[andrewinardeer]

Trump has what, 3 and a bit years as POTUS?

All this power grabbing is setting himself up for what? In 3.5 years he is out the door and an election will be held with presumably Vance as the POTUS nom.

If you play the tape out and, as expected, the GOP is massacred at mid-terms, and Dems get in their pick in at the next election I would expect all this to be undone.

What is the point?

And I reject any argument that Trump will take the POTUS position for a third term. It won't happen.

[TheAlchemist]

Are you sure about that ?

Because if history is any indication, he's on a straight path every single dictator and strongman walked before becoming one. He has set on fire every single US institution and the rule of law. He is the law now.

It doesn't end well. Maybe it won't be him, but his son, who knows. But there is no good outcome out of it. Zero. He's not loosing another election.

[cosmicgadget]

Seems pretty simple: he was staring down the prospect of dying in prison. The classified documents and Jan 6 cases were open and shut but had Judge Cannon and executive immunity slowing things to a crawl. So he made a deal with P2025 to get him back in office in exchange for executing their plan to reshape the country.

A lot of what they're doing is difficult to reverse. Article III appointments, gerrymandering, SCOTUS decisions, the replacement of the federal workforce, selling off federal property, approving resource extraction, economic damage, ...

[dragonwriter]

> In 3.5 years he is out the door and an election will be held with presumably Vance as the POTUS nom.

I wouldn't presume that very strongly; the last two sitting VPs to be nominated to succeed the President they served under were Nixon and George H. W. Bush.

> If you play the tape out and, as expected, the GOP is massacred at mid-terms, and Dems get in their pick in at the next election I would expect all this to be undone.

I think you haven't thought through the manners in which a military occupation targeted on a partisan basis can, alone or in coordination with other chicanery, selectively impact the operation if elections, and how any uncertainty produced is resolved by the fact that the existing House is the ultimate judge of elections to the next House.

IOW, your mistake is asssumign business as usual despite all the flashing red lights and klaxons going off about how the business of government is not operating as usual.

[twoodfin]

You forgot about Al Gore.

[Forgeties79]

At this point they are probably banking on the Supreme Court reining in all this executive power right before his term ends to hobble a possible Democrat successor.

[lawn]

> And I reject any argument that Trump will take the POTUS position for a third term. It won't happen.

You're naive if you say it absolutely won't happen.

This scenario has played out again and again throughout history when dictators install themselves, existing rules and legality be damned.

[rsynnott]

> and an election will be held with presumably Vance as the POTUS nom.

I mean, surely not. No-one is going to vote for that. They'll presumably be able to find _someone_ who's less of a weirdo nobody.

[cosmicgadget]

This will be the depressingly interesting part about the next three years. The GOP will have to push a successor while Trump clearly will not accept any threat to his status. This is probably why they are going so hard for gerrymandering and eliminating mail-in voting.

[Yeul]

Trump occasionally speaks wise words. People DO love dictators- at least until they go cuckoo and start wars and have public executions.

[kccoder]

SOME people like the idealized concept of a dictator. Those people are fools.

[softwaredoug]

Trump has anchored us to such a degree of daily insanity, that a right wing - dare I say far right - but less dramatic - will feel like a relief. My baseline assumption is if Trumps not around, a slightly saner GOP, with still Trumpy policies, becomes way more popular. So Vance or whomever will have a Unitary executive with some norms reestablished (like Fed independence) and some knee jerk Trumpy policies (like tariffs) back to some level of sanity.

After all is said and done we’ll have a right leaning government but with most of the day to day insanities and drama removed. But still far more right wing than we would have tolerated 10 years ago.

Either that or without Trump the Trump coalition implodes.

Or a puppet president is elected with Trump able to bully them into what he wants. But not sure his health lasts for that.