lizkat
Watching March roll out real winter
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2020
- Posts
- 7,341
Let's not forget though that the courts have not caved in.... it was a conservative judge with credentials of membership in the Federalist society who threw that Pennsylvania case out with a 37-page excoriation of Trump's lawyers for even having brought such a case into a courtroom in the United States of America.
Trump has no path forward that overturns enough states' outcomes to flip the presidential election to himself.
The GOP may or may not realize now that Trump is more threat than advantage to their own prospects even from the sidelines if he manages to hold a following after he leaves office. McConnell sees it, not sure about McCarthy, but their respective charges in Senate and House respectively so far seem frozen in party-over-country mode.
However: It remains to be seen how they and various new members of the 117th Congress will react when private citizen Trump --as is likely unless he's immediately embroiled in serious criminal court proceedings-- starts acting like he's running a shadow government from his smartphone accounts and via any mainstream media appearances he nails down.
Trump has hinted at feeling personally insecure because of his perceived enemies sometimes, but he may not realize that it's not folks like mayors of blue state cities who are the people likely to turn on him after he exits the White House, in the event he acts like he's still in charge of a superpower. In the case of behavior like that, it's people whose prospects in his own party he has damaged, or may damage that he should probably worry about.
A friend once said that the biggest mistake Trump as president will ever have made was simply standing on Day One of his presidency in front of the CIA's memorial wall, the one w/ 117 stars representing unnamed agents who have died in the line of duty, and rambling on and on and on to the assembled CIA staffers and their managers about how great was his campaign and how unfair it was that people thought more people had showed up at Obama's inauguration than at his own the day before.
Yeah, he did that. NIce photo op, eh? "My CIA guys"... "my generals".... my NASA / USDA / FDA ...
Fricken guy's lucky some relocated USDA data collector hasn't already mowed over Trump's toes sometime at a preview of the tractor pull in a county fair appearance on the Fourth of July...
Now I don't know and didn't ask where my friend may have been going with his remark that that appearance will have ended up as Trump's worst mistake, nor did he elaborate, but I know that Trump has pulled similarly self-centered and thoughtless stunts on staff of other agencies and departments for his entire presidency. I do not envy for a second whoever it is who will land on Trump's security details going forward if Trump persists in trying to use the USA government and its agencies as props for his self-aggrandizement in his post-presidential life. There are limits to the public's patience, but we are easily distracted. There are limits to government's patience also and may prove more task focused. They have resources should give anyone pause, even someone like Donald Trump. We might end up in court v Trump sometime, why not, --contractors who have had to sue Trump are a dime a thousand-- but that's only where Trump's hijacked party might START in order to impress upon him their own powers if he starts getting in their way and they can't just wave him off. Bill Barr runs a department has a lot of power. Bill Barr won't be there come the end of January.
I'd think it very unlikely Trump could manage to keep a consistent "host" position in a show dedicated to keeping him a center of public attention. He's a spoiled dabbler at best now. He's most comfortable sitting in a White House private quarters bedroom taking pot shots on a protected account on Twitter. As a real person in real life, he has been maintaining a pretty erratic schedule for a long time now, with an entire cabinet and West Wing worth of aides to take up the slack and provide distraction. I'd not be surprised if Trump fades away playing golf with guys who have remained personally loyal to him at least to his face, and not be surprised if he just dies in bed the way a surprising number of actual and wannabe dictators do. It's to the country's advantage if that's exactly what does happen. Hard to make a martyr of a guy who just strokes out on one too many hamberders or a round too many of golf in the hot sun some afternoon.
Last edited:
