Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
Is Trump beyond inventing, or creating, some crisis or other to prevent elections?
Someone has to hold executive power in that eventuality. Trump’s view would be that should be him.
Other countries have suspended their constitutions to extend the rule of a President beyond their initial term. Is there protection against this in the United States? What if that mechanism can’t meet safely?
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There is no mechanism to suspend the constitution of the United States. If anyone declared the constitution suspended they would, unambiguously, be acting illegally. The president simply does not have that power. Elections must happen when they are supposed to because the constitution - which cannot be suspended - says they must.
The *only* way for him to stay in power would be for him to make a declaration in the face of all of that, and for the entire government apparatus to simply accept it, and for the military to be prepared to back it up. And even if he did so, the federal structure of the United States is such that he just wouldn’t be accepted by all the states as the legitimate president. He would have a civil war on his hands, and the States are not un-armed in their own right.
Given that to this day the vast majority of American kids come up through school swearing allegiance to the flag and the republic, and everyone in congress does, it is hard to see how enough people would accept a president’s attempt to usurp the constitution so easily.