zlacker

"they are probably weighing the possibility that he never leaves office"

I think you are very far from reality

>>logics+(OP)
When Trump leaves office he will be open to an enormous amount of investigation, litigation and prosecution. I don't know how probable it is that he tries to stay in office, but I don't think it is zero. Twitter planning around that possibility seems be less likely.

>>logics+(OP)
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/trump-jokes-rigg...

> Since assuming office in January 2017, Trump has made at least 27 references to staying in office beyond the constitutional limit of two terms. He often follows up with a remark indicating he is “joking,” “kidding,” or saying it to drive the “fake” news media “crazy.” Even if Trump thinks that he’s only “joking,” the comments fit a broader pattern that raises the prospect that Trump may not leave office quietly in the event he’s on the losing end of a very close election.

>>logics+(OP)
How far do you think he would go in order to try?

>>logics+(OP)
very very far from reality. i heard the same thing from liberal friends about GWB and i heard the same thing from conservative friends about Obama.

>>zorpne+e3
My personal estimate is zero. He can't really cash in until he leaves office.

>>chasd0+q3
Comparing GWB to Trump is a bit disingenuous, don't you think? Trump is an actual wannabe autocrat, as opposed to GWB and Obama.

>>chasd0+q3
Out of interest, what public statements from Obama did your conservative friends use to justify those beliefs?

>>logics+(OP)
I dont.

>>Uhhrrr+Q5
What makes you think that? What do you think "cashing in" entails, and what do you think prevents the Trump family from doing it now?

Also, how would he and his family stay out of jail if they can no longer control the judiciary and FBI?

>>chasd0+q3
I heard those things too. This is the first time I've considered it even slightly plausible. I'd give it a 20% chance that he calls on his most fanatical base to march armed on DC if he loses the election.

Go check into the Qanon cult and similar circles. There are conservatively probably a few hundred thousand people in this country that would take up arms against the (literal) baby eating pedophile illuminati. All he has to do is say "the storm is upon us" and provide instructions. "Where we go one we go all."

Can any constitutional scholars comment on what happens then? What if he as commander in chief orders the military to stand down? Would they obey him or protect the constitution? What about the national guard? Local police? What would any of these agencies do if removing Trump required opening fire on tens of thousands of Americans?

Reagan, Clinton, and Obama were much more broadly popular than Trump, but the thought of them attempting this and having any chance of success is laughable. I don't even think Bush II could have pulled it off right after 9/11 at the peak of his popularity and with his powerful religious right base.

Trump on the other hand has a fan base unlike any I've ever seen. If you don't believe me research Qanon. There's a shockingly large group of people who worship him as something almost akin to a prophet. I'm sure there's some percentage who would die for him. It's a bit disturbing.

I agree that it's unlikely, but it is plausible.

Personally I think he will leave office, but what he has accomplished is to pave the way for an actual future dictator.

If the COVID recession plus unlimited QE results in further divergence between the real economy and the financial economy I could definitely see real fascism or totalitarian socialism winning some day. As I've been saying for a while, which one we get probably depends on which side is able to field the most compelling demagogue. I don't think people will care about left or right as long as there are pitchforks being handed out.

>>chasd0+q3
During his 'The president has total power' gaffe he at one point said something along "I am president, the president isn't a person, but the office. I have the office now. Then the next guy will have the office..." You know, the kind of thing a dictator would say. Sometimes I feel like defending him due to people's over reactions when I wouldn't otherwise.

>>logics+(OP)
I'd love to live in this world, but it is not one I think anyone can afford to live in. This man is a true narcissist who has very little respect for the office, the institutions he's responsible for, or more than half the country. All sorts of things that were very far from reality are no longer.

But I would love to be able to agree with you. That would be a better world. But the world we live in is where the President says "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," a racist dog whistle to the 1960s, who "jokes" about staying past any term limits, where enablers in Congress and in the media allow him to toe the line of criminal behavior with no accountability as long as it benefits them. That's reality. I wish it were different, but I cannot take your position and reconcile it with what's in front of us today.

>>magna7+b6
And yet Obama jailed journalists and worked towards instituting Socialist ideas - which include a ruling class.

Meanwhile, Trumps only "autocrat" proof is words? He talks snit... What has he done to become a King? Nothing he's done so far isn't powers used by previous Presidents - including Obama.

What actual has Trump taken to expand Presidential powers? And what steps has Trump taken to become a King?

Because until actual actions are taken... words are just Trump talking shit. Which he's allowed to do...

>>Uhhrrr+Q5
> My personal estimate is zero. He can't really cash in until he leaves office.

This seems true for a normal president, but Trump has never been shy about self enrichment even while in office, so it's not clear what incentive there is for him to leave.

>>paiute+7c
Vladimir Putin talks about his office in a similar way. Yet he's managed to hold it for 20 years even though the Russian constitution was supposed to limit him to two four-year terms.

At least since Augustus, dictators have been diligent in paying lip service to law and established tradition while trampling over both.

>>chasd0+q3
I did too, but the funny thing about "this time is different", is that sometimes it is true. Consider the fact that Trump is the only president that said he would not respect the results of an election if he lost. Also consider the dramatic backsliding in democracy we've seen in other countries throughout the world in the last decade. Vladimir Putin never explicitly called himself Emperor for Life, but for all practical purposes, he is just that.

At the end of the day there is no such thing as "the law". They are just words written on paper.

>>javagr+a2
"What if I...didn't leave office, as a joke...aha ha, just kidding... unless?"

>>javagr+a2
This is how he uses the Overton window to change the conversation. He's very good at this sort of thing.

>>montag+jc
Trump barely has support now, nothing close to the widespread popularity he’d need to refuse to leave office. There’s about a 0% chance the Supreme Court goes along with it, and without an election the Presidency automatically transfers.

He’d also have to be astoundingly popular among the Secret Service for them to betray their oaths. His military support would tank, and him, his family, and administration would be in constant fear for their lives. IMO, he’s just not that insane, stupid, or popular enough to even try.

>>zapita+va
Cashing in entails:

-Large book deal, with title "Winning: How I Made America Great Again Despite All The Dummy Losers In Washington"

-Some sort of talk show or network

-But mostly, going back to licensing the use of his name all over the place

As for staying out of jail, he might not, but I suspect a combination of fuzzily enforced regulations and big money lawyers will keep him out.

>>paiute+7c
The context for this is also that although Democrats wanted Obama to use executive orders to advance their agenda, Obama understood that future presidents would use his use of executive orders as precedent for their own--regardless of to what party they belong.

>>api+Gb
I think it's impossible to predict whether he makes such a call, it's the realm of psychology. What's the trigger? Let's say he loses the election. Does his decompensation happen so fast and so hard that he turns into Jell-O? Or does he rage tweet (or go on Facebook or TV or all of the above) that the election is rigged, illegal, invalid, and must be challenged with violence, before it's too late?

shrug

At that moment it is less about law than it is about character of other leaders. Does the Vice President, who is still the VP following his own election loss, contradict the POTUS' election fraud claims and call for violence? Necessarily on the table is 25th amendment and/or impeachment. A call for violent revolution to achieve the dissolution of constitutional order is unquestionably a violation of oath of office for any elected official.

People are conditioned to think that an impeachment would take a week or more. If Congresscritters actually get scared? They can follow strict rules of order and still get it done very quickly. Hours. The real impediments to speed are physical presence in the chamber. Not opposition. They will not wait for TV cameras, spectator chairs or tickets to get printed. If they really believe the POTUS is trying to incite an overthrow of the government, which is what autocracy means, they know full well they are inside the blast radius of imploding power.

>>chasd0+q3
Did you read the end of the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"?

>>dahdum+yg
Not going to weigh in more generally - but he seems to be doing pretty fine according to recent polls

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

>>zapita+va
they are already cashing in. look at jr's book deal. look at ivanka's trademarks in china. look at funneling money into their properties. there's myriad graft in that family.

>>Uhhrrr+9h
I don't think you appreciate the magnitude of what is happening in the US at the moment.

The federal government is being stripped for parts, as we speak. Entire agencies have been gutted. Industrial conglomerates can literally regulate their own industries - for a price. Foreign leaders can influence foreign policy - for a price. Federally endicted criminals can get out of jail as if nothing had happened - for a price.

The level of grift and corruption is unlike anything the US has ever known. If Trump remains in power - which he is absolutely planning to do at all cost - it will only get worse. The end game for him is to create a new dynasty of oligarchs - at the same level of the Saudi royal family or Putin. Compared to that, the book deals and talk shows are nothing - crumbs. He wants to join the club. And that requires staying in power so that he can 1) continue stealing billions from the US public, and 2) continue corrupting the federal government to stay out of jail.

>>dahdum+yg
> without an election the Presidency automatically transfers.

Says who? You've never had a President try to suspend or tamper with an election.

>>werner+Wc
He's neutered the justice department[0] and he's packing the federal judiciary with ideologues to the exclusion of sober-minded jurists. He's firing inspectors general tasked with oversight of the executive.[1]

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/attack-fun...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/16/us/politics/trump-state-d...

>>Uhhrrr+Q5
I'm not certain that is true. Wouldn't the most effective way to profit from the presidency be to cultivate your persona as a twitter troll, and tip someone off when you are about to make a market moving tweet so they can place a leveraged bet?

I don't think insider trading law would apply, but in any case we seem to have established that he's above the law and can't be impeached. He, or friends beholden to him, could be trillionaires by the time they leave office.

It would certainly explain why he continually makes inflammatory statements about China and everything else, without seeming to consistently pursue anything.

>>montag+jc
It's not about what Trump does. It's about what everyone else does. He's very good at getting attention with stunts that have no practical or legal effect. This includes signing executive orders, which sounds like doing something but it's not necessarily so.

So you need to look at scenarios where other people do stuff, and why it happens. Are there orders he can give and will people follow them? If not directly due to an order, how does it happen?

>>werner+Wc
Obama jailed a journalist? Who?

What do you mean by socialism? What socialist ideas did Obama institute? What is the "ruling class" within socialism?

Regarding Trump: what do you make of him removing the inspector general who had opened an investigation against Pompeo? What do you make of him pushing out Jeff Sessions because Sessions recused himself from the Muller investigation?

Put another way: what would count as stepping toward autocracy, other than an explicit suspension of Congress or the like? Barring outright coups, these things happen incrementally. See Hungary, Brazil, etc.

>>lazide+Fj
Well enough to pass some policy, but not enough to seize power through popularity. He’d undoubtedly lose significant (I’d wager most) Republican voters, and all semblance of a mandate.

The idea drives a lot of clicks and ad views though, so I’m sure we’ll see many more speculative articles before the election.

>>dahdum+Bv
I wonder if anyone in history has managed to seize authoritarian power with only 40% support. I vaguely remember an example in the 1930s in central europe somewhere.

>>ForHac+Ok
Primarily the Constitution and the Presidential Succession Act. While there are some ambiguities that need to be resolved there is definitely no scenario in which the sitting President continues.

>>montag+jc
In order for trump to make a military coup and disband elections, he need more than the title of office. Even for something like sending in the military in order to push demonstrators, you need the direct support of the military. Is there any evidence that he as that kind of support?

Without such support, all the can do is push peoples buttons. He can ask the national guard to go to the location, which the national guard will likely accept in order to look helpful and useful. He might be able to impose a curfew, through the courts will fight him there. He might even be able to impose rules against large gatherings, which again the courts would fight him over. But I don't see how officers and generals would accept an order to start shooting civilians. Even if we disregard the moral question, just the liability risk from "just following orders" makes me question how much control a president have over the military to do acts which the law and common understanding of the law says are illegal. Intentionally killing your own civilians is a pretty major step for any nations military.

Sending in the national guard is naturally still a terrible idea as someone is likely to get shot accidentally. There was a good reason why the 9/11 military posted at airports wielded guns with empty magazines. Trump has likely the ability to cause accidentally shooting when the looting starts by placing the wrong people at the wrong location with the wrong training and wrong gear. He has a much harder time to accidentally cause a military coup and disband elections.

>>dahdum+yg
I think you're basically making an "it can't happen here" argument, and I wholly disagree. I worry this kind of thinking effectively guarantees it will happen here eventually, because it relies on dynamics that govern legitimacy remaining the same as they have been in the past. The way it would happen is specifically if the dynamics of loyalty and who has legitimate authority change, and we've seen over the last four years that that's 100% happening. The only question is how deep the distrust of institution goes and how far the people in key positions will go to defend a President they are loyal to. If you can convince enough people to distrust the process of picking the President, you can create enough chaos to break apart the forces that would normally counter that kind of thing.

Look at any nation that underwent major coups; factions form, and it tears the organizations you've listed apart at the seams. Because a conflict of legitimacy exposes those seams, and those seams are absolutely present today. A Secret Service agent, an army colonel, armed militia, border patrol agents—if they can be made to believe the results of the election are illegitimate, they may consider the best way to fulfill their oaths to be stopping the "illegitimate" president from taking office. They will think of themselves as the ones stopping the coup.

I'd love to believe that all of those dynamics you're describing are the same as they were 20 years ago. I'd also make your argument then. But they aren't anymore. It can happen here.

>>jhprie+Ov
I appreciate your point but do you see an actual path for him to do so here? It’s a different form of government, in a different era, with a much more informed populace aware of those consequences.

Maduro did it in Venezuela recently, that’s actually a more apt comparison as he packed their Supreme Court to do so.

>>montag+Uw
I won’t claim it could never happen here, societies change and we could certainly drift to a place it could. The Dem candidates that advocated packing the Supreme Court scared me for this reason, that’s part of how Maduro seized complete power.

Trump now though? Nobody fears him, the majority disrespect him, government bureaucracy openly defies him. He doesn’t even have the House, nor enough Republican support to pass laws to enable a power grab, nor a Supreme Court loyal to him before the constitution.

>>dahdum+mx
He has already started.

- Informed populace. Really? It seems to me that propaganda and disinformation are rampant. The rise of radio broadcasts parallels the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Hitler understood the power of this new form of media, and used it to build a superior propaganda apparatus. The same thing is happening now with the combo of cable news and social media.

- Supreme court is now 5-4. The last two nominations do meet the bar of independence and due process. Neither do dozens of federal judge appointments that the Senate is railroading in unprecedented numbers.

- The entire GOP is compromised. Those who are not aligned with Trump have resigned. Remember Paul Ryan? Everyone who is left is fully aware of the new marching orders: absolute loyalty to Trump and his family. Breaking the law is ok - you will be protected. And if the law gets in the way, change it.

- The DoJ is compromised. For example, Federal charges were dropped against Michael Flynn, a federally indicted accomplice of Trump. That has never happened before.

- The election system is compromised. See the revelations by whistleblower Reality Winner. Note that no action has been taken - except exceptionally harsh prison sentence against Winner in retaliation for leaking the fact that the elect infrastructure is under attack.

- The FBI is compromised. Trump and his family have been under surveillance since the 1980s as known associates of the Russian mafia. It’s the only plausible explanation to the FBI leaving him, a known criminal, entirely alone, while choosing to sabotage Clinton with Comey’s eleventh hour announcement.

- ICE is now effectively a para-military operation loyal to Trump personally.

- The Treasury has been compromised by Russian agents since 2015. With Trump appointees now in charge, things have only gotten worse.

- Multiple state legislatures are compromising beyond repair. For example Missouri is deeply corrupt, and effectively controlled by the GOP in perpetuity regardless of popular vote. There is a vicious circle of electoral impunity leading to more dismantling of anti-corruption regulation, which allows more shady practices to tip the electoral scales even further. In Georgia, the secretary of state used his authority to “disappear” thousands of ballots and get himself fraudulently elected as Governor.

- Let’s not even get into the countless state and city police agencies that are infiltrated by white supremacists.

The coup is already underway.

>>dahdum+bA
Trump and Mcconnell have already packed the supreme court and the federal circuits.

It's no-longer a question of if the Democrats respond, it's a question of how.

>>perl4e+Pl
1) Reading Matt Levine's "Money Stuff" has made me expect that the SEC is pretty good at detecting such things.

2) Also, that seems like something which would make more money for someone else, which does not fit with my model of Trump's behavior.

>>cmurf+ej
The POTUS can bar senators from entering the room. Then what?

>>NickNa+eI
They didn’t pack the Supreme Court, it’s still the same number. They did appoint a bunch of textualists and originalists, not just die hard conservatives. That makes it harder to drive progressive change through the judiciary, but the legislative branch was always the better option.

Actual court packing is a terrible idea, last attempted by FDR, at great political cost. Hearing candidates actively propose plans for doing so boggled my mind.

>>javagr+a2
OTOH people who hated Bush Jr. thought there was a good chance, and some evidence, that he'd find a way to stay in office past his term. Same with Obama.

>>dahdum+XO
> That makes it harder to drive progressive change through the judiciary, but the legislative branch was always the better option.

Maybe not so much. Didn't this court gut important parts of the the Voting Rights Act?

>>ardy42+FV
We also have Roberts to thank for Citizens United, which flooded the political landscape with dark money and made the current GOP strategy viable.

>>Uhhrrr+3J
Matt Levine regularly says that US insider trading law is a mishmash of precedent and that it does not require an "equal playing field" but rather that's a misconception. He's also more than once mentioned that you can trade on your own intentions legally, and that illegal trading is generally based on misusing information that belongs to someone else. Finally, I essentially got the idea of people front-running the tweets from one of his columns, so I know it's occurred to him, but he wasn't quite so blunt about it.

The SEC is irrelevant if there's no specific law against it, never mind that there's no evidence anyone can prosecute for anything even if it was a crime.

As far as making money for someone else, doing a "friend" a favor is not the same thing as charity, nor is laundering money through a proxy. If you hypothetically give away a trillion dollars without receiving anything in return formally that doesn't mean you haven't bought something. Ownership is only the convention that other people think you own something, backed up by some sort of written records somewhere.

>>dahdum+mx
My concern is that we may see the same dynamics as the reconstruction era. White liberals may lack the stomach for the kind of serious reform that would preserve democracy in the face of a white supremacist bloc gradually eroding voting rights and the rule of law. I wouldn't expect a Hitler-style dictatorship but we could see one-party rule.

>>perl4e+cI1
Yes, but recall we are talking about my expectation that he will prefer cashing in to trying to be President for life (which in my estimation would be thwarted by every other part of government anyway). He may well be doing such things now, but he can't really cash in on favors owed until he leaves office.

>>ncmncm+UK
POTUS is a legal term, and no law gives them power to prevent senators from entering either capitol chamber. Each house has their own rules who can enter. They each keep their own Sergeant at Arms.

IF a POTUS can use force to stop them, it is extra-constitutional, and at that point this person is not POTUS but something else.

>>zapita+tH
Would you be interested in a bet on this? I’m fascinated by people who have strong convictions on things that I think the mainstream populace would put an incredibly low weight on, like, how’d you get here?

I’d love to hear what constitutes your majority of news sources. And also where you live broadly. I almost can’t imagine someone outside of SF who ready HuffPost daily to believe this.

I’d give you 20:1 odds and happily take the bet. I’m very curious how seriously convinced you are about this, as it’s about as far outside what even my extreme leftists friends believe. Not to try and be macho or anything, but I’m very curious how strongly you believe this, or if you are mostly acting as a bellweather, trying to sound an alarm very early on a trend you think others miss.

>>JoeJon+ss
> Obama jailed a journalist? Who?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/shocked-by-th...

I don't see anything about jailing them - and I remember reading a story awhile back about but can't find it. So if I'm wrong on that point, I stand corrected.

With that said - Obama definitely attacked journalists from DC. Spying on them, following them, etc.

> Trump removing various people

Those people work at the Presidents discretion. All previous Presidents have fired staff at various stages for various reasons.

Trump is a businessman who is known for firing people... You may have seen his Reality TV Show. His catch line? YOURE FIRED!

https://www.rollcall.com/2017/05/10/a-list-of-notable-presid...

He has the ability to fire people at will.

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/165983

> The final vote was ten in favor and ten opposed, so Adams, exercising for the first time his Constitutional authority to break a tie, settled the matter in favor of the president’s exclusive removal power.

> The president’s authority to dismiss an appointee is now settled law, but with the text unclear, it had to be settled by the First Federal Congress.

> autocracy

Trump doesn't have the "unlimited powers" of a King or a Dictator though... you can claim it but he's got the same power as those before.

You could argue about "incremental" movements... but Trump hasn't moved the needle any further that I know of. Previous Presidents? Definitely... but Trump has been using everything previous Presidents have used - from Obama on back.