Trump has some weeks left to run. Will he do anything drastic?
I don’t think he will refuse to leave, he will have to find a ‘way out’ for his ego to survive.
Will he encourage puiblic disorder?
Will he sabotage/
What will he do about covid? (On the rise in the US).
I’m worried about right wing riots which he’ll no doubt stoke.
Exactly what he’s been doing. Unfortunately.
A few things we can be relatively certain of:
He will pardon himself and his family members of any and all federal crimes.
He will fire masses of people in the federal government he considers insufficiently loyal. This will have to effect of letting him vent his spleen as well as leaving the government crippled for Biden.
He will expropriate as much taxpayer money as he possibly can to himself, his family and his companies. I expect he will relocate himself and the White House staff to Mar a Lago at exorbitant rates.
I still think it’s likely he flees the country. Not because he said he would (though you should listen when people say what shitty thing they’ll do), but because it fits with what he was trying to do. He wants to escape prosecution at any cost, which would include from state crimes he can’t pardon. Go somewhere without an extradition treaty, so he can’t be tried.
But that’s only after he runs out of other options. He’s going to try to get the results invalidated, and push his fully radicalized followers. And, yes, he could very likely be spiteful first, as he has until January to pull it off, having his own plane that can’t be stopped.
He will continue to do nothing about covid. Otherwise, I don’t think the rest of his squatting days will be nearly as cinematic as the last month has been. He’ll lick his wounds, engage in whatever spiteful tactics he can think of and on Jan 20th he will handcuff himself to the heaviest object he can find, swallow the key and tell the secret service agents, “You can’t move me, it’s against the constitution, I’ll sue you, you’re fired, where are the ballots? It’s all on Hunter’s laptop etc”
He can’t fire anyone who wasn’t his political appointee already (and the political appointees all resign anyway). He tried an executive order to get around that, to go into effect on the last day of the presidency, but it should be tied up in court for at least the extra needed day.
Oh he might flee, but not before going into a pardonpalooza binge for his henchmen and henchwomen.
Although I would still like to see him making a blanket pardon for non violent drug offenders, for propaganda reasons, like when he pardoned some drug offenders in the past; making past administrations look as not doing enough about the ugly incarceration rates in the US to spite Biden. But I’m not holding my breath for that one.
He doesn’t give a hoot about his henchmen and women. Who are already, according to an item in the Times lining up cushy jobs for Jan. 21. They know a sinking ship when they see it.
Actually, I don’t really see him doing much, without people like Bill Barr egging him on.
Yeah, he doesn’t pay his debts. I don’t see him pardoning a ton of people.
I do see him stealing what he can, crippling what he can’t steal, and fleeing the country.
I think I left out an important conditional: Pardons to people that do know where the bodies are buried that could incriminate Trump in the future.
The problem with that, I believe, is that if they are pardoned, they can no longer invoke the fifth amendment against self-incrimination. If they are called to testify, they can be compelled
I’m not so sure he’ll be dishing out pardons by the wagonload. Himself and his family, maybe Rudy and Stone, but he doesn’t give things away or care about the people he uses. There’s going to be an interesting game taking place with the people who know they need a pardon and what they can still do for Trump. Hopefully some of them will turn and provide evidence that he was selling pardons, plus reveal details on all the crimes he committed in office. We can hope anyway.
He can move up that date to tomorrow if he wants to — it’s an executive order so it’s his discretion. I’m sure you’re right that it would be litigated but he could sew a lot of chaos in the meantime.
My thinking is that he will pardon these people so that the threat of prosecution cannot be used to coerce their cooperation.
Trump will ontinue to contest the election legally until he runs out of time or it becomes clear he can’t win.
Then he will sulk and claim the election was stolen, but live with the result since he has no choice.
In the meantime, he’ll do what every lame duck does: Write a few executive orders, pardon a bunch of people, and then leave office. The left and some of the right will scream bloody murder at some of the pardons, I’m guessing. Wildcard: Trump pardons Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, or both.
No one is going to prosecute him for anything, unless they go after him after he leaves office for things he did before being president. But my prediction is that once Trump is no longer in office, people will stop caring about ‘getting’ him.
If Alexandria Ocasio Cortez keeps calling for Trump’s entire administration to be investigated and charged, her own party will tell her to shut up. A lot of Democrats are blaming her and the ‘squad’ and other progressive Democrats for their terrible showing in the House and Senate, for good reason. Her star is going to fall, and the moderate Democrats will start asserting themselves again. ‘Socialism’, democratic or otherwise, will once again be a verboten word among Democrats.
There will be no right-wing riots. However, the media and big tech are going to have a lot of answering to do, since Republicans control the Senate and have investigative power. I expect hearings, and Twitter in particular has opened itself up to some serious ramifications. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lawsuit claims that Twitter stepped outside the parameters of section 230 and is liable for damages. This is especially true if it turns out the Hunter and Joe Biden accusations are real.
Those are my predictions.
Which federal crimes? You can’t blanket pardon someone for crimes that they have not been charged with, can you?
Are you talking about political appointees? Trump can’t just fire regular employees without cause. He can fire political appointees, but that gives Joe Biden the chance to appoint his own. Which he’ll do anyway.
No he won’t. He isn’t ‘relocating the White House’ in two months. Can’t be done.
Trump is going to spend his last two months complaining about the election being stolen and trying to defend his record of accomplishment, which is actually pretty substantial. He isn’t going to steal anything, or try to take over the government, or do any of that crazy stuff the left has been predicting since he was elected,
That sounds about right, other than stealing office supplies. Some lower level flunkies might take some souvenirs, but that happens at the end of every administration. There will be no juvenile antics like removing the ‘W’ from every computer keyboard as Clinton’s outgoing staffers did.
Interesting call on Trump leaving the White House before Jan 20. I think that’s possible, but not likely.
Actually many predicted what he was going to do when he was ahead early in the election, even Chris Wallace said later that what Trump was doing was being an arsonist with his lying speeches after the election.
As for going away, that would be nice but this is Trump, I will expect him to remain a loud troll that will be impossible to ignore, then making those investigations against him a reality after Trump leaves office. Because I do think many “moderate” Republicans will be the targets of his petty revenges.