If President Donald Trump loses the election in November, he’s going to leave the White House without incident.
Secret Service agents won’t have to drag him out, kicking and screaming, like a drunk and disorderly suspect on an episode of “Cops.” It won’t be like a B-movie where Gerard Butler has to take down a heavily armed Mike Pompeo with just a fork and his superhuman Krav Maga abilities. You’re not going to see Kellyanne Conway manning a makeshift parapet on the perimeter of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
I’m thoroughly confused about where this fever dream came from. Trump, from time to time, consternates reporters who consistently feel the need to ask whether he’ll accept the results of the election. This is considered heresy, which is rich given that, as I write this, we’re on day 1,351 of the left-wing establishment not accepting the results of the 2016 election.
However, the president has never suggested he’d do anything about this aside from complain mightily — probably in the form of a strongly worded Twitter thread — and he certainly hasn’t said anything about holing himself up in the White House with a phalanx of footsoldiers preventing the transition of power from happening, even when he doesn’t unequivocally say he’ll accept the results of the election as valid.
That House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is horrified at this is hardly news. The fact she thinks we might need to gas the White House to get the president out is, however.
The latest controversy involves Trump giving a similar answer to a question that’s similar to one he’s been asked a million times before.
“I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose,” the president said in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
“I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election, I really do,” he said.
“Are you suggesting that you might not accept the results of the election?” Wallace asked.
“I have to see,” Trump said. “I’m not going to just say yes, and I didn’t last time, either.”
Donald Trump, Chris Wallace and everyone watching this interview with a desultory knowledge of how American elections work is well aware of the fact that, if there aren’t irregularities in voting that either side can prove, whatever Donald Trump thinks of the election results won’t matter.
Furthermore, this seemed to be more about calling attention to the Trump administration’s issues with nationwide mail-in voting than a scene from the first act of the aforementioned Gerard Butler movie.
Trump’s remarks aired Sunday. On Monday, Pelosi appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” for her usual bout of fulmination, including a threat to gas the White House if something the president has never threatened ends up happening:
“The fact is whether he knows it yet or not, he will be leaving,” Pelosi told “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski.
“Just because he might not want to move out of the White House doesn’t mean we won’t have an inauguration ceremony to inaugurate a duly elected president of the United States. And I guess, you know, I’m second in line to the presidency, and just last week I had my regular continuation of government briefing. This might interest you because I say to them, ‘This is never going to happen.’ God willing, it never will. But there is a process.
“It has nothing to do with that the certain occupant of the White House doesn’t feel like moving and has to be fumigated out of there because the presidency is the presidency.
“It’s not geography or location so — so much for him. I wouldn’t spend so much time on it; that’s a victory for him because then we’re not talking about your first, more important subject, which is, what are we going to do to stop this vicious virus that is making an assault on our health, again, our lives, our livelihood and life of our democracy?”
The California Democrat also defended national vote-by-mail, a process that she’s absolutely sure presents no problems despite the fact it hasn’t actually been tried.
“This is simple. It’s — when I say simple, we know what we need to do,” Pelosi said. “Again, ignore what the president has to say. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, once again, when he talks about any problems with vote-by-mail.”
Ignore what the president has to say — except, of course, when he says something about the possibility of questioning the results, then it’s time to fumigate the White House to get him out.
To the extent Pelosi’s remark could be excused as hyperbole, it’s worth noting every time Trump or one of his allies uses hyperbole, the knives of humorlessness are instantly unsheathed.
Remember when they all claimed the president wanted people to inject Lysol into their veins after he made a sarcastic remark to a reporter about using disinfectant to kill the coronavirus? Pelosi’s response: “The president is asking people to inject Lysol into their lungs.”
Given the Vulcan-like standard the Democrats hold themselves to in these matters, I can only assume she meant what she said: That they might have to toss some CS canisters into the Oval Office and drag Trump out.
The fact is that nobody’s going to have to gas anything if Trump loses. He’ll vacate the Oval Office and Joe Biden will spend four years wandering the halls of the White House, trying to remember where the Oval Office is.
In fact, I can only think of one situation where Nancy Pelosi might need Gerard Butler to do his thing. That’s if Donald Trump wins again.
Story cited here.
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