The real reason it’s so tricky right now to get rid of Donald Trump

| 9:09 am EDT June 7, 2020
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Donald Trump is miserable as president. Whatever little interest he might have previously had in the job, it’s clearly gone now. Given his newfound obsession with bunkers and fences, he doesn’t even feel physically safe being president, even though he’s not in any actual danger. The last thing he wants is four more years of this. He doesn’t even seem to want four more months of this.

Trump has every motivation in the world right now to simply declare victory on his presidency, brag that his imaginary accomplishments are greater than those of any president who came before him, and call it quits. He could resign now. Or he could announce he’s not seeking reelection, and then pull back on his political agenda, which would take a lot of the heat off him as he finishes out his term playing golf. But Trump can’t do any of that – at least not without a significant amount of negotiations involved.

Once Donald Trump is no longer President of the United States, he’ll be criminally charged and arrested. There is no doubt about this. The Feds and New York State will be fighting over who gets to put Trump on trial first. For that reason, Trump knows he can’t just walk away from the presidency. He’d have to cut a plea deal of some kind, and it’s not even clear at this point that he’d be able to get much of one.

If we get closer to election day and it becomes more clear to Donald Trump that he’s going to lose, we could see him try to negotiate some kind of resignation plea deal at that point. But for now, he surely thinks he still has a chance of turning around his election fortunes over the next five months. So why would he want to give up and quit now, knowing that quitting will likely come with at least some prison time? The irony is that if Trump weren’t facing an endless list of criminal charges, there would be better odds that he would resign now and walk away.