As his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that there would be a normal transition of power, to a second Trump term, many are wondering whether he was actually serious. Even though many have referred to the Biden camp’s spokesman who had stated previously that the Secret Service is perfectly capable of escorting tresspassers out of the White House, one needs to start asking the question. Could Trump actually stage a coup d’état and cling onto power, against the country’s electoral wishes.
Rule of Law
In The Guardian yesterday, a similar question was asked, and Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, responded : “If the country continues to follow the rule of law, I see no plausible constitutional path forward for Trump to remain as president barring new evidence of some massive failure of the election system in multiple states,”
“It would be a naked, antidemocratic power grab to try to use state legislatures to get around the voters’ choice and I don’t expect it to happen.”
Another law professor, Mr Richard Pildes from New York University wasn’t so sure. He stated : “There’s a strange fascination with various imagined dark scenarios, perhaps involving renegade state legislatures, but this is more dystopian fiction than anything likely to happen,”
“The irony, or tragedy, is that we managed to conduct an extremely smooth election, with record turnout, under exceptionally difficult circumstances – and yet, a significant portion of the president’s supporters are now convinced that the process was flawed.”
Then again, a lot of things we didn’t expect to happen in the past four years…. have all happened under Trump. Don’t count him out just yet we think.
