“It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.” - a “senior Republican official” to WaPo
Wish fulfillment is a funny thing: maybe a sort of corollary to the five stages of grief, some weird combination of denial and bargaining. That is, if what is happening right now will have been part of Trump's final act as putative democratically elected politician: a coup. I mean, why wouldn't this go his way, as all else horrible and terrible before it has?
I come to this post-election-called-for-Biden-but-pre-consession moment with great trepidation and just a sliver of hope--the media is, after all, consistently calling Joe Biden the president-elect. All that's left to fret about, I suppose, is, will the Secret Service do their job, if it comes to that, and physically drag him out of the White House come 01/20/2021? Or will the military not go along with orders to stop Biden's inauguration and thereby keep the Orange Menace installed?
The legal/constitutional avenue is all but blocked, and with that comes the question of how hard and with what tools does he flail.
Or does it end with a sizzle, a no-show at the Inauguration, a fleeing out of the country of the smallest man in world history. Add another asterisk to our Great And Powerful History as the World's Greatest Nation. It was always a myth.
