When I was young and travelling around the world I’d tell people I was from Alaska and they’d occasionally tell me that we should become part of Canada because America was such a terrible place. I’d feel a little uncomfortable about that, being an American and having some affection for my own country. But now I don’t know that I’d react the same way. Trump and his cult are making it very easy to look to Canada.
Robert Reich discusses Trump’s new obsession with territorial expansion and has a modest proposal:
But as long as we’re considering changing national borders, why not do it in a more sensible way?
How about the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California becoming the 11th province of Canada? After all, the politics of these blue states would fit much better with Canada’s than with Trump’s America.
Meanwhile, the New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) and New York could become the 12th Canadian province, for much the same reason.
While Trump is toying with the idea of annexing Canada, these blue American states should bid him goodbye and be annexed by Canada.
Hell, Trump might just go along. He doesn’t like these blue states anyway. They all voted against him in 2016, 2020, and again in 2024. He’s been looking for ways of getting even. Why not simply disown them?
Letting Canada annex these blue states would also simplify Trump’s war on undocumented immigrants, since many of them reside in these states.
America First Legal, a nonprofit run by Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, has already written to local elected officials in California and New York warning them not to try to become sanctuaries — threatening that the officials could be personally “criminally liable” if they refuse to support federal government efforts to detain and deport illegal immigrants.
But if California, New York, and other blue states were annexed by Canada, the problem disappears.
Of course, this leaves the pesky question of whether Canada would accept America’s West Coast as its 11th province and New York and New England as its 12th? I’ll leave that question to Canadians.
I can’t say I’d blame them if they said fuggedaboudit. We may be blue states but we have plenty of MAGA weirdos too. On the other hand, it would be an economic powerhouse so …
Obviously, this is just a joke. But with Trump shooting off his mouth about annexing Canada and Greenland it makes you wonder if some of the things we believe are unthinkable are as unthinkable as we think they are.
President-elect Trump has suggested that he’ll use the military in immigration raids and turn to a 1798 law to put immigrants in camps. His base appears to support those plans despite the likely fierce opposition from most Americans. 46% of Republicans endorse using the military in mass deportation raids and placing immigrants in camps, according to a nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) post-election survey.That’s more than double that of independent voters (19%) who agree with the idea.And that’s more than five times as Democratic voters (8%) who supported this policy.
“There have been questions in the Trump era where I’ve thought…I can’t believe that we need to know the answer to this question,” Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, tells Axios.”I guess the good news is that three-quarters of the country rejects this idea that we should be putting immigrants in the country illegally into internment camps guarded by the military.”Jones said the bad news is that nearly half of people who consider themselves members of a mainstream political party do.
His “Border Czar” Tom Homan has been filling in the blanks on the mass deportation proposals:
Homan told the Washington Post in an article published Thursday that the administration plans to locate more than 300,000 children he described as “missing” in the U.S.
Both Trump and Homan have previously expressed support for deporting families of mixed immigration status, and Homan expounded on the idea in the interview with the Post. “Here’s the issue,” Homan told the Post. “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position. He noted that it will be up to families to decide if they would prefer to be deported together or split up.
Homan also said the U.S. would resume family detentions and “construct family facilities” to do so.
Decent people all over the world will hate this country… and they shouldwww.washingtonpost.com/immigration/…
Since 2019, about 450,000 unaccompanied minors have been transferred to ORR, according to a Department of Homeland Security oversight report published in August. During that time, 32,000 did not show up for scheduled court hearings, and an additional 291,000 were not issued a notice to appear by ICE.
Homan acknowledged that many of those young people are probably with their parents or other family members, but he said he wants to mobilize nonprofit groups and private contractors to carry out a more concerted effort to track them down.
That’s not going to happen, I’m afraid. The new congress is sworn in on Friday. But then, he has so little experience in government that he wouldn’t know that. Well, other than being president for four years and staging a coup in January four years ago.
He’s just having a tantrum because he knows that he’s going to be faced with a terrible problem, right off the bat.
The fiscal hawks are gunning for the budget and he’s empowered them by giving Musk and Ramaswamy this silly commission charged with slashing spending which they’re using to rally the troops. It was a huge mistake. (He should have given him the mandate to go to Mars or something,)
GOP leaders are staring down two bad options to solve President-elect Donald Trump’s debt-limit problem, after failing to execute his demand to lift the federal borrowing cap in the last government funding bill.
One path requires full buy-in from Republican lawmakers to address the issue via budget reconciliation — a huge challenge thanks to the party’s fierce fiscal hawks. The other entails winning over Democrats, who for the most part rejected Trump’s initial debt-limit gambit last week.
“Whoever advised the president that it was even possible needs to better understand how this place works,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said about Trump’s latest push to raise the debt limit.
It’s going to be an urgent issue for Trump as soon as he takes office. The federal government will resume the cap on its borrowing authority on Jan. 1, as the U.S. sits on a national debt of more than $36 trillion, though the Treasury Department can buy time for a number of months with so-called extraordinary measures. The fiscal time bomb illustrates the struggle Trump and Republican leaders face heading into 2025, as they consider whether to court Democrats who will want concessions or their own conservatives who are known for rigidly sticking to their demands to cut funding.
“I’ve told my caucus, if they try to do it under reconciliation, they’ll lose my vote,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on Friday. “I told them: You want to kill reconciliation, put something on that we don’t like.”
They are intent upon extending their massive tax cuts and expanding them, adding more trillions to the debt. They also want much more money for drill, baby, drill, the border and the military. So they’ll have to cut over $2.5 trillion in cuts to social security, Medicaid and Medicare to cover that. Trump isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but he does realize that he can’t control the hardliners on this and feels desperate already over what a shitshow that’s going to be.
Today he endorsed Mike Johnson (in the most hilariously self-serving way possible) but there’s good reason to believe that the hardliners really don’t care what he says about any of this.
Could he have buried it any deeper? Lol.
He knows they are looking at a disaster. If the Democrats hold fast, and they certainly will if the Republicans dig in on these massive cuts, it’s going to be quite a spring. And who knows if the MAGA Freedom Caucus will even vote for Johnson on January 3rd. Right now there is at least one who won’t and several more who say they haven’t decided. As Trump would say, “it will be wild!”
A couple of days after Christmas Donald Trump posted something very odd, even for him. He seemed to have accidentally posted personal text to his bff Elon Musk on Truth Social. (This has been confirmed by CNN.) Sounding downright forlorn he wondered when his pal was returning to Mar-a-lago (“the center of the universe”) because he misses him and his son X. He also mentioned that the New Year’s Eve party was going to be “AMAZING” and that Bill Gates had asked to come to dinner.
Sometimes you can be lonely even in a room full of people so perhaps Trump needs the richest man in the world by his side to make him feel loved. But it’s also possible that he senses his new best buddy is no longer as interested in him and has instead decided that he’s going to play president without him. Where are you?
Trump is spending his days down in Mar-a-Lago golfing, holding casting session for his administration and wining and dining CEOs who might be able to boost his personal fortune over the next four years. He doesn’t appear to be paying very close attention to what’s been going on in Washington or among his MAGA faithful. Several times now, he’s been late off the mark, belatedly following Musk’s lead after all hell broke loose.
It happened just before Christmas when he was busy golfing while Musk blew up the continuing resolution and almost caused a government shutdown. Trump later attempted to appear to have taken control by pretending that he had been the one to decide the deal was untenable due to overspending while at the same time demanding that the Congress raise or eliminate the debt ceiling before he took office. The Republican hardliners balked and didn’t extend or eliminate the debt ceiling and they ended up passing a watered down version of the original deal with Democratic votes.
Trump looked weak, Musk looked strong and the MAGA/Freedom Caucus appeared to be siding with Elon Musk rather than Dear Leader.
The problem began last weekend when Trump named Indian born Sriram Krishnan, as his senior policy advisor on AI, to work with another Musk associate and fellow South African born David Sachs, his new AI and “crypto czar.” That got the attention of some MAGA loyalists, notably Laura Loomer who was, until recently, a great friend of the president-elect even travelling with him on his campaign plane. She noticed that Krishnan is a big proponent of the H-1B visa program which allows skilled workers to come into the US to work temporarily, many of them from India and Asia. The tech sector makes particular use of this program.
Loomer went after the program, saying it was unfair to native born Americans and began complaining that the loyal MAGA followers were being left out of the administration in favor of these tech-bro interlopers who were betraying the American First cause. Other MAGA followers weighed in making it clear that they did not want any brown foreigners coming into the country, in fact they voted for Trump because he said he was going to get them all out. They don’t see any difference between a Guatemalan migrant, a Haitian refugee or a Pakistani engineer.
It was at this point Musk personally joined the conversation explaining that in order the make America great again they would need to hire lots of foreign engineers and programmers because they’re the best and it would help the team.
That didn’t go over very well either. Soon his deputy Vivek Ramaswamy joined the fray posting a long screed about how American mediocrity, bad culture and a compulsion to worship prom queens instead of smart nerds makes it impossible for the country to succeed. It surely made incels everywhere rejoice that they have finally been seen but it enraged the MAGA faithful online even more.
Meanwhile, Loomer and her cadre were going specifically after Musk, suggesting that he was playing Donald Trump for a fool. She wrote at one point, “The elephant in the room is that [Musk], who is not MAGA and never has been, is a total fucking drag on the Trump transition. He’s a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar a Lago in an effort to become Trump’s side piece and be the point man for all of his accomplices in big Tech to slither in to Mar a Lago.
Everything went downhill from there. with this post perfectly distilling the argument:
He later called his MAGA critics “contemptible fools” and said to one, “take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” But at least he didn’t call them deplorable. That would be very bad.
It got even uglier at that point with the likes of Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec getting in on the act as Musk proceeded to suspend the X privileges of a number of his critics, including Loomer.
Charlie Kirk fires back at Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
"It's what the American people want. The American people overwhelmingly voted for less immigration and the prioritization of the American children and the American worker— not the American oligarch."
Bannon responds to Musk calling MAGA “Racist” and saying he’s ready for “war” over the H-1B Visas — says he won’t take the temperature down, he’s “fixing bayonets” and “doubling down” (even though Trump sided with Elon) pic.twitter.com/FXLMP6Z1MS
Everyone had wondered if Trump was ever going to put down his golf clubs and say something. When he finally did it was in an interview with the NY Post in which he declared that he thinks the H-1B visas are just great and he uses them all the time at his properties.
He was extremely hostile to these visas in the past, as one of his most loyal activists, Jack Posobiec pointed out:
Trump:
"I know the H1-B very well, I shouldn't be allowed to use it. We shouldn't have it. It is very, very bad and unfair for our workers and it should be ended" pic.twitter.com/04yWzJktnq
Once again,, it’s pretty obvious who wears the presidential pants in this new administration and it isn’t Donald Trump.
Elon Musk won yet another internecine GOP brawl and proved that he has the next president of the United States firmly under his thumb. Trump seems to be dazzled by him and his tech-bro billionaire buds in the same way he’s dazzled by Vladimir Putin. Having the richest man in the world be his friend is more meaningful to him than being president again.
I think we’ve all been thinking that Trump was going to get jealous and kick Musk to the curb sooner rather than later. But that’s no sure thing. He’s lost more than a step. He’s four years older than when he left he White House and he’s bored with the details of the presidency. From what we’re seeing, he’s ready to let his bff do whatever he wants and it’s becoming clear to the MAGA activists who’ve worshipped him that it’s not going to be Musk who’s kicked to the curb — it’s going to be them.
Donald Trump is skilled at stoking grievance and earning himself media hits. He’ll need to now that Elon Musk is stealing his spotlight. So ahead of violating his oath of office again the moment he utters it, Trump is talking smack about real estate he’d like to acquire in his second term. Trump doesn’t know much, but he knows real estate, how to distract the media (away from casting his reality-show second term), and exclusive clubs.
Only Trump can make Jimmy Carter’s passing about himself and his “very exclusive club.”
James Fallows thinks Panama Orange’s tiny-violin musings about Panama treating America unfairly is more make-believe from Trump:
This rhetoric comes from the same place as his claims that migrants are bringing in deadly fentanyl (they aren’t), that public schools authorize gender-change surgery (they don’t), or that regulation has crippled the US oil industry (which is producing more than ever before). It’s based on lies; it’s designed to make his followers mad; and it works.
Like Pavlov’s MAGAs, it works. The media salivates at hearing the grievance bell ring just as readily.
The chance of the US forcibly (or in other ways) “taking back” the Canal is zero. The next time you hear this idea, put it in the category of other make-believe Trump threats and promises. These range from his promise to end the warfare in Ukraine “in one day,” to his threat to slap a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada, the US’s two largest trading partners. Or even the Musk-Ramaswamy fantasy of cutting trillions in “fat” from the federal budget.
None of these claims is meant to happen, in the first day or the first year. Their purpose is to work partisans up right now.
Since the days of Rush Rooms and before OxyContin, movement conservative puppet-masters addicted generations of Republican foot soldiers to a daily endorphin hit. A hissy fit over some liberal “outrage” here, blamethrowing directed at some caste disfavored by white America there.
Fallows, however, focuses on just what a triumph of diplomacy the Jimmy Carter administration negotiated with the Panama Canal treaties of 1977-78 and the “shrewd” courage it took to ratify them. (Fallows recommends a coupleaccounts of the debates and contentious issues at the time.)
But Fallows also sees Trump’s grievance-based focus on the canal as a way to bring attention to the impacts of climate change:
The managers of the Canal say that what they have to sell the world is not transportation but water. Every ship that travels the 50-plus miles from ocean to ocean through the Canal requires some 50 million gallons of fresh water.
That’s how much it takes to raise a ship from sea level, in the Caribbean or the Pacific, up through multiple locks to Gatun Lake in the middle of the isthmus. The lake is 78 feet above sea level; after reaching it, from either direction, the ships then descend through locks down to sea level on the other side. Every drop of that water to fill the locks comes from rainfall in the largely forested land in the Canal’s watershed.
Savvy readers can see where this is going.
Over time, this watershed, like so many others, is becoming hotter and drier. Over time, many of these surrounding forests, where not officially protected, are being cut down, paved, and developed or turned into cattle-grazing land. Thus the Canal authorities have put themselves at the center of a struggle to protect their business interests by preserving, and even trying to expand, what is also a globally crucial reservoir of biodiversity.
Shorter Fallows: No water, no canal. So let Panama Orange fume about imaginary unfairness. Fallows sees Trump’s Panama rhetoric as a path to “global discussions of sustainability. I hope some people now thinking about Panama will reach the same conclusion.”
What more can one say about President Jimmy Carter? I lack the words. Let me borrow a few from Jonathan Alter, biographer of “a formidable, complex man” writing at Washington Monthly:
He was the first American president since Thomas Jefferson who could reasonably claim to be a Renaissance Man or at least a world-class autodidact. At various times in his life, he acquired the skills of a farmer, naval officer, electrician, sonar technologist, nuclear engineer, businessman, equipment designer, agronomist, master woodworker, Sunday School teacher, land-use planner, legislator, door-to-door missionary, governor, long-shot presidential candidate, U.S. president, diplomat, fly-fisherman, bird dog trainer, arrowhead collector, home builder, painter, professor, memoirist, poet, novelist, and children’s book author—an incomplete list, as he would be happy to point out.
That’s when Carter wasn’t defending democracy around the world or working to eradicate the Guinea worm and river blindness, Brian Klaas reminds us:
The Carter Center, the NGO that he founded in 1982, has been a crucial force for good, known primarily for its work on successfully promoting democracy and providing high-quality election monitoring across the globe. It deserves that reputation.
I’ll spare you the description of infection by the parasite. But Carter’s success at eradicating infections were dramatic:
Before Carter got involved, Guinea Worm was prevalent in 21 countries, infecting at least 3.5 million people per year. Today, that figure is down to just 13 cases per year. It’s a reduction of 99.99% in just a few decades, making it one of the most successful public health interventions in history.
[…]
Similarly, the Carter Center has done tremendous work at tackling onchocerciasis, or river blindness. That disease comes from black fly bites, and it’s prevalent in 31 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Again, it’s a largely neglected disease, despite the fact that just shy of 20 million people are currently infected, with about a million of them having lost their vision due to the infection.
The Carter Center has provided hundreds of millions of rounds of treatment for river blindness, drastically alleviating avoidable suffering. It doesn’t generate headlines, nor is it usually mentioned as a core part of Carter’s reputation in American political discourse, but had Jimmy Carter not decided to devote his efforts to these programs, millions more people would have been needlessly blinded by a devastating parasite.
I’ve bristled for years when conservatives sneered at Carter and his legacy in office. Those sneers speak volumes about their values and little about Carter. He was a lucky man but an unlucky president, his accomplishments obscured by what might have been, writes James Fallows, a veteran of the Carter White House:
Probably only a country as near-impossible to lead as the United States of that time could have given someone like Jimmy Carter a chance to lead it.
Despite it all, Carter had broader support during his first year in office than almost any of his successors, except briefly the two Bushes in wartime emergencies. Despite it all, most reckonings have suggested that Carter might well have beaten Ronald Reagan, and held on for a second term, if one more helicopter had been sent on the “Desert One” rescue mission in Iran, or if fewer of the helicopters that were sent had failed. Or if, before that, Teddy Kennedy had not challenged Carter in the Democratic primary. Or if John Anderson had not run as an independent in the general election. What if the ayatollah’s Iranian government had not stonewalled on negotiations to free its U.S. hostages until after Carter had been defeated? What if, what if.
Carter claimed for years that he came within one broken helicopter of reelection. It’s plausible. We’ll never know.
But perhaps one lesson from the Carter presidency Democrats (and Joe Biden today) have yet to learn is that humility is a negative on the national and world stages. Bluster draws eyeballs and inpsires undeserved confidence. Competence and caring? Not so much.
In his newsletter today, Professor Timothy Snyder offers a new glossary of terms to use in the coming next few years:
1. Mump regime. Musk plus Trump. Mu…mp. The real centibillionaire and the fake rich person in the proper order.
2. Mump oligarchy. The regime is an oligarchy, rule by the wealthy few. Trump is the oligarchs’ spokesman. He might stay or go. The oligarchs will remain.
3. Mump as illness. Physical illness: we are made sick and scammed blind (think of RFK Jr and Ramaswamy). Mumps is one of the diseases that will return without vaccines. Mental illness: Musk’s idea of prosperity is that he hurts you and you thank him. See my work on sadopopulism.
4. In Mumptopia, Americans spend our time in front of screens, instructed whom to hate and worship by algorithms curated by immigrant software engineers. We die pointlessly young on an overheated Earth with the word “Mars” on our lips. The Mump mage performs a ritual rocket dance, leaping a few inches over our graves.
5. Mump not MAGA. The MAGA folks somehow did not realize that they were giving power to a an illegal immigrant South African centibillionaire. This is not their regime.
6. Mumpers. South Africans, Russians, and others close to power. Musk, Putin, Thiel, Sacks, Trump (today), Vance (tomorrow) and their closest circles.
7. Mumpery. Behavior typical of the Mump regime. Gaslighting, theft, scams, tax avoidance, disinformation, Putinism, dictator worship, threatening U.S. allies, submitting to U.S. enemies, persecuting Americans, suppressing speech with threats of violence and lawsuits, promoting pollution and global warming, ending public services.
8. Mumpets. Those who choose to submit to Musk. For example, senators who ignore their constitutional responsibilities and vote for Trump’s Cabinet nominees, whose buffoonery and fascism are meant to weaken the state so Musk can profit. Compare: puppet, pet.
9. To mumpify. To become a mumpet. Nouns can be formed from this verb. For example: “Senator Fetterman is pretty far along in his mumpification.” Or adjectives: “Yep, I’d say he’s mumpified by now.” Compare: zombify, zombification.
10. Mumpy, or mumpish. People influenced by the Mump regime, or actions that tend towards a mumpified world. “That’s mumpier than I would have expected.” “She’s gone all mumpy on me.” Supersedes: trumpy.
Works for me. I have been asking for suggestions on social media about what we might use other than the word “fascist” which I think sounds too old-fashioned, overused and academic. It’s perfect but I was thinking of something along the lines of “woke” which started out as Black vernacular that they appropriated to use as a sweeping pejorative for anything that smacks of progressivism and civil rights.
The best one I saw was “red-pilled” which is defined by Google AI as:
The term “red-pilled” is a political metaphor that originated from the 1999 film The Matrix. It’s used to describe someone who has become aware of what they believe to be political biases in society, and has developed an oppositional consciousness against those biases.
In the film, the main character must choose between taking the red pill and accepting an illusory reality, or taking the blue pill and remaining ignorant. The term “red-pilled” has been adopted by a variety of groups, including men’s rights activists, conservative conspiracy theorists, and far-right and white supremacist groups.
It seems to me that we should be able to make that into a pejorative along the lines of “woke” but it would take a massive effort on the part of the opposition. Since I am a nobody, I assume this will go nowhere. But I thought I’d throw it out there anyway.
However, Timothy Snyder is an icon and “mumps” may just be something that catches on.
The House committee charged with helping the U.S. confront China risks losing momentum and falling into irrelevance amid partisan infighting on the panel, legislative dysfunction and signs of significant disagreement with Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
The House China Select Committee — established two years ago to craft strategies and shape legislation to fend off Beijing — has had a rare reputation for bipartisanship and getting bills passed. That reputation may not last much longer.
Already, partisan agendas have started to affect which legislation the group tries to push through. And the incoming Trump administration, while pledging to be tough on China, is expected to bring different priorities — making it difficult for the panel to get Trump-friendly Republicans on board with its proposals.
As we saw with the continuing resolution chaos before Christmas, the problem was getting the Freedom Caucus rebels to vote for a bill that had been negotiated with Trump’s blessing (even though he pretended that he didn’t know about it) all because Elon didn’t like it.
Now we will see that the Musk-Trump followers are looking to break up the consensus on this bipartisan committee as well:
President-elect Trump, by contrast, has said Taiwan needs to do more for its own defense and pledged during his campaign to “save TikTok.” And his close adviser Elon Musk has business interests in China that some lawmakers and former officials say could prompt him to push Trump to soft pedal U.S. security concerns to maintain good ties with Beijing.
“Trump’s statements on China and Taiwan and his relationship with people like Musk who have interests in China say it all,” in terms of his sympathies and possible policies after he takes office, said committee member Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.).
If the China hawks all capitulate to the Musk-Trump business interests we will know that the corporate wing of MAGA really is firmly in charge of foreign policy. The big question is if Trump will muck it all up with his ignorant loose talk and insistence on throwing his weight around to look tough when the truth is that nobody really takes him very seriously — it’s clear all you have to do is kiss his feet and he’ll do whatever you want. Xi Jinping ate chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago and feted Trump like a medieval prince when he visited the country making him believe they were buddies, just as Vlad is. I’m fairly certain that’s not true.
So who knows where all this is really going? We’re led by imbeciles, weirdos, fascists and greedheads. Anything can happen.
The legal beagles Mark Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick at Slate fielded a question from a reader asking if Trump could really run for a third term as he often hints at doing? Bannon made some news the other day proclaiming that he was going to.
Lithwick points out that the clear meaning of the 22nd Amendment says no. It says:
“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
It seems pretty clear to me. Of course if everything goes completely sideways, he stages a successful coup and the constitution is no longer relevant, who knows what he could do? Stern addresses one scenario the reader had posed:
Tracey does point out one potential loophole in her letter: I think it’s clear that Don Jr. could run for president in 2028, with Donald Trump as his vice presidential candidate. And if they win, at 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2029, Don Jr. can resign and Donald Trump will become the president. There is nothing, to my mind, in the 22nd Amendment that forbids that. I mean, we can do a pragmatic, functionalist reading, and we can say it goes against the spirit of the amendment. But it doesn’t go against the text. As long as Donald Trump is not elected as president for a third time, he could be elected vice president and then become president. And I do not believe there is any limitation on his power to then serve the remaining three years and 364 days as president if that occurs.
I guess anything could happen. But as Stern also points out, what is the likelihood that people would vote for that freak Don Jr no matter what the clever plan? I’d think Vance would be more likely but Trump could never be sure that Vance would give up power. Anyway, that’s all extremely far-fetched.
More importantly, Trump will be 82 in 2028. He’s losing it now and I would guess we’ll see even more serious degradation over the next four years. He’s pretty much turned over the presidency to Elon Musk and Project 2025 and is concentrating on casting, personal profits and vengeance. He spends his days on the golf course and his nights DJing at Mar-a-Lago. There’s no way he can run again in 4 yrs and I doubt he even wants to. Every day he’s more of a spent force.
That’s not to say he isn’t going to inflict great damage. But he’s a very lame duck and while we have no choice but to fight him every step of the way, we also need to keep our eyes on what they really have in store for us next and it isn’t likely to be Donald Trump.
