I did Nazi that coming.
Wait, yes, we all did.
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Trump is exactly the person we always said he was.
More to the point, he’s the person he has always said he was.
Anyone surprised by this has never been paying attention.
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Well, I suppose that Congress could change the law setting the date of the election. Modern technology doesn’t really take all that long to determine the person who will become President in January, but a transition team does have a lot to get done in that time.
However, the Constitution doesn’t have any emergency clauses that allow for changing the 21 January date when Trump will stop being President and I really doubt even John Roberts will discover one that allows the President to extend his own term in office.
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And until the vaccine is out, and until there is another Supreme court seat.
All of which he figures will happen by January, if he can just find a way to extend his term by a few extra months.
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Because he wants to be fair. Not just fair, the fairest of them all!
Great, I’ve just conned myself into wanting a Trump / Snow White mash-up. “Fox News, Fox News on the wall, whose the greatest Prez of all?”
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I’m Black, GenX and I used to be “born again;” so I’ve been expecting that I would have to endure some sort of dystopian society at some point for most of my adult life.
SMFH
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He’s attempting to set himself up a situation where he can make a gain either way. Plan is delay the election and he gets to stay in office longer, or don’t and ALL the blame for coronavirus deaths gets shifted to the democrats who forced the election to happen on time. He’d then try to put the blame for all the mismanagement of the pandemic and economic crash on the democrat controlled house, He’ll be claiming he anticipated it being bad, but they wouldn’t let him fix it.
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No, but Chief Justice Barr probably could…
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Nice try, Mark, but GDP is an obvious and taken-for-granted clusterfuck, while moving elections is not - yet.
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Fine, he “cancels” the election. Most of the States have one anyway. They send their EC votes to the House of Representatives, which certifies the election completely ignoring him. Along comes the 21st of January and Biden is sworn in. What then?
Bear in mind, he might have a few thousand goons with DHS, but that’s not enough to take over the country. So – then what?
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My only problem with the scenario in that thread is that I could totally see a Roberts court taking it up and ruling 6-3 against Trump within 48 hours, citing that his own stupidity in telling his supporters to stay home is his own damn fault.
Say what you will about this court’s politics, they have shown no patience for stupid.
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I believe that scenario is referred to as “a constitutional crisis.”
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What happens if nobody there votes? I guess the House doesn’t count those EC votes then.
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Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking this is “just” a distraction. Or that Trump intended it to be a distraction. He means it. Sure, he doesn’t have the power to do this, and even if it happened, it’s a completely separate issue that he’d stop being president in January. But not having the authority to do something hasn’t stopped him from finding work-arounds before. He’s shown he’s absolutely going to try to find a way to prevent a vote in November, using whatever tools are at his disposal, and do whatever he can to undermine their perceived legitimacy.
Yeah, we should have learned by now that when Trump does something outrageous it’s not done purely as a calculated distraction from (whatever else is going on). He means it. It also acts as a distraction from other things he’s doing, but everything he does is outrageous enough to distract from something else that’s going on.
Someone pointed out that not only has Trump had more conversations with Putin lately than with any allies, but more than any president would communicate with any foreign leader, unless it was a close ally during a time of crisis. Which is exactly the situation here: Trump’s communicating with his own personal ally at a time of crisis - his impending electoral loss.
Right - it’s (early) 1933 Germany bad, not 1940 Germany bad.
The problem is: when the Supreme Court ruled against the administration on DACA, making it clear they were acting illegally, the administration’s response has been, “Don’t wanna, you can’t make me” and continued doing the thing that’s illegal. So clearly, court rulings don’t matter if there’s no actual mechanism to enforce them.
He didn’t want to be. I’m entirely convinced that was his plan for the 2016 election - lose and start a grievance-based right-wing media outlet. (The Trumps had already put things into place to make that happen.) But now he’s stuck. He’s committed crimes in the process of getting elected and being in power, and past crimes have come to light due to the extra scrutiny. He’s got a bunch of loans coming due in the next couple of years. His best chance of making all that go away is staying in power another four years. His ego won’t let him lose, either. So now he’s got a lot more motivation to win than he did the first time.
There aren’t enough federal goons, er “law enforcement” to do this. (There’s about 130K total, including lots of people who wouldn’t/couldn’t go along with it or are actually needed where they are, so the actual number of deployable agents is a fraction of that.) But Trump is also clearly angling to convince citizens to go out, armed, to “defend” the polling places from undesirables. That’s the bigger threat. (Though the federal forces can be used to create chaos to inspire local “militias” to become active, as has been happening already.)
Yeah, he’s certainly made that clear lately, hasn’t he? Send in federal goons, spark riots, use those riots as justification for… whatever, and then declare victory as well (even as things get even more violent and chaotic due to his actions).
I’ve been saying - sending in the feds is his Reichstag fire. Because of the fact that we can see him holding the match, it hasn’t worked out that well for him, but I have no doubt he’ll keep trying variations of it.
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“Mr. Barr has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”
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I honestly don’t know, and anyone telling you with certainty that they do is lying. I think it is unlikely that Trump is actually able to hold on to power via that method, but I think the constitutional crisis (best case) or bloodshed (medium worst case) that would result would irreparably damage our country.
I think the best strategic outcome hope for from his inner circle is to provoke a violent confrontation between the feds/mercs and protestors, where the feds/mercs get overwhelmed and badly hurt or killed. To mix metaphors, they want Fallujah footage to justify extra-Constitutional measures.
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Thank you for the excuse to repost this. It gives me much joy to see Big Bird curse. Almost as much as the redubs of George Carlin with Thomas the train.
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