People love to make predictions as we start a new year. I was laughing at a particularly amusing one the other day by a Toronto Star writer, Tony Burman. He was predicting that Donald Trump would resign from the presidency and get a pardon from incoming president Mike Pence. All that prediction proved was that Mr. Burman does not understand Mr. Trump.
Not that many of us do understand Donald Trump. He is not exactly rational in his behaviour. In fact, he is the most irrational of all the American presidents. He always reminds me of the Forrest Gump philosophy about life being like a box of chocolates. You never know when you are going to get one that is nuts.
But we must acknowledge that Mr. Trump is not going to sit still for a process that forces him to resign and be beholden to that guy Pence for saving him from persecution. In fact, the very idea of Mike Pence following him as president would curl the Donald’s hair.
Trump would be fully prepared to fight any legal attacks after he leaves the presidency down to his last billion dollars. His only problem would be his family trying to have him declared incompetent before he wastes all of their inheritance. Be warned, anyone who wants to take on Trump before the courts needs to have billions to waste on lawyers and ten years to spare. And do you really think the American supreme court is made up of those democratically inclined?
I agree that Dick Nixon had no alternative but to get a pardon before leaving the White House. People really were out to get him. Tricky Dick was caught bare handed and bare faced. He belonged in jail more than any of his party plumbers. The difference between Nixon and Trump is that Nixon knew his limits. Trump thinks he is omnipotent.
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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry
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