Jamie Rowen, an international law expert and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, warned on a Saturday episode of All Rise News that President Donald Trump and his strongman allies appear to be laying plans to flee to friendly dictatorships if they lose power and face prosecution at home.Nahhh. Like James Carville's repeated assertion that Trump will quit after the midterms, this doesn't jibe with anything we know about Trump, and it ignores the safeguards that will continue to protect Trump even if his party faces the largest imaginable drubbing: (1) A half-cetury-old Justice Department opinion says that a president can't be prosecuted while in office. (2) It will still be impossible to convict him in the Senate if the House (by a simple majority) impeaches him, because Democrats will need at least a dozen votes from Republican senators to reach a two-thirds majority, and Republicans still won't be ready to defy him. (3) The Supreme Court has protected virtually everything he does as president from legal scrutiny. (4) Even after the midterms, Democrats will still be Democrats, and therefore they'll be afraid to take bold action against Trump, especially because the mainstream media will be urging them not to.
"You can imagine that if he loses an election that he thinks was rigged, even if it very clearly wasn't, and he loses by a sizable margin...that he too might face some type of criminal investigation for all of the crimes that he is currently committing," Rowen told journalist Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News.
She suggested Trump, too, would seek refuge in Russia, saying he "will have colluded with, say, Putin to figure out a way to escape to that country."
"That's all I can keep thinking," Rowen said. "They are laying a plan for all of them, no matter what the consequence in their countries are, to flee to other dictatorships that support them."
And Trump hates travel. We've known this since the 2016 campaign. Politico reported this just before Election Day that year:
... for Trump, near-nightly returns to Manhattan — from as far west as Reno, Nevada — mean a chance to sleep in his marble-and-gold hued 66th floor penthouse in Trump Tower....If Trump has ever traveled to a non-Trump property just for the pleasure of being in a new place, I'm not aware of it. His sons and son-in-law might flee if faced with serious legal peril, but Trump won't.
Even when Trump doesn’t return to Manhattan, he almost always overnights in one of his many other properties: the sumptuous Mar-a-Lago in Florida, the exclusive, private Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, or his Trump-branded hotels in Chicago, Miami and Las Vegas. Through Saturday, only four nights in October had Trump not slept in a bed that he or one of his companies owned.
Carville's belief -- that the job will be too frustrating for him after a Democratic Congress is sworn in -- is belied by this:
It was the day before the election, and the president had decided to come [to the Reflecting Pool], a place that excites him, to talk about many of the topics that make him happiest. Trouble is, almost none of those topics have anything to do with the issues that are driving this election.Also:
At a time when voters have made clear they’re most concerned with the high prices of gas and groceries and a new war in the Middle East, Mr. Trump used his final in-person appearance before Americans head to the polls to talk about drain pipes, top soil, limestone, fountains and his favorite kind of columns.
“The pipes now are totally renovated,” Mr. Trump said. Propped up next to him was a poster board showing an aerial view of the pool, with this caption: “Back, and more beautiful than ever!”
The “brand-new pipes,” Mr. Trump said, are “very important in terms of the algae and other things. And it’s a complete job, and we’re very proud of it.”
The Trump administration has submitted its proposed overhaul of East Potomac Golf Links for federal review, calling for a new championship golf course and a $304.5 million seawall around the Hains Point peninsula....Building makes Trump happy. If a Democratic Congress makes trouble for him elsewhere, he'll still have this. And if the Democrats try to block his projects, he'll get to engage in one of his other favorite activities -- siccing lawyers on people, either to get what he wants or to prevent them from getting what they want from him. For Trump, it's all lifefuel.
The 55-page concept proposal, obtained by The Washington Post, was submitted Friday to the National Capital Planning Commission....
Remember that Trump first gained fame as a builder -- he was probably the most famous builder in the world in the 1980s -- but after that, he wasn't really building anything. He'd buy up buildings, refurbish them a little, and slap his name on them, to no great media fanfare. He'd make deals to brand other people's buildings, which he mostly didn't own. He was a TV star and a brand name, not a builder.
But now, using your tax dollars and bribes from rich people, he gets to be a builder again. It's like going back to the bloom of his youth. He's reliving his glory days. Why would he give that up?
*****
And will today's results be the Democratic rout we're all hoping for?
In the House, absolutely. In the Senate, I think Democrats will prevail, but there are still some worrisome polls in Maine, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, and Alaska, and the huge overestimation of Abdul El-Sayed's lead in the Michigan primary has me concerned that the polls could be wrong again. So I wouldn't bet the rent money on a Senate flip. (I would bet the rent money on a House flip.)
I think Democrats will win enough of the worrisome states to get to 52 (which is necessary to preclude a possible post-election John Fetterman ratfuck) -- and possibly beyond. I feel surprisingly confident about Kansas, and Iowa might work out also. But the extreme "reach" states -- Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi -- probably aren't happening. (I think Florida is the least likely of those three, because the combination of old white Fox addicts and Cubans makes the red wall insurmountable.) I'll be delighted if I'm wrong, though.
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