What does the future hold for Donald Trump? - threadbans in OP

On the issue of appealing the judgement. Trump has two avenues; one is lodging the entire judgement amount in the next 30 days, and I doubt he can raise that amount in 30.

Second course is obtaining a bond for that amount, usually sustaining a 10% non-refundable fee, but that also requires trump to submit a financial statement that's he's good for the total amount.

Now maybe I'm being skeptical, but what bond company will accept such a statement given that the conviction he is appealing is for issuing dodgy financial statements in the first place?

Sue for what exactly?

Discrimination or something, his legal advisors know how to abuse the system even if he loses every case eventually.

Add to that the likelyhood that The Presidency is all Donnie has now left to avoid disaster. His 4 years in the White House gave him a welcome pause from the financial & legal troubles that were already on their way to get him prior to 2016. I imagine him to be desperate to get in there to gain access to the Magic Pause Button that being POTUS appeared to offer him. So he will hold on for dear life to stay on the ballot until November. Even if the GOP suddenly kicked him off the ticket in favor of Haley, he would still run, because he has no choice.

If all goes as we hope, and Donnie loses in November, there will be all kinds of hell from the MAGA cult. This was going to be the case regardless, but out of desperation Trump is likely going to try for a repeat of Jan 6 and I suspect he’ll openly call for a coup this time. Once that fails, we’ll still be left with MAGA for the foreseeable, but Donnie’s days will likely be numbered. Without his businesses or anything close to a billion to his name he will eventually start to disintegrate. It might take years, and during that time we’ll get more of what we’ve had for the past 4 years, until finally he loses what few marbles he had left or his decrepit frame will succumb to nature.

Only then we’ll be left with his wretched legacy to deal with.

Imagine he does win 2024, with debts of over a half billion.

Plenty of secrets he can sell.

@everlast75

He can. Not because he has the high ground, but because that's what he has been doing with various rivals/enemies of his for pretty much his whole political career such that it is normalised. He uses 'crooked' as a nickname for several such people and everyone seems to have largely gotten sick of pointing out the ridiculous irony.

"we also have to recognise that he is more likely than not to win in November"

What are you basing this view on?

I don’t see it. Apart from everything else, his core support hasn’t really changed. Enough to win a GOP nomination, not nearly enough to win a presidency.

I don’t think there are too many undecideds anymore - everyone knows what you get with Trump(which is basically nothing, he is running for personal protection from prosecution more than anything else) and most Americans categorically do not want him as president.

Fair point but...they also don't want Biden either. People have been sold on the idea that he is past it (fairly or unfairly) and his approval ratings are at levels that are fatal for a sitting president.

One group of people who are good at pricing markets are bookies. They all have Trump as favourite and Biden is at more than twice his odds.

Don't get me wrong by the way. I'd rather vote for a comatose Biden than a vigorous Trump!

But, at this point, Trump is favourite.

The good news is that can change through events or, even better, a new Dem candidate.

The problem is not his base. The problem is who is there to vote for the other candidate. This is what scuppered Hillary in 2016 - she couldn't rally the blue vote despite Trump's obvious problems, then. Everyone seems to be expecting that those who voted for Biden or against Trump last time will do so again this time, but Trump fatigue has set in. The lawsuits and the felony cases and the outrageous things he says have just become one big ball of noise. Every time he does 'the thing', i.e. the thing which pundits proclaim will be his undoing, all that does is set a new high watermark of what to expect from him, another notch on the crazy belt.

And the problem for Biden is A) his age, which Trump is not far behind at all in, but he distracts from that with all of his other madness, and B) getting the blame for everything that's wrong with the USA or perceived to be, which is something every incumbent POTUS must deal with, some better than others. The Democrats did a hell of a job in 2016 of making Trump seem in any way electable and look to be flirting with the possibility of pulling it off again. I believe that even if Biden were in a wheelchair with a big string of drool hanging off his chin, he'd be a better president than Trump for the simple reason that being infirm and decent is better than healthy and evil, but America is probably going to need a bit more selling than that, rightly or wrongly.

But the big difference between 2016 and now is that the US have had 4 years of Trump, and know what a rubbish president he is. In effect, him running significantly rallies the blue vote as people will turn up to make sure that he won’t get back in the White House.

I don’t think Biden is an ideal candidate. But I don’t think his TV gaffes are enough to get the American public at large to think they’d prefer 4 more years of a crook with an abysmal presidential record instead of another 4 years of a president that has done little wrong.

Theres a strange double standard at play - Biden makes an incorrect statement and he’s all of a sudden too old and incompetent, and Trump, who makes his own regular gaffes amongst his borderline treasonous statements, lies and post conviction tirades, is somehow more competent? Crazy stuff altogether.

I also mentioned polling. Have a listen to this recent snippet from ABC\538.

72% of Americans have doubts about Biden's ability to do the job. Those are unprecedented numbers.