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.