Surprise! The Economist endorses Biden!
Not exactly October, but an interesting yet depressing article about what Trump might do in the months between losing the election and leaving office.
Yeah. I wonder, is it actually illegal to sell pardons?
I also have to wonder if it is illegal to sell military and intelligence secrets. He can give them away for free, but is there anything saying that he cannot be compensated?
I expect him to wreak havoc on the agencies under his control, firing everyone that he can, and, on his last day in office, when his EO goes into effect, firing pretty much everyone.
There is no chance that there will be any leadership (not that there has been much), and in fact, be actual deliberate impediments to pandemic response. If there is a vaccine that is getting ready to go into wider circulation, he can instruct the FDA to shut down all testing and prevent any progress.
He is definitely the type that, if he can’t have his toys, he will break them to make sure that no one else can either. I just hope that there is enough left after his temper tantrum to rebuild. That fired employees wait it out and come back after he is gone.
I wouldn’t put it past him to start some military conflict that cannot be smoothed over by a transition. Iran is not going to care that Biden isn’t the one that nuked Tehran, we will be forced into a conflict that we have no reason to be in.
Trump hates our country, and the people in it. He even hates his supporters, treating them with contempt and derision. He only sees value in what he can take. He has no loyalty to anything or anyone, and will work to harm our country as much as possible as punishment for voting him out.
If the cabinet does not invoke the 25th citing a mental breakdown from his loss, and install the odious but at least not intentionally vengeful Pence, then I truly do fear the damages that Trump will wreak upon our nation in his last months in office.
But something like 40% of the voting public apparently do, and that freaks me the hell out.
I feel Trump’s sole motivation is his love for himself. So I don’t think he will seek to destroy America; it’s the country Donald Trump lives in. He’ll spend his last weeks in office (either in 2021 or 2025) doing things like selling pardons and stealing White House silverware - things which benefit him - not wasting time on things which don’t affect him like helping or hurting the country. I don’t think Trump cares enough about the United States to try to harm it.
I hope you’re right, but nothing in his history indicates to me that he has any grace when losing.
You’re forgetting that Trump is also one of the pettiest men alive, and holds grudges for years. This is the guy who spent years randomly dredging up a Twitter feud he had with Rosie O’Donnell.
Do you really think he’ll react more maturely to being kicked to the curb by a majority of American voters?
Honestly, my lingering fear wasn’t/isn’t what Trump will do. I really think he’s too lazy to bother mucking up the government’s inner workings very much; there’s no percentage in it for him. I am afraid that McConnell, in the wake of a Democratic takeover, will use the lame-duck session to revise Senate procedures in some way to neuter the incoming Congress, kinda the way Wisconsin’s Republican legislature fucked over the incoming Democratic governor in 2018.
He may not care about the United States this minute, but once it fires his sorry ass – he will care deeply and not in a good way.
His self love does include monetizing every single exchange to benefit himself, but he has demonstrated his (more than willingness) determination to punish those who harm him.
The most ironic demonstration of his pettiness might be if he loses and blames his die hard supporters for not intimidating enough liberal voters and coercing more Trump votes and just generally being disloyal enough to not create a win. It would be just like Trump to blame his own enablers for his failings.
Remember in the first weeks of W’s term, the constant reports of how the Clintons “trashed” the White House? Trump isn’t going to leave it pristine, I’ll tell you that for nothing. You’ll be able to send a film crew through and get footage of what looks like a South Bronx crackhouse.
They can try, but the Senate, as expressed by its majority, has absolute control over its own rules with no recourse to other parts of the government. Once the Democrats have control, the rules we will be whatever they want them to be.
Could they not, for instance, institute a rule decreeing that any change to Senate procedures (including the filibuster) requires a 60-vote supermajority?
No, they cannot. The rules are wiped clean when the new Senate is sworn in.
Yes, and they could make that rule, and that rule could then be overturned by a simple majority.
Well, one worry off the plate at least.
Yeah, at a point when they’d know definitively which way it could tip the outcome.
Not that they’d consider that, of course. They’re above all that. 
Or “kisses”?
The new administration will wonder where all the presidential portraits have gone. Months later they show up in Putin’s garage.
They will also wonder why Putin has every bit of intel and military secrets that the US possesses.
Well, they probably won’t wonder.
I’m sure he’ll be upset if he loses. But his usual response when he’s upset is to whine a lot and not actually do anything about it.
He’s like a toddler. Tell him he has to go to bed and he may roll around on the floor and scream. But you don’t worry that he’s going to set the house on fire.
Sure, I could be wrong. But if Trump had enough ambition to do things, he’d have been working these last four years and we wouldn’t be talking about what he’s going to do if he loses the election.