Predictably predictable
Donald Trump is so predictable that he does the things you were going to predict he was going to do before your predictions can even be printed.
I’d planned that one leg of this three-legged stool – in more ways than one – of a column was going to be the prediction that Trump would try to delay the election, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and the related safety of voters as his rationale. And just like with his tax information, which he said he would release when his Internal Revenue Service “audit” was over, which hasn’t happened in five years and never is going to happen, the postponement of the election, in Trump’s mind, would continue until folks just accepted it would never happen. Then he gets to be president/ king for life.
The real reason Trump is proposing to delay the election, of course, is not the pandemic but that, in almost all polls, he’s getting swamped by Democratic presumed presidential nominee Joe Biden. So, Trump being Trump, when he realizes he’s not going to win, he cheats. Just ask his golf partners and caddies.
Both people who read this column regularly will remember I’ve accurately predicted many of Trump’s previous actions, so I have a record of success I’m running on here. That being the case, there are two others things I’ll predict the Predictable Don will do in coming months.
One will be he will announce development of a COVID-19 vaccine, a cure-all therapeutic, or both. He’s already setting all of this up with his, “Something good is coming soon” rhetoric that he repeats and repeats.
And because he is so entirely predictable, I’ll predict he’ll make that announcement sometime in mid- to late October, allowing little time to scientifically or medically disprove these allegedly remarkable, lifesaving medical developments. And Trump will, of course, insist the medical companies with the cures will only work with him, so he must be re-elected.
Right around that same time, maybe a week or so later, Trump and his hatchet man, Attorney General Bill “Mean Fred Flintstone” Barr will announce the indictments and/or arrests of one, or more, of the following: Joe Biden, Barack Obama, John Brennan, James Comey and possibly a few others. They will be charged with illegal domestic spying on Trump’s 2016 campaign, or something similar.
I believe Trump and Mean Fred already have the shoddy evidence they need to make an easily disproven court case. But that it’s a crappy case won’t matter if they act in late October, because there won’t be enough time to prove in court that the case is a sham, a mere public relations stunt meant to sway the election.
So now that we’ve established two legs of this stool of a column, I can see it still needs a third leg because Trump sawed off a leg before I could sit on it. So I’ll add another sturdy prediction to create a solid base.
If all of the high jinks Trump and Mean Fred do don’t work and Trump still loses the election, Trump will declare the election invalid, and Mean Fred will back him up with a specious legal opinion and a hearty “Yabba-dabba-did.” Then Trump will hole up in the White House and refuse to leave.
What happens next with Trump in that scenario? Does he go on a hunger strike, refusing all of the Big Macs, fries and Diet Cokes that are the staples of his diet? Does he call for armed rebellion from his heavily armed supporters? Do the new residents of the White House just decide to work around the crazy, crabby old orange man who refuses to leave?
Even I can’t predict that.