According to the general consensus, Trump lost this election. Joe Biden secured more than the 270 electoral college votes he needed to win. It‘s over. Done. Finito.
But Trump refuses to publicly acknowledge this fact. Just yesterday he tweeted more baseless claims about supposed voter fraud, and he’s declared multiple times on twitter that he’s going to win the election since losing the election.
He’s submitted a budget proposal for 2021, he won’t let Biden talk to foreign leaders, and his campaign staff has been instructed not to contact Biden’s transition team. On top of that, he’s attempting to place his lackeys in key positions in the pentagon.
Trump cannot win legitimately at this point. But can he hold onto power for another four years anyway? (which he would consider winning even if nobody else does.)
The Throw Stuff At The Wall and Hope It Sticks Strategy
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Trump has filed a number of lawsuits alleging voter fraud in multiple states.
The results can be summarized like this: He’s won a couple of lawsuits concerning the vote counting process, lost nearly every lawsuit so far concerning the votes themselves and election certification- lawsuits which, even if they were successful, wouldn’t affect enough votes to change the outcome, and the lawsuits that are still pending are unlikely to be successful due to the lack of hard evidence.¹ ²This lawsuit blitz strategy could be a threat to future elections, but where this election is concerned it is unlikely to change the result.
If Trump manages to erode confidence in the election enough to not only stop certification but also cast doubt on the results of the election, this strategy could be dangerous but, by itself, it won’t change the results unless hard evidence is presented- which is unlikely seeing as Trump’s own lawyers have (so far) acknowledged that they have none¹
The Steal Strategy
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Since the electoral college votes for the president, why not just replace the pre-selected electors with faithless Trump lackeys who will ignore the will of the American people and vote for Trump?
The problem: few people want Trump to win as badly as Trump wants to win. In order for this to work, legislatures would need to appoint faithless (don’t vote in accordance with the will of the American people.)¹ There’s debate about whether legislatures can actually do this, even if they‘re willing to.
In order for Trump to win with this strategy, multiple states would need to appoint faithless electors, which would require circumventing state law to avoid a Governor’s veto.¹
If Trump managed to convince the legislatures of enough states to appoint faithless pro-Trump electors he could “win,” but the supreme court and the state legislatures would have to fall in line with Trump for this to work.
I’m not going to say there would be an uprising if this happened, and I’m not going to advocate for violence, but I will say this: I would not want to be a judge/legislator when the public finds out Trump stole the election- especially a judge/legislator who helped him do it.
The Taking Power by Force Strategy
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Basically, Marshal law. A coup.
Roger Stone- who should be in prison right now- told Trump to declare Martial law if he lost the election- the sort of advice one would expect from a convicted felon.
Trump could try to implement martial law, but without military backing it would essentially be pointless and there’s no reason to believe (and several reasons not to believe) the military is going to help Trump- a man who has allegedly insulted them numerous times- overthrow democracy.
Trump can create his own constitution if he wants to, but if the military isn’t willing to help him it’s essentially pointless. If he somehow convinced law enforcement to carry out his orders, then the military would respond. He can’t orchestrate a coup if nobody is willing to sing his tune.
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Trump is the leader of one of the most powerful countries on the planet. His threats should not be dismissed and they set a dangerous precedent.
But he doesn’t have many options at this point, and the best option he has is likely to fail. It didn’t seem possible for Trump to lose the election, but he did. It’s hard to imagine Trump leaving office, but he (almost certainly) will.
