How will the Trump administration end?

[SnowFire]

Let's get our bets on the table while it's still unknown.  Keep the commentary clean here folks, no wishing for any of the bad scenarios.

You can vote for multiple options, but some of them are a bit silly in combination.

(Also, no, I didn't include "abolishes 22nd amendment, wins 3+ terms."  Call that one a subset of 9 or 10 I guess.)

[Cmdr_King]

He won't step down on his own, ego's too big for that.  And Republicans won't remove him, they're down for most of what he's sellin'.  So either he dies before he really gets rolling, or he dies because everyone else is dead, which is closest to option 6.

[Sierra]

He won't step down on his own, ego's too big for that.  And Republicans won't remove him, they're down for most of what he's sellin'.

I went with option 8 on this reasoning.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I am expecting WW3. It's the only scenario extreme enough to be emotionally prepared for whatever actually happens.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I see where CK is coming from but there are already signs that his support is unstable among Republicans, so I voted 3/4 (I find the distinction between the styles of resignation too grey to care). The argument that they like most of what he's selling doesn't really hold water to me because if he's gone they get Pence, who still offers them that. Arguably I should have voted for 7 as well.

WW3 requires at least one other major power be as stupid and bombastic as Trump. I have a bit more faith in China than that.

[superaielman]

Yeah voted impeachment. We're less than a month in and it's been nonstop crisis since day one, entirely of Trump's own making. I have no faith in either party but Trump is too big a problem to be ignored and the Russia things are... damning to put it mildly.

[OblivionKnight]

The Rapture comes early.

In all seriousness, I'm thinking impeachment.  The next option is that he rides it out for 4 years, loses to Ahnold, and then we fight the true enemy, Mecha-Hitler

[Captain K]

Voted out in four seems the most reasonable result.  He won't get impeached with a Republican Congress, no matter how stupid he gets.

Having said that, George W. Bush was the worst president of my lifetime and he got voted in for a second term.  I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Trump wins a second term.  American voters are really that stupid.

[Excal]

Dubya didn't just get voted in a second time, he got better results the second time.  And while the news and social media seem to suggest that Trump is wildly hated among those who make noise, polls conducted since the inauguration seem to suggest that those who don't make noise are ok with Trump at present.

My bet is on eight years followed by a Democrat in 2024.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Trump is currently historically unpopular for a president this early in his term, actually.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/will-trumps-approval-rating-be-a-problem-for-republicans-in-2018/ (article itself is just interesting reading, but it includes some talk of his aggregate rating of his approval numbers)

Not ruling out your scenario to be clear (it's obviously possible), just commenting on your second sentence.

[SnowFire]

He is, but he was also historically unpopular in the primaries, and historically unpopular in the general.  Moral: he can be crazy unpopular in the polls, but mole-people living in brushes who don't respond to polls are disproportionately likely to vote for him, and people who pay a modicum of attention to real-world events are disproportionately likely to hate his guts.  Hard to be sure how it'll play out.  I do think that 8 years is unfortunately plausible for all that I didn't vote for it myself.  (Currently 8 years being tied with Banana Emperor.)

Kinda surprised that the DL isn't buying the 25th Amendment option.  If the Republicans want to avoid a messy impeachment scandal, it's totally the backdoor way to get rid of Trump: Pence declares he's unfit for the presidency and the Senate agrees.  No need to actually convict him of anything then.

For Elf, it's definitely a nebulous distinction, but 3's resignation scenario was closer to "Eh, bored now, laterz" or "I am very sick so I'm resigning".  Admittedly, it is very easy to imagine Trump resigning because the Presidency is no fun anymore, and have it be due to scandals / problems that don't rise to the level of imminent impeachment-by-Republicans, but are scandaly rather than "personal".  (I do think that many people underestimate the possibility of voluntary withdrawal not due to scandals; as 538 pointed out in http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/14-versions-of-trumps-presidency-from-maga-to-impeachment/  's scenario #5, we've totally had presidents who just kinda back off and delegate before, and resigning would be one step further in that direction.)

For Cid's scenario, there is a bright side: I'm sure any future new presidents would have some good ideas, like the ones from here:
https://youtu.be/jtu6ZFBuNZE?t=6m53s

[Excal]

Yeah, I was mostly responding to polls that showed that, despite the huge amounts of noise, Trump's immigration order was acceptable to about 40% of the country.  That said, Trump and polls confound me, since the guy seems to be made of teflon.  In the absence of anything you can use as proof of an exception, I'm falling back into traditional patterns of two terms under one president and then switching to the other party.

Hell, I'm expecting that congress will probably swap in 2020, and the senate in 2022.  And that events and issues will have minimal impact on this progression.

[Sierra]

Snowfire, you know that I am just waiting for our first A.I. president.

[Captain K]

Kinda surprised that the DL isn't buying the 25th Amendment option.  If the Republicans want to avoid a messy impeachment scandal, it's totally the backdoor way to get rid of Trump: Pence declares he's unfit for the presidency and the Senate agrees.  No need to actually convict him of anything then.

Will never happen.  Pence's gravy train was built on Trump's crazy; he's not going to survive if he denounces the crazy.

[Ranmilia]

Voted 3/5/6/7/8.  Impeachment not gonna happen.  Natural or "natural" causes are always a slim possibility, as is someone internally or externally taking a shot at him.  Elections, certainly not in four.  Eight... maybe, but it's hard to see things that far out.  Trump's been fairly successful so far, on the whole, and there's no particular reason for the GOP to allow themselves a chance at losing.

[Cotigo]

Trump's been fairly successful so far, on the whole, and there's no particular reason for the GOP to allow themselves a chance at losing.

Has he, though? Or do his core supporters just buy the story that he has? For all that the entire last month has been an extremely loud circus, his worst egregiouses have been stamped down by the rule of law and the whole checks-and-balances thing seems to be working as intended. His administration has been thankfully impotent and while I still fear the real possibility of this all ending up in violence (mostly 'cuz it already has) as the days go by I'm MORE optimistic about the future than not. . . . .

...

...as far as the executive branch is concerned. That whole Republican majority legislative branch is just ripping us a new one, though.

The ideal scenario is that he's no more effective than any other Republican choice but is so loudly incompetent that the houses switch over the next couple cycles, though I'm not so braindead that I think that's likely. Still, the point is that Trump has demonstrated so much sheer incompetence and petty combativeness towards people working for our actual overlords (hur hur media joke) that this ill-will is going to keep fermenting.

Not that I think his presidency is going to alienate his core supporters or anyone else more interested in playing political games than governing, but I do think there's going to be less dipshit fart-in college students for the next generation or so, so maybe the left can get it's act together. Maybe.

[SnowFire]

Amazingly, the answer to this one is still not 100% clear, but clearly multiple answers were in the realms of possibility of being correct.  "Voted out in four" wins it seems, though the vote was a lot closer than it should have been.  There was a bit of a coup, but it was a self-coup in favor of Trump, not one to remove him.  There was an impeachment, but it didn't lead to conviction, and even if the second impeachment trial ends in a conviction, it won't be what led to Trump's removal.  Trump didn't die, but he did catch covid-19, and it's pretty easy to imagine that a more severe case could have led down that path.  We didn't have World War III, but Trump did literally launch planes to bomb Iran then ordered them to turn around after they were already in the air, so that wasn't out of the realm of possibility as well (along with some sort of insane love/hate North Korea non-strategy).  The possibility of the 25th Amendment was at least seriously floated by Pelosi & Schumer, although Pence shot it down apparently after defanging his authority and getting some assurance of vaguely good boy behavior.  Trump managed to destroy quite a bit of the US government, but not all of it (we'll see how many Trumpy loyalists burrowed into the civil service in 2020 after he just unilaterally rescinded rules that were expressly intended to stop what he did...  what use is a rule if the guy who's supposed to enforce it doesn't, etc.).