But again, it’s an issue of time. A dictator can’t remake the military until he is secure in power. If Trump tried to seize power, he’d have to work with the military that exists now.
He would care about a crisis that would drive him out of power. Which is what would happen if his army melts away or refuses to obey his orders.
Agreed. This is why it is so important to remove Trump now. He has been corrupting our institutions* for the last four years, and it is imperative that we remove him from power so that they may be shored up and strengthened against future malign influence.
Four more years of Trump could result in irreversible damage.
*not necessarily including the military in uniform so far, but that could change if Trump were to remain in power.
No way. Trump sent federal officers into Portland to crack heads and fill the streets with tear gas, and protests that had been petering out ramped way up again, led by a Wall of Moms, who put themselves at the front.
People who weren’t going to protest because there was a veneer of legitimacy will show up if troops were sent in. And, yeah, the rest of the military doesn’t just watch that handful of people follow illegal orders and hurt or kill, or threaten to hurt or kill, fellow citizens.
Yep. I think the net result is many more protestors.
This. Exactly this.
In the immortal words of Lt. Cmdr Montgomery Scott:
Cap’n! The ship (of state) can’t take much more of this abuse!
All levity aside …
We are lurching very close to an undefined edge of an unknown slope with a madman at the helm. If there’s not concrete evidence by the end of Nov that Trump’s preparing to leave in Jan it’ll be time to be very, very concerned. Right now it’s just time to be very concerned.
I agree with this in spirit.
However, if we do wind up under an autocracy, opponents might mostly go underground, but would not give up…The United States has such a strong democratic tradition that the new regime would never be secure.
I suspect that the economic damage, of a North American Juan Perón, could never be fully made up. But the political damage could be totally reversed, with most Americans determined to never let it happen again.
I mentioned Pence in a previous post. As a corollary to this discussion, what do people think Pence would be doing in this scenario?
As per the OP, we’ll go with the premise that Trump has managed to piece together some legal argument that he is using to assert that he won the election and will remain President for the next four years. But we will also assume the legality of his argument is disputed and many Americans are saying Trump has seized power illegally and Biden is the real President.
Where is Pence while this is happening? Will he stick with Trump as his Vice President, figuring that being a Vice President under dubious circumstances is still better than not being Vice President at all? Or will Pence decide it’s time to cash in his chips and get out of the Trump administration before its inevitable collapse so that he doesn’t get dragged down with it?
I’m not sure if you realize or agree with this, but it is utterly impossible for Trump to stay in office unless Pence falsely claims, at the January 6 joint session of Congress to count the electoral vote, that the GOP ticket won. After debasing himself like that, I can’t see the slightest chance that he then wouldn’t serve as the selected vice-president.
If Pence does falsely make that claim, at the formal culmination of the legal election process, John Roberts still might still (in what is probably a nightmare scenario for him) swear in Joe Biden on January 20. Then Trump and Pence are both out.
In or out (and I think it is almost certainly – out) Trump and Pence are bound together.
It is in Pence’s interest for Trump to gracelessly give up, and Pence will probably get what he wants there.
The presence of the Vice President isn’t a legal necessity. If he’s not there, the President pro tempore of the Senate will preside over the event. This happened in 1969 when Hubert Humphrey decided he didn’t want to preside over the reading of the votes that were going to officially declare he had lost the election to Richard Nixon.
Roberts isn’t even required to do anything. If he wanted to lend his weight to one side, he could do that but he could also choose to stay out of it. The swearing in doesn’t even have to be done by a justice of the supreme court. In the past, it’s been done by state court judges.
In one case, it was done by a notary public.
It would almost be funny if, on Jan. 20, Biden is getting sworn in by Chief Justice Roberts, and Trump has a parallel “swearing in” by Wally Astoria, notary public.
Excellent question. I think it depends on the timing.
If it becomes obvious by, say, Dec 1 that Trump is all-in on his cheat and enough cracks in the rest of the government are forming that it looks like he might well pull it off, Pence faces a stark choice. He can jump off the runaway trolley right now, or he can ride it to wherever it ends up. If he’s still VP on Jan 6 he’s in for the whole ride whether to glory or to an early death.
If he’s got any remaining integrity / loyalty as a traditional R, not just a grifting T opportunist, he’ll jump ship ASAP. If not, not. I don’t know how his mind operates, so I can’t handicap that one. I always thought he was part of the conventional 2016 “adults in the room”. Although he clearly lacked / lacks the force of will to be more than a fart in DJT’s windstorm.
A countervailing thought:
Assume Pence bails on 1 Dec piously sanctimoniously announcing he cannot be a party to the travesty in progress. Who gets to select the temporary replacement VP for the 2016-2020 term according to what standard? And does that person have the inside track to be the new VP after Jan 21? If Trump gets to decide and can count on Senate & SCOTUS rubberstamps, T chooses … Don Jr. or Jared.
Pence (or his staffers) can wargame this at least as well as we can. Pence could certainly persuade himself (or be persuaded) that a Trump / Pence administration from 2020-2024 is better for the USA than is a Trump / Trump or Trump / Kushner administration. Even as a traditional R it’s the “patriotic thing to do”.
Such selfless sacrifice to the greater good will certainly be appealing to his ego. [/sarcasm]
My bottom line: IMO he’s already “in for a penny; in for the whole enchilada.” He’ll do what Trump tells him to all the way to the end.
My personal opinion is that Pence sold his soul when he agreed to be part of Trump’s administration. Now it’s all about his self-interest.
So I don’t think Pence will care that Trump is breaking the law and would have no problem joining Trump in that. Pence’s concern will be whether Trump will fail and get caught.
I feel Pence is smart enough to know that Trump and his crew don’t have the makings of successful plotters and are going to fail. So he won’t want to be a part of their failure. Having decided this, he will present his decision in a way that reflects best on him. He will denounce Trump and say he’s appalled by what Trump is doing on moral grounds.
I really don’t see any Republican of current consequence hopping off the Trump Train. There are 73 million voters in the country demonstrably griftable.
Too bad there’s so many photos of him giving Trump adoring, fawning looks the likes of which he never gave to God.
I agree that Pence is in it for Pence and Pence alone.
That’s certainly reasonable. But here’s a different take.
Pence is close enough to what’s going on behind the scenes that he (and his team) are in a pretty good place to handicap the outcome. They know about the secret meetings with the FBI or with plotters at DoD, etc. or with various R state governors & legislators. Certainly they know all this sub rosa stuff better than we do. And Pence has been in that better place since e.g. July when Trump started making seriously loud noises about winning even if he lost.
The one piece of rock solid evidence we have today is that Pence has not resigned, nor is he making (public) noises about doing so.
If we assume your logic is correct (and I agree that it is), that strongly implies that as of today Pence thinks Trump will succeed. Not that Trump will fail. For Pence, bailing early on Trump’s failure is a winning play and staying late on Trump’s failure is a losing play. If Pence’s crystal ball is still murky today, he’ll probably continue in place; inaction is always easier than action.
My bottom line: IMO … The fact Pence has not resigned yet is proof he does not yet believe that Trump’s ploy is doomed to fail. Pence still thinks it has some material chance of succeeding. For you and me in the cheap seats, that’s a tell worth paying attention to.
And a chilling tell it is.
In the grounds of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, no doubt.
We’ve had some digressions in this thread away from the OP asking about “What happens after?” and back to the earlier problem of “how will / could he pull it off?”
Returning to that digression I’ve been thinking a bit. The 2016 coup in Turkey is instructive.
In a nutshell, a properly elected president became increasingly autocratic, apparently won a highly contested election, became ever more autocratic and at some point a combination of some legislators and the military had had enough and attempted a coup to restore constitutional democracy. It failed.
The critical point I’d like to connect to the US is that essentially the coup failed because the various police organs backed the person of the sitting president while the military faction backed the constitution. When push came to shove, the police carried the day.
The folks here with DoD experience are pretty adamant DoD as a whole would never back Trump. What we lack here are people from FBI, BATF, DEA, the other few dozen federal police-like agencies and various state police forces. See this eye-opening list of all the federal badge carriers.
The parallel is not perfect. But it leads me to think that if tyranny will come, it’ll be delivered by guys with badges, not from guys in camo with stripes on their sleeves.
My interpretation is different. From what I can see Trump is doing stuff like posting tweets and filing lawsuits. He isn’t committing any major crimes. So Pence is facing no serious consequences for sticking it out.
But Trump’s efforts do not appear to be working. Biden’s victory still appears intact. So Trump is going to have to make a decision to either accept this reality and begin making plans for leaving office in January - or he’s going to have to try some more extreme options which will be much more legally questionable. That’s when people like Pence will have to decide how much they are willing to risk for Trump and whether those risks will pay off.
That’s certainly a reasonable way to read the tea leaves. Overall I’ve been impressed by your wisdom on this whole election from months ago. I hope I don’t come across as an endless quibbler. It’s just easier to springboard off the more thought-provoking posts vs. the me-too posts or the tain’t-so posts.
If there is any room for both our interpretations to co-exist, it’s that you’ve accurately assessed what’s visible in public. Which is amounting to a noisy nothingburger as you say. Whereas I’ve hinted at what might (or might not) exist in private. With no way to know whether there’s a deep plot well in train, or I’m fearing shadows and hearing ghost stories.
I do not think of Trump as any expert plotter; rather the opposite. But I do think there’s some somebodies somewhere behind the curtain who are at least somewhat competent and who have evil goals. May they fail completely & be exposed for the scoundrels they are.