What If Donald Trump Gets Reelected?

A plausible scenario that can be prevented if we all vote

The election is now exactly four weeks away from today. To say that it is the most consequential election in recent history is an understatement. One of the candidates is someone who had unsuccessfully attempted an insurrection to overthrow the government, had managed to get the Republican nomination despite being a convicted felon who once tried to overthrow the government, has threatened to rule as a dictator, and is incredibly chummy with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to the point where he considers Putin’s interests to be more important than America's.

These days there are all kinds of rumors and conspiracy theories circulating around Twitter/X, which indicates the consequences of Elon Musk laying off a huge chunk of the staff ever since he purchased that platform in late 2022. I tend not to pay them much heed because, as someone who studied journalism in college, I prefer to stick with easily verifiable facts.

There is one persistent rumor currently making the rounds on Twitter/X that I am going to repeat here in the hopes that it will give anyone reading this post the incentive to vote next month (if you haven't already done so via early voting). This one is the most plausible scenario of all of the rumors and conspiracy theories that are out there and it's one that could be terrifying if it actually happens.

Here's the scenario. As we all know, Donald Trump's previous vice president, Mike Pence, decided that he didn't want to have anything to do with Trump after the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. You really can't blame him because not only did Trump instigated it but he denounced Pence as a “traitor” because Pence refused to stop the certification of the election, which led to the rioting Trump supporters setting up a gallows outside of the US Capitol and running inside of the building yelling “HANG MIKE PENCE!!!” Pence knew that he could have been killed that day so not only has he distanced himself from Trump but he also announced that he will not endorse him for president this year.

So Trump needed a new vice president, which is easier said than done considering how Pence was almost killed while he was still Trump's vice president, which would be enough for any sane rational person who values his life to think twice before saying yes to becoming Trump's running mate. Enter Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. These two tech bros are politically ambitious but they are constitutionally prohibited under the 14th Amendment from ever becoming president because they were respectively born in South Africa and Germany. But Peter Thiel does have an acolyte who was born in the US and Thiel used his money to ensure that this man got elected to the Senate representing Ohio. His name is J.D. Vance, whose previous claim to fame was as the author of his Hillbilly Elegy memoir. Even though Vance is still in the middle of his first term as a senator, both Thiel and his ally Musk think that Vance would make the ideal vice president for Trump. So the two of them kept on convincing Trump to choose Vance as his running mate until Trump gave in.

Meanwhile Trump has been giving speeches at rallies but there's something off about him. Even though most of the mainstream corporate media try to report as if Trump is normal, there are indications that he is showing signs of cognitive decline. That is a real concern, especially since his late father had dementia and these things can run in families.

Here is where the rumors and conspiracy theories kick in. Let's say that Donald Trump wins the election next month, making him the first president to serve two nonconsecutive terms since Grover Cleveland. Sometime between one and six (or maybe more) months after Inauguration Day, J.D. Vance along with the majority of the cabinet secretaries and some sympathetic members of Congress, get together and use the 25th Amendment of the Constitution to remove Trump from the Oval Office on the basis of his increasingly worse dementia and cognitive decline. J.D. Vance will become the next president.

A few months ago Newsweek ran this article on what America would be like under President Vance and it includes policies like further tightening restrictions on abortion and birth control, pulling the US out of NATO, being very harsh on immigration, and stripping Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits. Incidentally these are all policies that are championed in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. Then there is the entry about Vance on the Vatnik Soup website that provides further insight on where he stands on various issues and how they could indicate what he would be like as president.

There's also the scenario where Musk and Thiel will use Vance to institute their own policies and get the government to fund their personal pet projects (such as Musk’s big ambition to start a colony on Mars). They could possibly rule vicariously through Vance even if both of them are constitutionally prohibited from becoming president themselves. Like I wrote earlier, it is not immigrants who are arriving to America fleeing poverty, war, and repression who are the biggest threats to America. It is wealthy white immigrants like Thiel and Musk who arrived to the US with the intent of making that country in the image of Vladimir Putin's Russia complete with more authoritarianism, less democracy, and fewer civil liberties who are the real threats to America, as this recent video from The Lincoln Project accurately points out.

There is also the possibility that Vance will rule for far longer than the constitutionally allocated two four-year terms. Donald Trump has hinted in his speeches that he would suspend part or all of the US Constitution if elected. Let's say that Trump does suspend the Constitution and he becomes a dictator. If Vance manages to remove Donald Trump from office using the 25th Amendment (or through some other means if Trump actually suspends the entire Constitution), there's a possibility that he would keep the Constitution suspended and he would continue the MAGA dictatorship. As of this writing Vance is 40 years old and is in relatively good health compared to Trump. He could potentially rule as a dictator for at least 25 years or more.

As a comparison let's take a look at Vladimir Putin, who is a favorite leader of both Trump and Vance. Putin first became the leader of Russia on New Year's Eve in 1999. Putin was 47 at the time. He has served as the leader of Russia since then and the Wikipedia has indicated that he is the longest-serving Russian or Soviet leader since Joseph Stalin. He's still going strong after 25 years in office. In fact, just a few months ago in a free and fair election the Russian people voted to allow Vladimir Putin to continue his rule. Given J.D. Vance's age and health, it's very plausible that he could also rule the US as a dictator for at least 25 years, if not longer.

Of course that's assuming that Donald Trump and his most fanatical MAGA supporters will go quietly into the night if Vance and his allies try to use the 25th Amendment to remove him. Donald Trump is someone who has the mentality of a toddler and there's a strong possibility that he'll resist so much that the country will be literally fractured ranging from fights inside of the government to, in the most extreme scenario, an all-out civil war. Donald Trump demonstrated that tendency when he refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election and, to this day, he has never given a concession speech.

There is one variation of that rumor where Vance tells Trump that if he leaves office without putting up a fight, Vance will issue a complete pardon to Trump for all of the crimes that he has committed on the federal level. (Of course he would still have to face state charges in states like Georgia and New York but that's another matter.) Trump quietly leaves office with his pardon thus paving the way for President J.D. Vance.

There is only one thing that we can do to prevent any part of this nightmare scenario from ever becoming true. We need to vote in large enough numbers so that there is no doubt that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the winners of the election.

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