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President Donald Trump holds a Bible in front of a church in Washington on June 1, 2020, amid protests over racial inequality in the U.S.
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump attempted a violent coup to remain in power the last time he was president, so why would he step down at the end of his term if he’s elected a second time, particularly knowing that prison may await him once he leaves office?
To a range of increasingly alarmed authoritarianism scholars and Republican officials and consultants, the answer is simple: He will never leave willingly.
“The signs are all there that he would not leave voluntarily,” said Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College. “After all, he did his best to stay in office in 2021, sparking an insurrection to do it, and he has vowed to use the power of the presidency more forcefully in a possible second term.”
David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Florida, which is now Trump’s home state, agreed that a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as it has existed for 236 years. “If Trump gets reelected, all bets are off on the Constitution surviving the tests he’ll throw at it,” he said. “His movement would support anything he tries, regardless of constitutional provisions.”
“Trump is so unpredictable that anything could happen. Literally anything,” said GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who added that Trump’s hold on his base of supporters today is “even stronger and more intense” than it was in 2016.
Trump’s campaign staff did not respond to multiple queries about whether he would honor the constitutionally prescribed end of his second and final term, but his statements through the years suggest that he does not see the Constitution as necessarily binding.
As the 2020 election approached, Trump repeatedly suggested that he was owed a third term, because so much of his first was consumed with a Justice Department investigation into his campaign’s coordination with Russia to help him win in 2016. And as Election Day grew closer and he lagged far behind Democrat Joe Biden in the polls, Trump floated a postponement of the vote because of the coronavirus pandemic — an idea quickly shot down by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
More recently, while repeating his lie that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him, Trump last year called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” so he could be immediately reinstated as president.
Despite this, many if not most Republicans ― even those who dislike Trump and think he betrayed his oath with his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob he had incited attacked the U.S. Capitol to keep him in power ― believe that those who worry about a second Trump term morphing into a dictatorship are catastrophizing.
“While he can damage the wheels of democracy, I don’t know that he can break them,” said Oscar Brock, a Republican National Committee member from Tennessee.
David Kochel, a Republican consultant in Iowa with decades of experience, said what Trump may want and what Trump can get are two entirely different things. “It wouldn’t matter what he did. The Constitution is what it is,” Kochel said. “The military swears an oath to defend it, not the president. No chance he stays longer than the constitutionally allowed term.”
Those arguments, though, echo the ones Republicans made after Trump lost the Nov. 3, 2020, election, when the GOP establishment largely humored Trump’s lies about “fraud” on the theory that there was nothing he could do to stop Biden’s inauguration.
Instead, Trump actively used the threat of violence, and then actual violence in the Jan. 6 insurrection, to try to coerce then-Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers into giving him a second term in office. About 140 police officers were injured by Trump’s mob, and five ended up dying.
Gail Helt, who watched for signs of democratic decay abroad as a CIA analyst and now runs the Security and Intelligence Studies program at King University in Tennessee, said too many Americans continue to assume that rules, “norms” and even laws would protect the nation, when Trump cheerfully ran roughshod over them during his first term.
“We have to stop applying norms to Trump and expecting he will abide by them,” she said. “We have to get that through our heads. Four more years of Trump will be our undoing.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-trump-leave-office-second-120005556.html
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump attempted a violent coup to remain in power the last time he was president, so why would he step down at the end of his term if he’s elected a second time, particularly knowing that prison may await him once he leaves office?
To a range of increasingly alarmed authoritarianism scholars and Republican officials and consultants, the answer is simple: He will never leave willingly.
“The signs are all there that he would not leave voluntarily,” said Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College. “After all, he did his best to stay in office in 2021, sparking an insurrection to do it, and he has vowed to use the power of the presidency more forcefully in a possible second term.”
David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Florida, which is now Trump’s home state, agreed that a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as it has existed for 236 years. “If Trump gets reelected, all bets are off on the Constitution surviving the tests he’ll throw at it,” he said. “His movement would support anything he tries, regardless of constitutional provisions.”
“Trump is so unpredictable that anything could happen. Literally anything,” said GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who added that Trump’s hold on his base of supporters today is “even stronger and more intense” than it was in 2016.
Trump’s campaign staff did not respond to multiple queries about whether he would honor the constitutionally prescribed end of his second and final term, but his statements through the years suggest that he does not see the Constitution as necessarily binding.
As the 2020 election approached, Trump repeatedly suggested that he was owed a third term, because so much of his first was consumed with a Justice Department investigation into his campaign’s coordination with Russia to help him win in 2016. And as Election Day grew closer and he lagged far behind Democrat Joe Biden in the polls, Trump floated a postponement of the vote because of the coronavirus pandemic — an idea quickly shot down by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
More recently, while repeating his lie that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him, Trump last year called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” so he could be immediately reinstated as president.
Despite this, many if not most Republicans ― even those who dislike Trump and think he betrayed his oath with his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob he had incited attacked the U.S. Capitol to keep him in power ― believe that those who worry about a second Trump term morphing into a dictatorship are catastrophizing.
“While he can damage the wheels of democracy, I don’t know that he can break them,” said Oscar Brock, a Republican National Committee member from Tennessee.
David Kochel, a Republican consultant in Iowa with decades of experience, said what Trump may want and what Trump can get are two entirely different things. “It wouldn’t matter what he did. The Constitution is what it is,” Kochel said. “The military swears an oath to defend it, not the president. No chance he stays longer than the constitutionally allowed term.”
Those arguments, though, echo the ones Republicans made after Trump lost the Nov. 3, 2020, election, when the GOP establishment largely humored Trump’s lies about “fraud” on the theory that there was nothing he could do to stop Biden’s inauguration.
Instead, Trump actively used the threat of violence, and then actual violence in the Jan. 6 insurrection, to try to coerce then-Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers into giving him a second term in office. About 140 police officers were injured by Trump’s mob, and five ended up dying.
Gail Helt, who watched for signs of democratic decay abroad as a CIA analyst and now runs the Security and Intelligence Studies program at King University in Tennessee, said too many Americans continue to assume that rules, “norms” and even laws would protect the nation, when Trump cheerfully ran roughshod over them during his first term.
“We have to stop applying norms to Trump and expecting he will abide by them,” she said. “We have to get that through our heads. Four more years of Trump will be our undoing.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-trump-leave-office-second-120005556.html
