It’s a conspiracy conspiracy theory.
Speculating without evidence, that perhaps some people (including his Trumpiness) are planning to keep Trump in office illegally - that is a conspiracy theory.
People actually planning to do it - that is a conspiracy.
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I can think of one thing more dangerous, and the Redcap In Chief still hits the mark. “The best swordsman fears not the second-best, but the worst.” The second-best may not be entirely predictable, but can usually be counted on to fight sensibly. The worst can be more dangerous because of an inability to assess the inherent risk to any given action, up to and including getting both fighters killed by accident.
Herr Drumpfenfuhrer cannot allow his ego to get deflated without lashing out at the supposed perpetrators. And being forced out of a position of power by such “stupidity” as laws definitely qualifies, since he has lived most of his life acting as if he is above the law.
I don’t know where I would place such a bet, but I would lay my shiny quarter down on “problematic transition in 2020”…
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Oh, sure. “Alive” in a biological sense. Just ask the Von Bulow medical team. But ‘cogent’, that’s something else again.
And given that Don John Two-Scoops is already sliding away from ‘mentally sound’, I really imagine him becoming an even more blatant puppet for the Republicans.
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What we need is an A/B test. Let’s just find a pair of middle-age twins, install one of them as President, and then compare their gray levels after 4 or 8 years.
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I thought the first amendment was the right to a Twitter account. Didn’t they pass it in 2006?
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Finally, a political platform everyone can get behind.
Wait, are there people that base their votes on a religious-based denial that twins exist?
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I’d be down with a Warren/Kelly ticket.
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It is fun to wallow in fear and worst case scenarios. But yes, Trump will leave the White House. Hopefully in the most humiliating way possible, and facing a lifetime of trials and litigation.
We can make that sooner than later by getting off of our asses and working to defeat the GOP at all levels. That means volunteering (including the horrific nitty-gritty of canvassing and phone banking), donating, and organizing.
And we’d have to do this stuff anyway even if Trump dropped dead an hour from now.
Here, I wrote an essay about it:
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Could you point to the part of 1A that protects the rights to Twitter? I can’t find it in my copy of the Constitution.
You got a scanning electron microscope for that nitpick?
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It’s really not, yet so many people insist upon doing it anyway.
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So you’re saying Juliàn Castro?
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How many projects on military installations around the country lost some or all of their funding to pay for Trump’s Folly (his wall that a $500 ladder from Home Depot will likely be able to bypass?)
Even if the First Amendment did protect the rights to have a Twitter account, the message that started this portion of the discussion included the phrase “prison sentence”. If the punishment (taking away Trump’s Twitter account) was imposed by due process of law does it necessarily violate the First? Consider the text of the Fifth Amendment, which reads in part:
After all, being imprisoned after a jury trial infringes upon a prisoner’s “right of the people peaceably to assemble”.
Vexatious litigants face limits on their right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” imposed on them by the courts.
If your religion involved human sacrifice, I’d bet your defense that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is a Get Out Of Murder Charges Free card won’t fly.
Trump’s lawyers might claim (at his insistence) that taking away his Twitter account is a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments”, but if they can do that with a straight face I’ll fund their trip to the World Series of Poker in exchange for a share of their winnings.
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I… guess I am? I had no idea.
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Will twin astronauts do for now?
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He campaigned to be CEO and Majority Shareholder of the Corporate States Of America.
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As such, he’d still be prosecuted for embezzlement and removed by the board of directors.
And welcome to BoingBoing!
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But again: not a conspiracy theory. It’s not “speculating without evidence” - Trump and his supporters are openly talking about him staying in office beyond his term(s), partially under the mistaken belief that he’s legally “owed” more time, but also because of a disdain for democratic norms and rule of law. When people openly talk about doing something, that’s a threat. (The seriousness and likelihood of the threat are separate issues.)
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Of course, eventually. I’m more worried over how he’ll leave the state of our by-its-fingernails democracy.
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A conspiracy then. Plotting (even ‘talking with intent’) to break the law is a conspiracy. Sadly, prosecutors tend to insist on more robust evidence of action towards that end than just talking about it before they’d consider a prosecution (though not always, if the consipracy was seeded by security services and allegedly going to be undertaken by those of a brown persuasion, just as one random hypothetical example).
Well, it’s not (that we know of) a conspiracy yet, either. We can’t prove intent at this point, nor how serious anyone in a position to make this happen actually is. So what we have is the threat. It may turn out to be an empty threat, but still a threat.
Meanwhile, Trump just publicly stated that China should investigate Biden (hinting at a better trade outcome), so his public performance of illegal acts doesn’t seem to count for much.
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