Dallas Mitchell
How do you think Trump will spend his final days in the White House?
It will probably go down something like this.
November 3—Joe Biden wins the election with a decisive win—not a razor thin win like 2000.
Trump refuses to concede. He will try to declare the election null and void, insist millions of illegal aliens voted, and he will litigate.
He will have Bill Barr sue in multiple states—at least enough to give him 270 electoral votes. If Barr refuses (which seems unlikely) Trump will have his personal lawyers do this. He will sue in every state that was close, claiming there was cheating, it was rigged.
He will be constantly tweeting about how unfair it all is to him, and repeat and retweet every imaginable conspiracy theory—and insist his lawyers use that in their litigation. The RNC will probably go along with it, and he may insist they use their lawyers too.
He will refuse to concede, and will come unhinged. He will execute his office in an unpredictable manner—trying to bargain with the opposition, the courts, the public. He’ll sign executive orders with no legal force, declaring the election null and void. He’ll order Barr to arrest Joe Biden (which he apparently has already done), and if Barr does not he might even fire Barr and try to find another henchman. Any actual efforts to do so will be swiftly over-turned by the courts—even packed with conservatives.
The suits will move very quickly up through the judicial system, even with Trump trying to slow it down. If it’s just one state in the balance, like Florida in 2000, SCOTUS will find a way to give Trump his victory through judicial fiat. If it’s multiple states and not close, even the majority of SCOTUS, packed with partisan activists, will have a hard time over-turning the election.
This is Trump’s plan. He is counting on SCOTUS to ensure his “reelection”. If they do not, he will rage against them, call for investigations into the justices who voted against him, try to order Barr to arrest them. SCOTUS will also be receiving numerous threats, including death threats from his supporters.
Trump will claim it’s all too close—that the election is a virtual tie—especially considering supposed Democratic cheating, and demand that it must go to the House, where each state gets one vote, ensuring his win.
He will demand that states Biden won (assuming he does) with Republican governments, such as Arizona and Florida—seat a group of Trump electors instead of Democratic electors, defying the vote of their state’s voters. States with Republican governors that Biden wins, Trump will demand the state’s Secretary of State certify him the winner instead of Biden.
Trump may try to prevent the electoral college from meeting. When the US senate meets to count the electoral votes, he will demand the Republican majority simply declare him the winner.
If democracy in our country survives this shitshow, and it’s clear Trump is going to be out on January 20, he will call upon through Tweet for his adoring cult fans to rise up and “LIBERATE THE COUNTRY!!!!” Hopefully Twitter has the good sense to shut down his account around this time, before it blows up.
This whole time, Trump supporters will be marching and protesting with guns—stirred up more and more from his periodic Tweets about the radical Democrats, and how they will take your guns, ruin the country, and it’s a coup and so on. There will be sporadic violence, a few shootings, possibly a bomb here and there at mass media outlets and Democratic senators, governors, etc. This will all continue through January 20.
Trump may try to find ways to carry out revenge on his enemies—he will try to order the IRS to conduct audits, or Barr to file charges or arrest people, the FFC to revoke licenses to various media outlets, or threaten through Tweet knowing his followers will threaten them.
Another of Trump’s priorities will be to try to find last minute ways to enrich himself. Look for a flood of pardons in the last few days—and if investigated, it will be found that these pardons were actually SOLD to the recipients. Trump will try in his final weeks to milk every last drop he can out of US taxpayers. Subsequent investigations will reveal jaw-dropping, blatant corruption.
Trump will never accept defeat or concede—he will be rage-tweeting at 3 a.m. his final night in office. The night before his final day in office the White House staff will have boxed up all his belongings, and someone will have drawn the unlucky straw to ask Trump where to send it all—and the will yell at them and threaten to fire them. They’ll just send it to his address of record—probably Trump Tower.
At around this time—he will become the first president to attempt to issue himself a pardon. He will issue a blanket pardon for himself, and attempt to make the pardon cover state crimes as well. He will also pardon Jared, Ivanka, and maybe Don Jr. These pardons may not even be announced.
There will be no turnover, no graceful concession, no effort for a smooth transition. The day Biden takes office, Trump will not be there. He will have boarded an early morning flight to Florida on his way to Mar-a-Lago.
During all this time—his health will suffer. He will be in terrible and failing health, and creditors and prosecutors will be circling and descending like vultures once he is no longer in office. Some suggest that he’ll take Air Force One to Moscow, but I don’t think Putin would have him. He would be too much trouble, and he is no longer useful once he’s out of office—oh, and those loads are due and payable—NOW.
In spite of Trump’s devoted cult, I believe that after he is out of office, interest in Trump is going to plummet with astonishing speed. He will always have a small base of devoted supporters who dearly love him, but they will all be looking for the next Big Conservative Thing and will have moved on to focus on hating Biden. Trump will no longer be as newsworthy, and the news will stop covering him. The evangelicals will no longer be interested in him, since he cannot give them any more judges to enact their social agenda through judicial fiat.
He will not be able to get a reality TV show, or a spot on Fox News—he is too undisciplined, too unhinged, too difficult to manage. His name is now toxic, and he won’t be able to make any more money on it. In fact, the tenants in buildings with his name have been petitioning to rename the building. He won’t be able to get any loans, not even through Deutchesbank, since the Russians will no longer have any interest in backing those loans.
He will face a “Legal Hellscape” when he leaves office—and may be under multiple indictments in a number of states. Unable to get Russian loans, he’ll have to liquidate his assets just to cover his massive legal bills. The stress of all this, along with his poor sleeping habits, and terrible diet will begin to tell.
His health will collapse, and he will probably die younger than his parents, possibly within ten years. His kids, also in legal jeopardy, might be in jail when dies and is buried. Probably a few hardcore supporters will show up in their MAGA hats at his funeral. |
