I’m not particularly concerned that Trump will skate on this impeachment trial. I think we all expect he will. Senate Republicans, after all, are all gutless Quislings completely devoid of honor or integrity. So yeah, Trump will almost certainly walk. I don’t like it, but I expect it — and there it is.
What scares me is this: what comes next? If Comrade Trump gets away with this — if he’s acquitted in the Senate despite all the evidence against him — what will stop him from doing it again? What’s will prevent him from allowing — or flat out encouraging — a hostile nation to attack his Democratic opponent? And what could we do about it?
He’s capable of doing that. You know he is.
What’s going to stop him from doing something even worse? What if, say, he declares a national emergency — what if he announces there’s been a threat to certain polling districts and ‘for the safety of the citizens’ orders those polling places closed? What if he says the voters should go to different polling sites, sorry for the inconvenience? What could we do about it?
Do you think Trump isn’t capable of doing that?
What if the 2020 election goes against him? What if he loses and claims the election was rigged/hacked/manipulated/fraudulent? What if he refuses to honor the result? What if he just refuses to relinquish power? What if he tells his followers to resist his removal from office? What if he tries to declare martial law? What then?
Do you think that’s impossible? It sounds crazy, doesn’t it. It sounds ridiculous. Because it IS crazy and ridiculous — or it would be if anybody else were president. But do you really think Trump wouldn’t try to pull something like that if he thought he might get away with it? What would stop him? Patriotism? Decency? Respect for the Constitution?
That’s what scares me. Not one more year of Trump, as horrible as that would be. What scares me is this: IF Trump gets away with it this time — and right now that seems a foregone conclusion — what’s going to stop him from thinking he can get away with it again? The answer scares me.
Nothing.
gregfallis.com 
After about one year, I made the prediction that on the night before the 2020 election, he would make the unsubstantiated claim that there are threats to polling stations, so let’s delay the election. Once it is delayed beyond the time the electoral college must meet by law, then the claim is we cannot have an election.
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There are SO MANY ways POTUS, unchecked by Congress and lacking any sense of honest, could fuck with an election. And the argument so many Democrats are making to Republicans — that they should be concerned because when a Democrat eventually becomes POTUS, he could do the same shit as Trump — is completely worthless, because they know the Democrats would never elect somebody as corrupt as Trump.
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20 empty #Republican seats yesterday!
They’ve made their decision already.
This is a sham trial as Mitch McConnell intended.
They’ve hidden evidence, and denied witnesses.
Their defence is simply “He’s didn’t do it”
Shameful !
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I’m afraid you’re right; it IS a sham trial. I think it’s more accurate, though, to say the defense of Trump is more ‘So what if he did it’ rather than ‘He didn’t do it.’ They apparently think soliciting a foreign nation to smear a political opponent is perfectly okay IF it’s done by Republicans.
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This is how all dictators work. The thing that is unsettling you (and everyone else with any kind of brain & moral conscience) is that he’s doing this under a system which was expressly designed to prevent this kind of thing from happening. It is truly shocking. Following yesterday’s events in the trial, we can be absolutely certain that he’s put the fear of death (literally?) into any wavering Republicans and he and his legal team are certain that the vote won’t go against him. And when he gets off scott-free, there is no doubt at all that this will embolden him. The future you see is the one we’re going to get.
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