I can’t wrap my head around this notion shared by prominent political folk on both sides that if Trump loses the election to Biden in November, he’ll simply refuse to leave the White House.
Do what?
While I’ll admit it’s amusing to picture his tiny hands frantically clutching the door frame of the Oval Office as military officers heft him upward, his body parallel to the floor, orange beads of sweat bouncing off the parquet…yeah, no. That can’t happen. Can it??
The first time I heard this posited I thought it was a late-night joke, hyperbolic hand-wringing from the far left. But then, I kept hearing it from such strange bedfellows as Bill Maher and Mike Huckabee; Lawrence O’Donnell and Michael Cohen; Joe Biden and Jerry Falwell, Jr.
It could happen, they say with either elation or horror, depending on who’s talking. Trump could reject the results if Biden wins and refuse to leave.
NO, HE CAN’T. THAT’S CRAZY TALK. While everyone knows evicting tenants is notoriously difficult because squatters have rights, too, this isn’t some scofflaw who works the angles to avoid paying his landlord. Kidding! Actually that’s exactly who Trump is. Is it possible he could hunker down and refuse to leave the presidency and the big and occasionally moldy house that comes with?
Nervous Dems, in particular, are acting like we will someday see Trump swing through the doors on The People’s Court (“the best, the highest ratings they’ve ever had, everyone says so…”) while the baritone announcer succinctly describes the scenario of a frustrated plaintiff (that’s us, folks) seeking relief from a toxic tenant who won’t leave and has, just a wild guess, done unspeakable things to the plumbing.
Did democracy die while I was sleeping? Don’t answer that. Ever the aspiring autocrat, Trump, when asked by Fox News last week if he’d accept the election results if Biden wins, said: “I have to see.”
Wait. What? No, lumpy, you don’t “have to see.” That’s not how it works. If it were that easy, wouldn’t Barack Obama have spurned the indignity lumbering toward the Capitol on that rainy day in January 2017 when our nation broke God’s heart? Wouldn’t he have said in that halting way we now crave like a sandwich somebody else makes… “Uhhhh, no. We…believe…we, Michelle and I and our family….will stay. That is right. We will not….be leaving. We have decided….uhhhhh….to stay because this is not going to…uhhh… end well…”
And what then? Trump and Melania would simply shrug their shoulders, pantomime “whattayagonnado?” and slink back to their still-warm limo?
I think it’s far more likely, assuming a Biden win, which I don’t because I’m not a complete moron, Trump will go out pouting and stomping til his bone spurs flare, refusing to participate in the historic “transfer of power” ritual observed by every outgoing president. I think he will disappear and play golf instead. No point in changing it up now.
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Celia Rivenbark thinks Ivanka Trump needs to pull a coupla night shifts at Waffle House once this is all over.