Trump's Endgame Revisited

or what if Trump's mob fizzled at the sight of law enforcement

Trumps’ plan, upon discovering that democracy and the political will of a majority of Americans were against him, was to bend the anti-democratic Electoral College to his perrceived sense of popularity through legal bullying¹, a bizarre plan via John Eastman², fake electors³, and the cooperation of Vice-President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election result.

And after way too much legal research and political counsel, Pence, who seemed generally opposed to the Trumped backed Eastman plan, made it clear in the days before January 6th he would not join in on Trump’s scheme to remain President after January 20th, 2021, Electoral College results notwithstanding.

Without Pence’s cooperation, the plot would not work.

Unless, the mob enabled Trump’s Mussolini-esque gambit. Like the March of Rome in 1922, Trump wanted to arrive at the Capitol with armed supporters and the assurances of military cooperation to complete his plan.⁴ And that’s the way Trump attempted to sell the conspiracy to Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue.

“[J]ust say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] Congressmen.⁵”

And while it nearly worked, it’s worth asking — what if the angry mob sans Trump leading them to the Capitol said “Forget this nonsense” in the face of the police? [Feel free to fill in your own expletive enhanced phrase in the face of what Garry Trudeau once described as “baby blue helmets.⁶”]

Then what?

Well, the news that Trump had not begun packing up his personalty until after January 6th is rather telling.⁷ It’s a fair deduction that Trump had no intention of leaving and planned, if his coup did not play out as planned, to be forcefully removed from the White House on January 20th.

Great theatrical moment that would trigger his supporters and give him leave to play the politically martyred ex-patriate or maybe just confirmation that a narcissistic sociopath served as president

If one wants to play the FoxNews conspiracy game from the other end of the political spectrum - perhaps Trump's endgame was to travel on his diplomatic passport⁸ to France (at least officially), where they won’t extradite when a person is tried in absentia, or maybe to Russia (with enough top secret documents to make him useful to Putin’s oligarchy).⁹

It really does not matter as it seems that Donald Trump, like losing coaches, ousted corporate executives, and white collar criminals, never anticipated his plan not working out.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related_to_the_2020_U.S._presidential_election It is legal bullying to bring frivolous (i.e. evidence free) litigious actions into U.S. courts with the purpose of creating doubt as to what was clearly a free and fair election — with plenty of elected Republican officials saying so.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_memos

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

4. The Luigi Facta Gambit

5. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/leave-rest-me/619621/

6. https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1970/12/03

7. https://news.yahoo.com/trump-frantically-packed-documents-him-022010173.html

8. https://www.salon.com/2022/08/16/trumps-claim-that-fbi-stole-his-three-passports-turns-out-to-be-nothing-like-what-said/

9. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/mar-a-lago-documents-intelligence-us-national-security/671140/