It’s striking that what’s playing out after Israel’s election yesterday could also occur in November 2020.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to fall short of a governing majority in Israel's election Wednesday, raising doubts over whether he could maintain his decade-long grip on power,” per NBC News.
“Early Wednesday morning, Netanyahu refused to concede defeat and vowed to form a new government that excludes Arab parties… Facing the end of his political career, and potentially even jail, Netanyahu pulled out all the stops throughout the campaign.”
That a surreal take right there by MTP, but it’s not the first prediction of a less-than-smooth transition should Trump be voted out after his first term.
Back in February, Georgetown Law professor Josh Geltzer actually broached the possibility of Donald Trump refusing to honor our election results in an opinion piece for CNN.
Regardless of who runs in 2020, if Trump loses, will he leave the Oval Office peacefully?
[...]
Remember, when Trump was merely a private citizen running for President in 2016, he became the first presidential candidate in recent memory to refuse to commit that he'd honor the results of the election if he lost. Now, he occupies the Oval Office. He's the commander in chief of the most powerful military on Earth. If he even hints at contesting the election result in 2020, as he suggested he might in 2016, he'd be doing so not as an outsider but as a leader with the vast resources of the US government potentially at his disposal.
In March, Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen also ominously hinted at the possibility when he testified to Congress, saying that “given my experience working for Mr Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”
So where does this concern come from? Look no further than Trump’s
admiration of dictators. Remember when
he commented on Chinese President Xi’s move to end presidential term limits in his country?
“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump’s remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN.
“And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.
Of course, we can’t predict if this will really happen, but Trump is backed in a corner and he’s going to have some real legal issues to deal with without the shield of the presidency … and he knows it.
Our system of checks and balances should protect us from the possibility of a president refusing to leave office, but with Republicans enabling this president’s authoritarian tendencies at every turn, it would seem that all bets are off.