Wrecking ball: the damage Trump could do while still president until January
Quote:
Some of the mayhem that will follow Donald Trump losing the presidential election is already known
“If Trump loses power he’ll spend his last 90 days wrecking the United States like a malicious child with a sledgehammer in a china shop,” said Malcolm Nance, a veteran intelligence analyst and political author, speaking before the result of the election was known.
“We’re likely to see the greatest political temper tantrum in history. He may decide he wants to go out with a bang, he may decide he will not accept the election result. Who knows what a cornered autocrat will do?”
While a flurry of executive actions to further roll back environmental and industrial regulations is possible, analysts believe a beaten Trump will be less motivated by politics and more focused on himself. Nance’s main concern is the possibility of civil unrest, from Trump supporters including armed militias, white supremacists and other activists fired up by perceived calls-to-arms by their leader.
“All these 100-truck convoys may start marching like they’re going into Mosul,” he said. “It’s like an insurgency. We’re going to find out … whether they rise up en masse and say we don’t accept this, Donald Trump’s our man, and they start parading and taking over boards of elections.”
He’s a compromised person, a broken asset of a foreign power, and has been under the thrall, the pay, or most likely the debt of Vladimir Putin,” Nance said. “Anything which benefits him personally, anything that benefits what he believes is his brand, he will do.”
Other analysts agree.
“Trump will likely spend his last months in a flurry of self-dealing, tossing out pardons and trying to discredit his opponents and the system itself,” Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and chair of the Human Rights Foundation, said in an opinion piece for CNN.
“Americans who want to see the rule of law restored and strengthened must be ready to fight for it, in the courts and in the streets if necessary, peacefully but persistently, because there is little doubt that Trump and his supporters will not go quietly.”
Not all experts believe a Trump “lame duck” presidency will be completely volatile. “What will stop him is fear of prison,” Stuart Stevens, a veteran Republican consultant, told Salon.
Editorial: Trump's unhinged post-election rant portends a dangerous three months ahead.Quote:
Voters on Tuesday soundly rejected the most dangerously unfit president in modern American history, with that decision resoundingly confirmed on Saturday.
Almost three months will pass before Inauguration Day — three months under a president who last week voiced voter-fraud conspiracies so baseless and wild they verge on delusional. As dangerous as Donald Trump has been as a sitting president, he could well prove to be more of a wrecking ball as a lame duck. Congressional Republicans have long failed to stand up to Trump’s repeated assaults on America’s laws and norms. They should take Trump’s 4 million-vote loss as a directive from America to finally exert the oversight this president so clearly requires.
In short, he sounded less like a president than a mentally disturbed man standing on a street corner shouting incomprehensibly at passers-by.
The idea of this defeated, embittered president remaining in power for three months with nothing to lose should be terrifying to the 74 million Americans not hypnotized by the Trumpian spell. Until Jan. 20, Trump will maintain his authority over the Justice Department, which he has long used corruptly for his own political ends, not to mention his control over the military and its nuclear weapons. He knows what issues matter most to Democrats — climate change, health care, pandemic precautions — and can be expected to do his best to include them in his scorched-earth departure.
As I said prior to the election I wish for the physical safety and mental health of WP’s American members and I hope these fears are overblown.
_________________
“Self Acceptance is a process not a performance”
“You are autistic enough. And you always have been”
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity.
Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 08 Nov 2020, 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
08 Nov 2020, 11:46 am
