{"id":13398,"date":"2021-01-05T20:59:21","date_gmt":"2021-01-05T20:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=13398"},"modified":"2021-01-09T15:18:15","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T15:18:15","slug":"trumps-last-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=13398","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s last stand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

8th January: after the attempted coup in Washington DC, I have added Scenario 14 and Scenario 15 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Looking over the water at what\u2019s going on in America these days is fascinating. It\u2019s real \u2018pass the popcorn\u2019 stuff, especially since Trump\u2019s phone call to Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I listen to and read professional American political and legal commentators. They’re the kind of people the British media doesn\u2019t dig. British media seems to prefer their own \u2018correspondents\u2019 who, frankly, are just plugging themselves into the same American experts anyway: Seth Abramson, Aaron Rupar, Daniel Dale, Adam Klasfeld, and Brian Klaas to name my most regular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lately the scene in the US has taken on a surreal air, it\u2019s almost like a cross between LA Law, The West Wing, and an as-yet-unwritten John Grisham novel. It is, frankly, riveting viewing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I thought I\u2019d combine my lack of knowledge of things American with some strategic thinking and put together some scenarios for fun. You know, just jot down a few possibilities that we could revisit in a few months. Just to see how wrong I was. So here we go:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 1:<\/strong> Trump attends the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He vacates the White House. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration occurs naturally<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 2:<\/strong> Trump attends the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He vacates the White House. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration does not occur naturally<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 3:<\/strong> Trump doesn\u2019t attend the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He vacates the White House. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration occurs naturally<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 4:<\/strong> Trump doesn\u2019t attend the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He vacates the White House. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration does not occur naturally<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 5:<\/strong> Trump doesn\u2019t attend the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He refuses to vacate the White House. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration does not occur naturally<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 6:<\/strong> Trump doesn\u2019t attend the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He leaves the Whitehouse and bunkers down in one of his US resorts. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration occurs naturally<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 7: <\/strong>Trump doesn\u2019t attend the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He leaves the Whitehouse and bunkers down in one of his US resorts. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration does not occur naturally<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 8:<\/strong> Trump doesn\u2019t attend the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He leaves the US and bunkers down in one of his overseas resorts. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration occurs naturally<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 9: <\/strong>Trump doesn\u2019t attend the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He leaves the US and bunkers down in one of his overseas resorts. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration does not occur naturally<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 10:<\/strong> Trump doesn\u2019t attend the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He leaves the US and bunkers down in one of his overseas resorts. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration does not occur naturally. Trump disappears from his overseas bunker, eventually surfacing in a safe haven from where extradition to the US can\u2019t happen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 11: <\/strong>Trump doesn\u2019t attend the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He leaves the US and bunkers down in one of his overseas resorts. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration occurs naturally. Trump disappears from his overseas bunker, eventually surfacing in a safe haven from where extradition to the US can\u2019t happen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 12: <\/strong>Trump doesn\u2019t attend the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He leaves the US and bunkers down in one of his overseas resorts. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration does not occur naturally. Trump disappears from his overseas bunker and is never seen\/heard of again<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 13:<\/strong> Trump doesn\u2019t attend the Biden\/Harris inauguration. He leaves the US and bunkers down in one of his overseas resorts. Transfer of power to the Biden\/Harris administration occurs naturally. Trump disappears from his overseas bunker and is never seen\/heard of again<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 14:<\/strong> Trump is admitted to Walter Reed NMC where he is detained and diagnosed with a mental breakdown. Subsequently he is declared to be suffering from mental illness. Further medical investigation reveals he has a worsening decline of mental\/cognitive abilities owing to advanced dementia. Trump is never charged with any crimes. He retires to his Mar a Lago resort which he never leaves alive<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 15:<\/strong> Despite calls for the 25th and impeachment, Trump’s diminishing powerbase in the Republic Party in the Senate come together privately to help him avoid both. However a secret arrangement is arrived at by which Trump loses all Presidential powers, though he technically remains in office as President. All executive power is transferred to the VP. Only Trump, Pence, and Mitch McConnell will be party to this agreement. This will isolate Trump from the executive, but will keep impeachment and the 25th off the books, both of which would be catastrophic to Trump and the GOP. Pence sees out the remaining term of office *as VP* though acting privately as President pro tem<\/em>. Later, for Trump, probably during Biden’s inauguration, as per Scenario 14<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of these scenarios gives rise to a number of sub-scenarios but this is, after all, just a very high-level view of the most obvious ‘could happens’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’ll be interesting to see how the first three weeks of January play out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8th January: after the attempted coup in Washington DC, I have added Scenario 14 and Scenario 15 Looking over the water at what\u2019s going on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}