Every single thing that Trump does over the next 73 days will be about seeking a softer landing when it comes to the criminal charges, civil penalties, and financial troubles he's about to face once he leaves office. Everything else said by him, or about him, will just be noise.
Trump is "contesting" the election so he can fundraise off of it. If he threatens to refuse to leave office, it'll be in the hope he can negotiate some kind of leniency in exchange for leaving peacefully.
If Trump starts doing weird things or starts pushing a bombastic agenda, it'll be to distract us from whatever he's working on behind the scenes to try to give himself a prison-free and bankruptcy-free exit from office.
Considering how comically inept Trump and his remaining handlers are these days, Trump will probably screw up whatever it is he's trying to pull off with regard to giving himself a softer landing. But you must understand that this is what he's TRYING to pull off. Nothing else.
The media is still pushing narratives about Trump somehow running again in 2024, or somehow launching a new TV network or business venture, because they're still trying to present him as relevant, so you'll remain scared of him and remain tuned in.
You SHOULD be scared of Trump these next three months, for the same reason you should have been scared of him these past 45 months: he'll continue to pillage us and negligently let people die. But he was always going to lose and then go prison.
Let's not allow the media to suck us into this mindset that because Trump has lost, he now somehow magically has the power to do magically evil things during the lame duck period that he couldn't pull off before. He's the same lazy crook. He just has a lot more problems now.
Trump has FAR LESS leverage now that he's lost. Many of his "friends" will stop returning his calls. And he has to focus on fending off prison and bankruptcy. He's far more crippled than he was when the week began. That doesn't somehow make him more powerful.
Now if you think Trump is a total psychopath who wants to go out in a blaze of glory and throw away whatever might be left of his life, that's one thing. But that's never been Trump. He's always the guy who makes deranged but empty threats and then meekly declares bankruptcy.
Trump is arrogant enough to think he can pardon himself and have it hold up in court, and then beat the state level charges by charming the jury. He's wrong on both counts. But that's the path he's most likely to pursue.
Trump is far too broke to mount a criminal defense, and literally no one is going to loan money to him at this point, so he's likely to spend the transition period focusing the most on pilfering taxpayer money. That's what we should watch most closely.
In addition, because Trump never gave a damn about how many people died in the pandemic, he's not about to start caring now. We have to focus on finding ways to work around him and mitigate the death toll until he's gone in January.
If we allow Trump (or the ratings-hungry media) to bait us into focusing on nonsensical narratives about laugh out loud impossible things that Trump is magically going to pull off, then we won't notice when he's pilfering even more money, pardoning guilty people for cash, etc.
You know how I knew all along that Trump would lose reelection? He doesn't have a magic wand. He did a lousy job, most people hated him, his numbers were terrible all along, and so he lost. So predictable. He won't have a magic wand during the transition period either.
Will Trump flee the country? Probably not. Will Trump resign and have Pence pardon him? Maybe, but probably not. Will Trump refuse to leave on inauguration day? No. These are mostly just unrealistic scenarios that the media presents as realistic, to bait you into staying tuned in
The media is mostly not even talking about the fact that Trump is now earmarked for prison and bankruptcy. That means their analysis and predictions for the transition period are useless, because they're ignoring the primary motivations for Trump's behavior and choices.
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