8647: Donald Digs In
Trump doesn't plan on ever leaving. What are we going to do about it?
In his inaugural address as Governor of California in 1967, Ronald Reagan marveled at “the orderly transfer of administrative authority by direction of the people,” extolling it as “the simple magic of the commonplace routine, which makes it a near miracle to many of the worlds inhabitants—this continuing fact that the people, by democratic process, can delegate power, and yet retain the custody of it.”
That simple magic has no effect on Donald Trump; democracy to him is just hocus-pocus. Orderly transfer of power is a spell that cannot be cast upon him.
Here’s the deal: Donald Trump is not going anywhere. He’s never going to leave—not willingly. He will never choose to move out. He intends to stick around, come what may. And to believe otherwise is to engage in a different sort of magical thinking—the kind that will end our republic.
If impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate, Trump will make like his buddy and fellow criminal Netanyahu and refuse to vacate the premises. If voted out, he will not concede defeat; he will remain at the White House—the People’s House, the presidential residence he’s remodeling like it’s a wedding venue at one of his tacky golf courses. Even if he croaks, an orderly transfer of power is not assured; JD Vance—avatar of sweaty fascist gajillionaire Peter Thiel and standard-bearer of the Dark Enlightenment, a rightwing political movement that seeks to replace the duly elected president with a king, a dictator, or, if you prefer a more euphemistic but less accurate word, a CEO—is no sure bet to follow the Constitution he and his buddy Curtis Yarvin despise.
Donald Trump is best thought of as a cancer on the body politic. A tumor won’t up and leave because two thirds of the Senate says so. A cancer won’t stop metastasizing because it loses Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin. No: the tumor keeps growing until it is excised. The cancer keeps spreading until it’s stopped with chemotherapy—or until the host body dies.
I say again: Donald Trump is not going to leave on his own accord. He’s not going to depart willingly—even when his term ends.
This is not idle speculation on my part, or kooky conspiracy theory. We know there won’t be an orderly, peaceful transition of power this time because there wasn’t an orderly, peaceful transition of power the last time. The Republicans, and to some degree the legacy media, are doing their damnedest to whitewash the events of January 6, 2021. But we all remember what took place on that dark and shameful day: A violent mob of MAGA insurrectionists, at Trump’s command, besieged the Capitol. They grappled with police officers and killed one of them. They smashed windows. They broke into Nancy Pelosi’s office. They made off with stuff. They smeared shit on the walls. Many of these violent thugs were tried, found guilty, and went to prison—and Trump pardoned every last one of them. For all we know, the J6 marauders are the same masked stormtroopers kidnapping people for ICE.
The reason Trump was so mad at Mike Pence that day is because he thought—not without good reason—that, had Pence “found the courage” to not certify the vote, as he wanted and demanded, Trump may well have been able to remain in the Oval Office. The insurrection might’ve been successful. The only reason Trump left in January 2021 is because his coup attempt fell flat. Had it not failed, he certainly would have stood his ground.
This time is different. Trump is much more powerful now. He has his lickspittles at Justice and the FBI, zealously indicting his political enemies. He owns the Supreme Court, which has granted him kingly powers, and routinely ignores judicial orders from circuit judges. He has bullied the legacy media into submission. He holds sway in the Senate, and his toady Mike Johnson has effectively dismantled the House. The military remains independent, but three years from now, he may well control the armed forces as well.
So no, Donald Trump will never leave, and therefore, Donald Trump will have to be removed. Dictators don’t get impeached, any more than cancer does. Dictators don’t get voted out, any more than tumors do. Dictators must be toppled. Trump understands this, and is consolidating his power to prevent that from happening. If he succeeds in subverting the military, as he’s clearly trying to do, who will be left to serve the eviction notice, much less kick him out of the White House? DC Metro police? The Gambinos? Batman?
Trump won’t be gotten rid of easily. We—the Democrats in Congress, the Democratic governors, the legacy media, and all the rest of us—have to get that idea in our heads, accept that it is real, and come to grips with the urgency. The proposition of a real MAGA dictatorship is terrifying, infuriating, and totally unprecedented in the 249-year history of the United States. But this is what we’re dealing with.
And this is not me being alarmist, making mountains out of Stephen Miller hills. Trump has made it very clear what his intentions are. The warning signs are everywhere. It’s obvious he intends to stay. I mean, he’s literally dug in…
Renovations
Trump has no concept of legacy, no inkling of what it means to give back to the community. He does everything for himself. We have almost eighty years of evidence that demonstrate this selfish, empathy-devoid behavior. And here’s the thing: as my friend and co-host Stephanie Koff has been saying for a while now, Donald would not make such ambitious renovations to the White House if he was not planning on sticking around.
With all that gilt on the walls, the Oval Office looks like one of his grandfather’s whorehouses: bordello un-chic, Fabergé Egg McMuffin, dime-store Romanov, white trash Versailles. He’s made it his office. All that’s missing is a framed photo of a nude Melania behind the door.
He just renovated the Lincoln bathroom. It’s a box of marble, with gleaming gold fixtures. It looks like a columbarium. He’s so proud of it, he posted a picture on social media:
And he knocked down the East Wing of the White House. He knocked down the East Wing of the White House without having plans in place for what’s going to replace it. He knocked down the East Wing of the White House without asking permission. He knocked down the East Wing of the White House during a government shutdown, when there was no Congress in session to check his power.
He knocked down the East Wing of the White House and no one tried to stop him.
Instead of the East Wing of the White House, we’re getting the President Donald J. Trump White House Ballroom—assuming he plans to build a ballroom and not something else. What is it really? The plans are vague. We haven’t seen the details. The panel of experts put in place to approve the project has been disbanded. He fired them all. Is this actually a ballroom? Is it a private club, like Mar-a-Lago? A warehouse for MAGA merch? We don’t know. Maybe it’s something even more sinister…
Fortresses
Beneath the East Wing of the White House is, or was, the bunker. You remember—the secure redoubt where he hid like a coward during George Floyd protests. Perhaps, as my friend Cheri Jacobus has suggested, Trump plans to expand the bunker.
Why would he expand the bunker? To make it very difficult for anyone to physically remove him from the grounds. In theory, he could crawl into the hole in the ground and stay there indefinitely. It’s not like the guy loves the sunshine. It’s not like he craves nature. As long as he has his Fox News and his cheeseburgers, he’ll be fine.1
And Trump is not the only one with a fortress.
Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense who prefers to style himself the Secretary of War—presumably because “Secretary” sounds like a woman’s job to his sexist pig ears and he thinks “War” is more manly—is now living in military housing at a military facility.
Marco Rubio, the despotic Secretary of State, who wears many hats in this Nazi administration, is now living in military housing at a military facility.
Krisi Noem, the grotesque head of Homeland Security, is now living in military housing at a military facility.
Stephen Miller, the Joseph Goebbels of the Trump regime, is now living in military housing at a military facility.
These are civilian positions. None of these people should be living in military housing at a military facility—not even the “War” Secretary. But that’s where they are.
Why are they doing this? Is it just a matter of personal security, as they suggest? Of avoiding protestors? Of isolating themselves from critics? Maybe. But the fact of the matter is, the cruelest leaders of this cruel regime have situated themselves in fortresses—secure locations that make it very difficult for anyone to go near them.
Voter Fuckery
Trump intends to fuck with the vote. He’s been transparent about this.
I’m not talking about the possibility of vote-counting machines being tampered with by Elon Musk or whoever (even though there’s plenty of evidence to support the thesis that recent elections have not on the up-and-up, if anyone in the media or the government cared to actually look). I’m talking about stuff he’s doing right out in the open.
Trump violates the Hatch Act on the regular. Per the DOJ, “The Hatch Act generally prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity while on duty, in a federal facility, or using federal property.” Legally, Trump is not allowed to use the Office of the Presidency to campaign. But in 2020, all he did was campaign while on the job. We gave up even trying to document these violations, let alone attempting to charge him with a crime. When he does stuff like address army cadets and bitch about Democrats, that’s technically illegal under the Hatch Act.
The GOP is going to win the gerrymandering war. For all the sound and fury about California’s Proposition 50, Gavin Newsom’s scheme to pick up Democratic seats in the House, the fact of the matter, as David Daley explained months ago on The Five 8, is that for the Dems, this is a losing battle. There are more red states that can add seats than there are blue states that can add seats. And all of the red states will. So right off the bat, winning the House is going to be more difficult than it should be.
Then there are the tried and true methods: voter suppression laws. They’re trying to do away with mail-in ballots. They’re trying to do away with early voting. They want it so that you have to go to the polls on Election Day to vote. And they’re going to make it so the wait times are interminable in blue districts and speedy in red ones. And God forbid you try to bring anyone a bottle of Dasani.
Having the vote only on Election Day makes it easier for them to run interference. They can purge the voter rolls. They could make it so that voters have to have an ID.
And they can intimidate at the polls. Already, the Department of Justice has said it is sending “observers” to New Jersey and California to monitor the election. This is illegal—not that anyone cares, or that there’s laws anymore.
The purpose of doing this is to normalize the federal government meddling in elections, which are administered by the states. Because what Trump intends to do in 2028 is send either ICE agents, or National Guard, or—and this is what he really wants—U.S. military to police the voting. This will scare off a lot of people, or cause chaos, or otherwise prevent the voting from running as efficiently and fairly as it should. It will help him.
And the presence of ICE opens up new and innovative opportunities for fuckery. If the vote only takes place on Election Day, all he has to do is order a series of mass arrests in swing districts. He doesn’t even have to charge anyone with a crime; he just needs to round up a few hundred people in all of the “purple” precincts and hold them for 24 hours. That is not hard to do, what with the budget ICE has at its disposal. This is the easiest way, in fact, for Trump to fuck with the vote.
One more thing. Kat Abughazaleh, who I’ve interviewed several times at PREVAIL and on The Five 8, is running for office in Illinois. She has been very active in protesting the ICE raids in Chicago. She has been thrown to the ground violently by ICE agents. She took a baton to her face and got a bruise. And last week she was indicted on some bullshit charge for participating in a protest—for executing her First Amendment rights.
I fear that this indictment is a trial balloon for a sinister new tactic. Just because you’re a politician or an elected official doesn’t mean that Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice or Kash Patel’s FBI can’t or won’t arrest you, indict you on some trumped-up charge (pun intended), and hold you indefinitely—or at least for a few weeks, from mid October until the day after the November election: another potential way to fuck with the vote.
“But the law says. . .”
Given the preponderance of evidence that this is what Trump intends to do, I find it naïve and foolhardy to accept, as a given, that the 2026 elections are going to be fair—let alone the presidential contest in 2028. Why should we assume this? I’ve already discussed a half dozen ways that he’s going to cheat—or, more accurately, to pervert the law to suit his purposes.
Likewise, when the idea of Trump running for a third term was floated—by the Project 2025 people, and by Steve Bannon, and even by Trump himself, who explained that there was some legal way that this outcome could be achieved—the consensus opinion in the legacy media is that this would never happen because it’s not legal. Presidents can only serve two terms; this is his second term; therefore, at the end of this term, he has to vacate.
But when has the law ever stopped Donald Trump from doing what he wants? The man has made a career of thwarting the law. If something is against the law, he does it anyway, and fights it in court. This works out well for him, because he controls the Supreme Court, by virtue of owning six of the nine justices. So any case that goes to SCOTUS is going to be found in his favor—even if it flies in the face of judicial precedent, the spirit of the law, or common sense.
The idea that the law would stop him from running and serving a third term is LOL-able. And yet, a lot of people are telling themselves that this can’t happen because of a couple of words on a piece of paper. Guys: Trump doesn’t care about that!
The other thing about the third-term-is-illegal bit: Trump is technically ineligible to be president right now. He was ineligible to run for the office in 2024, under the Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
It’s clear he engaged in insurrection. He led an uprising against the government! Section 3 explicitly states that anyone who does that and wants to run for office ever again must have the candidacy approved by the House and the Senate. Trump did not do so. Therefore, he was ineligible to run, and he is ineligible to serve right the fuck now. Remember how he went on and on about how Obama couldn’t be president because he was born in Kenya? That was a lie. His own violation of the 14th Amendment, and ineligibility, is real.
If anyone in the Democratic Party had any fucking courage at all, they would have made this a thing two years ago. Biden’s entire campaign should have hinged on Trump’s ineligibility for office—which would be legally accurate, and also put J6 in the spotlight for the duration of the campaign.
Instead, the Democrats never brought it up. I’ve yet to hear it come out of the mouth of any Democrat—not a one. And so even though it was, and is, expressly against the law for Donald Trump to be president right now…he’s president right now.
So that amendment prohibiting a third term? If and when it comes to that, everyone will just ignore it, just like we currently pretend the 14th Amendment doesn’t exist.
Overtures of Violence
We’re already seeing the ICE raids grow worse and worse as time goes on. These are horrifying on a human level, completely self-defeating on an economic level, cruel on a social level—but for Trump, they serve to normalize violence. They serve to normalize unidentified masked men in unmarked cars, kidnapping people off the street.
Similarly, the National Guard has been deployed to various cities throughout the United States. And Trump is trying very hard to get the military to go in as well. He’s circumventing the rules, he’s twisting around posse comitatus. What he really wants is to activate the Insurrection Act, which basically gives him the same powers that Hitler had under the Enabling Act. He wants so badly for the “No Kings” protests to go wrong so he can use it as an excuse to call in the big guns—to literally call in the big guns. He’s thirsty—for blood.
When addressing the generals last month, Pete Hegseth spoke about the soldiers as killers, as war-fighters. Seven times in the address, he used the word “lethal.” The purpose of that speech, I think, was to root out the more constitutionally minded of the generals and find those who are willing to do whatever it is the Donald Trump asks, even if it’s illegal.
Trump wants to turn the troops against us. That’s what he wants—his own private army.
War (What Is It Good For?)
And then there is war. Why, I wonder, does Trump have such a hard-on about fighting Venezuela? Who gives a shit about Venezuela? It’s clearly not necessary to go to war with Venezuela, any more than it’s necessary to go to war with Nigeria.
As my friend Gal Suburban has proposed, being at war with Venezuela or Nigeria—or Fredonia or Boravia—gives Trump a ready-made excuse to call off the elections entirely. He could cite other examples of elections not happening in wartime, even though, in the United States, elections took place during World War II, and even during the Civil War.
“So it shall be ordered. . .”
So let’s say he runs in 2028 and he loses bigly. All of his voter suppression techniques fail. So many people hate his fucking guts that the polls are overwhelmed, and he is unable to fuck with the election sufficiently to get the outcome that he wants. Let’s say that happens. He will still have one last arrow in his quiver: Executive Order 13848.
The key takeaway of “On Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election,” issued on September 12, 2018 by President Donald John Trump and renewed by Biden and again by Trump, is this:
Not later than 45 days after the conclusion of a United States election, the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the heads of any other appropriate executive departments and agencies (agencies), shall conduct an assessment of any information indicating that a foreign government, or any person acting as an agent of or on behalf of a foreign government, has acted with the intent or purpose of interfering in that election. The assessment shall identify, to the maximum extent ascertainable, the nature of any foreign interference and any methods employed to execute it, the persons involved, and the foreign government or governments that authorized, directed, sponsored, or supported it. The Director of National Intelligence shall deliver this assessment and appropriate supporting information to the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security.
That means that after the election, but before the winners are seated, the traitor and cultist Tulsi Gabbard will deliver an assessment to Trump, Rubio, mendacious rich asshole Scott Bessent, Hegseth, Bondi, and Noem. Not one of those individuals would stand up against Trump.
As I wrote back in June of 2022:
The alleged plan, as laid out by Gal Suburban and Jim Stewartson in a series of pieces on MindWar, the latter’s Substack, went like this: Per 13848, Trump would receive the IC’s report on foreign interference 45 days after the 2020 election—December 18, 2020. He would use the findings therein to invalidate the results, ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines. Then he would have a do-over. But this time, the election would be managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent agency of the federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance—including running elections in fledgling democracies. (In November of 2020, Trump went to extraordinary lengths to keep the acting head of USAID, a MAGA loyalist named John Barsa, in the job.)
The researchers conclude:
It appears Executive Order #13848 was set to be executed based on fraudulent accusations of foreign election interference, which would have enabled Trump to direct the US National Guard to seize voting equipment in the designated swing states, or any other states of their choosing, and then deploy USAID to function as the “Election Infrastructure.”
This type of operation would be familiar to those who served in the US Armed Forces, specifically during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). One such veteran who would have extensive knowledge of this mission is Michael Flynn, who served as the Director of Intelligence, Joint Special Operations Command at the time.
Trump didn’t invoke EO13848 in 2020 because the Intelligence Community was late, perhaps intentionally, in giving him the report. This time around, Gabbard will make sure he gets what he needs right quick. The dismantling of USAID by Elon Musk and DOGE means that the election equipment can be seized by the National Guard, or ICE, or whatever other entity Trump wants.
EO13848 is the part in the horror movie when the monster we all think is dead appears one last time. It gives him, in theory, the power to invalidate the results of the election.
8647
All of these data points, taken together, indicate a president who will never willingly go away. He’s never going to leave. He must be thrown out.
There are nonviolent ways to accomplish this. Two weeks ago, I proposed one method, the #Liz48 Plan, involving jumping the presidential line of succession:
We must consider every nonviolent plan that might work, we must use every peaceable means at our disposal, and we must do it now. This is a five-alarm fire. It could not be more urgent. The longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be to remove him—and he knows this, which is why he’s constantly delaying everything.
Back in May, James Comey shared a photo on Instagram where four numbers were spelled out in seashells: 8647. The “47” refers to Trump, who is the 47th president of the United States. The MAGA outrage machine claimed that “86” means assassination, suggesting Comey was covertly calling for the execution of the president.
This is stupid. “Eighty-six” is a term used in nightclubs. It means to throw someone out and never let them back in again. It means exile. That’s all it means. There’s nothing about it that implies or suggests violence.
What we need to do is eighty-six 47. We need to throw him out nonviolently—and let me stress, nonviolently—and never let him anywhere near the White House ever again. The fate of our democracy depends on it.
“No generation has fought longer and harder for freedom or paid a higher price than ours. But the fulfillment of our destiny demands more,” Reagan said at the end of that 1967 speech. “Let this day mark the beginning of that fulfillment.”
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore.
There is a more ominous, if admittedly farfetched, scenario: Trump could descend into the bunker and die in the bunker of whatever unnamed infirmity is ailing him, and we wouldn’t know. It would be like Death of Stalin. Vance and Miller could run AI video of him, to fool everyone into thinking he was still alive; it’s not like his medical team has been an open book in terms of disclosure. They could do this for years, potentially. Like I said, this is farfetched. But ailing dictators are often kept behind closed doors while their lieutenants run the show, the Trump regime has already displayed an affinity for AI, the AI tech-bros all support him, there have already been AI-enhanced videos of Trump speaking, and if an AI had to learn to perfectly replicate Donald Trump, well, there’s more footage of him speaking than any human who ever lived.
Shared with both of my senators. Maybe it will prompt Schumer to do more than wag his finger🤞🏼
Sharing on LinkedIn, but really it needs to be copied and dropped by planes in every city and township in America.