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There’s all kinds of fun options depending on how bad it gets.
There’s already 7 GOP senators trying to take his tariff power away and nothing tangible outside the market has even happened yet. Elon is calling other members of the inner circle retards for their trade policy (proxy shot at Trump).
Most realistic scenario is that congress just votes to take tariffs away and overrides the veto. If there is blood in the streets even a GOP congressman will be loyal to his constituents who are mailing him death threats and threatening his political career forever. And it’s much easier to swallow just taking back tariff power over an actual impeachment or something.
If it gets really bad, like Great Depression bad, I would bet my life savings he gets JFKed or has a mysterious heart attack/plane crash/take your pick.
You simply cannot survive as a politician in America if you fuck with the economy to this extent. We already see the campaign ramping up, Jamie Dimon and other financial bigwigs are pressuring Trump (first option in the toolbox) but if he continues to go full retard they will take the other tools out too.
How many politicians were assassinated during the COVID lockdowns or during the Great Depression?
A couple in the Depression. More if you count local politicians, conventions, etc.
Not so much during COVID, perhaps because, you know, it wasn’t that bad?
This asshole tried to kill a judge in 2020, but it was some sort of unhinged #MeToo grift instead of a COVID thing. And then there was this random act of schizophrenia in 2023.
But really, violence is rare.
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If you believe the FBI, there was that plot to kidnap governor Whitmer.
Well, the plot existed, even if it was developed at the Hoover building.
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The COVID lockdowns made the rich richer than ever before as infinite money was ploughed into pumping equities and real estate, why would they have been unhappy with that?
The lockdowns caused a massive plunge in the stock market. There was a recovery, but I don't see how that could have been caused by money printing. Printing money doesn't affect the real prices of assets.
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Well, if Elon wins and gets Peter Navarro fired, that would be great, but it ain't going to happen. The problem is that Trump likes tariffs. Without Navarro, maybe he'd have less-stupid tariffs (still damaging but not Great Depression damaging), but he's going to be inclined to go with his tariff-friendly advisors over Musk on this.
The non-MAGA members of the GOP don't have the cojones. They never did, that's one of the reasons MAGA won in the first place.
The Deep State will like the Great Depression; the last one is what created them, after all.
Idk about this, but I do wonder the extent to which Democrats will be tempted to let Trump shit the bed for two or even four years given that the ensuing backlash could create the environment for New Deal-era levels of political dominance. If the question arises they can't credibly choose not to step in, but in ways the best case scenario politically is for mostly-Democratic majorities in Congress to try to stop him and then a majority of the Republicans prevents the overriding of his veto, which prevents them from trying to shed the Trump legacy down the line. Indeed, when there was shutdown talk Nate Silver said Democrats should stop trying to be the adult party and just let Republicans take ownership of their own messes.
I doubt you're going to get that. It's much more likely you'll get an equivalent to what's going on in the UK right now.
The UK already had multiple medium sized political parties though, I don't know the odds of that situation coming to be in the US (though it would be good).
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Up till now MAGA has been neutral to positive for the average American. Trump didn’t really do anything that’s impacted Joe Six-pack and if anything has delivered some wins on woke and DEI. And his tax cuts broadly benefited Joe Six-pack in the short-term as well.
So the only real reasons to oppose Trump have been “he’s vulgar” or political games like Jan 6 that democrats also played. Or you’re a woke lib who hates him on principle.
But now all of a sudden people are staring at GFC part 2 with the potential for much much worse. Joe Six-pack will get annihilated with inflation and might get laid off too. And whose fault is it? It’s 100% on Trump and everybody knows it.
All of a sudden even conservatives are like “wait a minute wtf” and that will lead to political pressure on Trump from essentially all of America except the most diehard of his base (and how many of them are diehard enough when they are about to lose their homes and a t-shirt is $50?)
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