Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect is worried about the period from now until the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20. He thinks Trump might find a happy refuge in Hungary or the Philippines. I would recommend North Korea, where Trump would get a hero’s welcome and could launch a new career developing waterfront property and hotels.
| Trump: The Art of the Deal |
| Once Donald Trump accepts the inevitable and grasps that he has lost the election, there will be two mortal dangers to the Republic. The first is that he will resort to extralegal means, including exhorting supporters to violence, to hold on to office. The second is that, as a wounded lame duck, he will become even more crazy and reckless. Let’s hope the military has a contingency plan to prevent him from starting World War III as a final, narcissistic “F-You” gesture to all who scorned him. But as reality sinks in, the survivor part of Trump’s twisted psyche will be focused on saving his own sorry ass. Jane Mayer has the definitive piece on all the prosecutions Trump will face as he leaves office. It’s quite a list. So Trump, the ultimate deal-maker, will be looking for the ultimate deal. He resigns, is pardoned by Pence, and is somehow spared further prosecution even by state officials not bound by a federal presidential pardon. As much as we might like to see Trump in a dungeon for all of eternity with reptiles gnawing at his vital organs, this is a deal worth brokering. Nothing is more important than getting a crazed lame-duck Trump out of office ASAP. The lawyers will have to figure out how it might be possible to bring in state prosecutors who have spent decades trying to send Trump to the slam. Maybe New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo could also pardon him for state crimes. Some might reject this as a corrupt deal. But these are not ordinary times. Get him out well before January 20. Trump has been talking about fleeing the country. Great! There are few pleasant places that would take him, but doubtless Viktor Orban or Rodrigo Duterte would be happy to have him. He can move Mar-a-Lago to Manila, start his own network, and get even richer. Swell. Just get him out of the White House before he blows us all up. |
| YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION SUPPORTS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM |
| Copyright (C) 2020 The American Prospect. All rights reserv |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I realize the above is tongue-in-cheek — but seriously folks, any course of events leaving XLV a free man will be making a deal with deil.
I just had to switch off the TV last night because some bleary-eyed talking heads were going on about how XLV is not going away and will still be a force to (w)reckon with for years to come. Yes, the Trump International Crime Syndicate is not magically going to disappear — not unless the Democratic Party grows the gumption (and maybe it will have to be New York standing alone) to get his whole gang’s taxes, prosecute them for their crimes, and put them away for good.
edit: Making a Deal with the Deil (excuse my Scottish)
Hilarious
Or “Scotch,” as Stable Genius Trump puts it. LOL.
Even the Idiot’s closing chapter is fascist. Hitler took the country down with him, sending children to the front lines, and blaming the people for his failures.
Oh dear, that’s horrible. ☹️
Sounds like Trump !!!!!
The “Deep State ” as Lofgren popularized it, is merely the Bureaucratic institutionalists who run Agencies . However after Trump’s assault on these institutions and the individuals in them ; I would not want to be Don the Con. A whole lot of people in a whole lot of agencies could put him in an Orange suit . His new TV network might have to be in Moscow with Snowden
Whatever Vlad was going to get from his Agent Orange in terms of intelligence, he doubtless already has. I sincerely doubt that Vlad wants him. Trump is a patsy and a mark and, I suspect, an object of blackmail, not a pal.
I can’t think of any country that wants Trump. In a way, it reminds me of the Shah. 😐
Brazil and the Philippines both have extradition treaties with the US, so they are both out. Saudi Arabia doesn’t (this is true of many countries in the Middle East), but as buddy buddy as he is with the Saudi Royal Family, is any Middle Eastern country going to take Mr. Muslim Ban? Ironically, many of the countries that don’t have such a treaty or treaties with the US are in Africa. Madagascar might be a possibility.
Ore maybe he could just buy Greenland, LOL.
Or, ofc
I have thought that it would be good for the country if Trump stepped down ASAP. The pandemic is starting to be extremely serious, and even now it is much too late but at least some sensible national leadership — science-based — is urgent and can’t wait until Jan. 20.
A lot of lives could be saved if a deal was brokered where Trump leaves immediately AND Biden appoints an agreed-upon team with real power to make pandemic-related policy for the country.
If Trump resigned, Pence would be president.
I think, Pence wants to fade away. He’ll never be elected president.
😐
Oh no, Eddie. Dense Pence is an ambitious fellow with his own variety of low cunning. Yon Mikey has a lean and hungry look.
We can hope
President elect Biden is sounding very good, just a tad premature but it appears Biden will win PA and/or enough states to reach 270. I wish we could make a deal with Trump on condition he shut up for the rest of his term and leave quietly in 2021 along with his obnoxious older children. Don, Jr., is a combination of Limbaugh and Hannity but without the charm.
Absolutely no social media would have to be part of any deal – from him, his family or any if his enablers. If he were to break this requirement, he would open himself up to prosecution. There would also need to be an extradition agreement for wherever h ends up. Maybe Russia could be a possibility.
If this election proves anything, it’s that the Trump Revolution is real and large and frightening. And Trump intends to continue leading it. Donnie Jr. already thinks he’s running for president in 2024. The only way to shut Idiot Senior up is to send him to prison. Thus prison, for Don the Con, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.
NO DEAL!
We don’t deal with terrorists.
Towerists
Trump is a Towerist
Steals from the poor
Shouldn’t empower this
Just say “No more!”
A couple years ago, I made a comment here on Diane’s blog that I didn’t care whether Trump got his just deserts but just wanted him gone. Make a deal with him. Agree to let him go golf, in exchange for his resigning. Then we’ll deal with Dense Pence the toadying pretend choirboy.
But as I have watched the devastation that Trump’s cruelty has visited upon asylum seekers and upon the families of American immigrants, as I’ve read the stories of the women whom he has assaulted and the real-estate students he has scammed, as I’ve watched him unilaterally decide to abandon the Kurds to be slaughtered, deliver a quid pro quo ultimatum to an ally at war, and bring about tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths by holding superspreader events and by politicizing wearing masks and social distancing because he thought being concerned about the pandemic would hurt his reelection, I’ve come to rethink that. Trump is a criminal whose actions have caused grievous harm. Justice for his many victims requires that he face his days (plural) in court.
To Eddie up there:
Pence is V.P. until a new President is sworn in, January 20th, so if it45 resigned, Pence would then, automatically, become President until January 20th. If this election were certified & Biden declared winner by November 20th, Pence would be President for 2 months. But it 45 will not resign. That idea is from the Theatre of the More Absurd…or, perhaps, the Most Absurd.
Would love to hear Mary Trump’s thoughts on that!
Hi retiredbutmissthekids 🙂.
Yes I know Pence is VP, until January 20, 2021, 12 PM. 🙂
Pence would never be elected president, because he’d be another Dan Quayle, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Gerald Ford-all vice-presidents linked to presidents they served with. 😐
Nope! No deals and no pardons. t45 AND Jr, Princess, Goober and Kushner will need to spend some time behind bars. Bannon and Giuilianni should join them. The worst thing that Gerald Ford did was pardon Nixon. It was the beginning of distrust toward ALL elected officials. My gosh, they even tried to dig up dirt on mild mannered, gentlemanly, _od loving Jimmy Carter and the only thing they could find was some dirt on his brother. A message needs to be sent that everyone is held accountable for crimes and bad behavior.
And talk about accountability or a lack of…… Steve Bannon got his hand slapped by Twitter for inciting violence against Dr. Fauci and Wray. If any one of us had posted that hate on social media, the FBI would have been leading us away to our own cell with a cot and 3 hots. These dregs of society keep getting a free pass and it has to end.
I would only quibble that that wasn’t “hate.” It was incitement to murder.
Our language has become so twisted that we no longer call things what they are.
I read that Bannon was BANNED from Twitter for inciting violence.
BANNED from Twitter is a slap on the wrist. Bannon should be going back to prison to wait out his trial for fraud since this seems to be a violation of parole? The FBI needs to handcuff him on national TV so that all can see what happens when one breaks the law….again and again. Legal charges should also be filed for inciting this kind of violence.
Even “inciting violence” does not express what it was: incitement to MURDER.
And just getting banned from some moronic social medium (Twitter for twits) is hardly enough.
Deal or No Deal?
Make a deal
To get him out?
Has appeal
For lousy lout
But what we get
Is not a deal
It’s just a bet
For future’s seal
I highly recommend that everyone watch the Frontline documentary Zero Tolerance, which details how Bannon, Sessions, and Miller got together and looked around for a mouthpiece to carry their white supremacist, anti-immigrant crusade forward and settled upon the ignorant malignant narcissist Trump to be their useful Trumped-up idiot (UTI). Bannon and Miller are disgusting, evil people, but they are a LOT smarter than their UTI is. On his talk show, recently, Bannon infamously called for the heads of Fauci and Wray to be put on pikes, but he then described how that might happen, in a public event like the “You’re Fired” moments from The Apprentice. So, the latter provides plausible deniability. He can say, I wasn’t talking about LITERALLY putting their heads on pikes. And the same goes for the other language that Bannon used on that show. Bannon says, basically, that the election is being stolen–that Election Day is Game Day and that any votes counted after that are fraudulent. He accuses election officials in Democratic strongholds of having printing presses churning out ballots for Biden. How many do you need? A hundred thousand? Here. But he doesn’t stop there. He says Trump won and must act like it, moving ahead with his second-term agenda, and that the Trump allies have the courts, the Supremes, the Constitution, the state legislatures, and both houses of Congress on their side. And the language he uses to describe all this is incendiary–he says that this is “a war” and a “revolution.” Now, of course, all this sounds completely nuts. Of course it’s legal to count votes after Election Day, and there’s no evidence at all of widespread fraud involving mail-in ballots.
It’s bad enough that Bannon is saying this stuff, but it’s also PRECISELY what Trump has been saying for many weeks now. These guys are trying to incite a throwing over of our democratic processes by having state officials seat Trump electors and having the courts throw out legal votes.
And they are trying to mobilize an army in the streets that believes this crap.
He’s right that they DO have the courts in their pockets, at least the Federal ones, particularly the Supreme Court — if it ever makes it that far.
History shows us what happened approx. 50 years out from the Civil War. The Confederacy placed statues to honor traitorous generals in cities and rural areas (and, the U.S. ended up with military bases named to honor them).
It’s time for tough love for the red state rural GOP and for conservative religious GOP voters Listening to their false grievances only solidifies them. The nation’s path forward to put a mirror in front of them that disables the bogus rationales they employ. American democracy will remain under threat until it’s done.
Some of those statues are now gone. 🙂
“Gone”, because of the courage of protestors.
The statues should never have been on public land.
I agree. Im glad Christopher Columbus’ statues are gone. 🤓
Agree.
Mark Meadows, Chief of Staff to Jabba the Trump, has tested positive for Covid-19. On Wednesday evening, he schmoozed, maskless, with the Trump family and invited guests at the big election party in the White House.
the, uh, Whiter House
right now it’s The Whine House
LOL. Perfect
“Self-Reverence”
Trump is a whine
In bottle of Klein
The fruit of a vine
With Möbius twine
This will test whether those who have had COVID can get it again.
I don’t think t45 had Covid 19 at all. I think is was another ruse concocted to bolster his ratings and to add stock value to the company that developed Regeneron. Show me the test results!!!…then I will believe it. Melania and Barron???….I don’t think they had it either.
LisaM, you may be right. He is an elderly man who is morbidly obese, as Pelosi put it. What’s the chance that he got COVID and recovered fully in three days?
Even if you can’t get COVid twice, we can always hope that in Trump’s case, the virus will make an exception.
Mark Meadows, citizen scientist. LOL.
Instead, let us turn our attention to what Biden-Harris can begin doing immediately to get this 🦠 virus under control. Everything turns on that. It is their central assignment. There is much they + we can do before Inauguration Day. Time to get our collective asses in gear.
Yep! I have Covid 19 fatigue and I’m afraid that I’m going to let my guard down and do something stupid to invite this into my household. We locked down in March and still haven’t completely opened up and we have had mask orders for a long while. I am tired of those in areas of the country where there have been few orders and only minor shutdowns complaining about how life is so tough. As our Governor says….”Wear the damn mask!”. If everyone, collectively, would follow some rules for a few short weeks, this could be knocked down enough that Christmas could be celebrated with family and friends in a cautious manor. Unfortunately, we will have to wait until Jan. 20th for anything to get accomplished.
To Eddie, up at 4:59 AM: Yeah, of course Pence would never be elected president. I see him as a ghost–so pale, expressionless & always in it45’s shadow.
And, whatever is on top of Pence’s head attracts flies.
Linda, Pence powders his hair with white flour.
Why?
Or, is it a joke about Pence being half-baked?
Or, about his preference for a make-do hair product that dates back hundreds of years like his world views?
Pence calls his wife “Mom”. ☹️
I agree with you 100%. As a citizen of the United States I have to ask, why this man is not in jail???????
Denise,
Trial precedes jail.
Prosecutors in New York City and New York State are waiting to charge Trump with financial crimes. After January 20.