Are we really about to see Donald Trump get dragged out of the White House?
Donald Trump has always been a guy who pushes buttons to see what gains he can get out of it. So it wasn’t a surprise that after he lost, he kept pushing the narrative that he secretly won, so his supporters would keep lining his pockets. But now even the likes of McConnell and Putin are admitting Trump lost, so he has to move on to his next round of button pushing.
Major media outlets have been reporting that Trump is privately threatening to simply refuse to leave the White House when his term is up. This has become newly relevant now that Trump has abruptly left Mar-a-Lago and gone back to the White House for one last stand. I warned you all along that he might make this threat. I also pointed out that if he does, the Secret Service would drag him out immediately – and that Trump knows this, so he wouldn’t actually try it.
Instead Trump is bluffing, which is what con artists like him do. He’s hoping he can scare someone, somewhere into giving him some kind of leniency in exchange for leaving quietly.
That’s not how anything works, of course. Neither the DOJ nor New York State is going to give Trump immunity in exchange for leaving office. Trump simply doesn’t have that kind of leverage, especially now that McConnell has moved on from him. But Trump has to try the bluff anyway, because he’s running out of things to try.
Once Trump is indicted in New York, he’ll surely try to convince the judge to let him have house arrest at Mar-a-Lago instead of pre-trial imprisonment. Trump knows that if he has to be physically removed from the White House, it’ll just decrease the odds that the judge will let him have house arrest.
So unless he’s completely lost what was left of his marbles, Trump isn’t actually going to have himself physically dragged from the White House. Much as many of us would like to watch that happen, it’s just a bluff to see if he can get any considerations in return. Palmer Report warned you a long time ago that Trump would make this threat, and that he would be bluffing. Nothing has changed about it now.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report