and his family, control the finances of the Republican party. At least for now.
He can mobilize the magas against a candidate. As we’re seeing the magas aren’t enough to get a Republican candidate elected. But they’re enough to cause a Republican candidate to lose to a Democrat. So Trump can’t help somebody win an election but he can make them lose one.
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
– Maya Angelou
How many times does he have to show us?
But he talks about a “strong law”. Does he know the difference between a law and a constitution? Maybe he thinks SCOTUS can repeal a constitutional provision. Maybe SCOTUS thinks so too.
This is a man who once said “I have an Article II, which allows me to do anything I want”. I guarantee you he doesn’t understand what the Constitution is or how the amendment process works and thinks it’s something Mike Johnson could fix for him over the weekend.
Even if Trump thinks he can override the Constitution with an executive order or something, can anybody present a scenario where it makes sense for Trump to talk in 2026 about a crime he’s planning on committing in 2028?
Because it seems to me that the most likely result of this “Trump 2028” talk is that it increases the likelihood that Trump will be removed from office before he completes his second term. He’s handing the Democrats an easy campaign issue a few weeks before the midterm elections and he’s annoying the Republicans.