Sleep Walking
A recent New York Times article stated “we are sleeping into autocracy.” It’s tough to come up with an argument against that observation. It seems that Trump is following the Orbán playbook, made more likely by Orbán’s three visits to Mar-a-Lago prior to the last election. I can imagine Orbán schooling him. It’s clear now to all but the most unaware, that Trump admires tyrants. Trump is working hard to own the courts, if he is successful in that, it could be his winning lottery ticket.
I typically don’t put a lot of stock in predictions, but I’m going to go ahead and lay this one out there. Clearly Trump sees himself as president for life. If every other strategy to remain in office fails, before the end of his term he is going to find an excuse to declare Marshall Law and he will have the legal mechanism (owning the courts) in place to support him.
A more likely strategy would be to circumvent the “only elected twice” clause in the Constitution. He’ll run again as Vice-President under Vance and then after the election Vance would resign allowing Trump to hold a third term. This option is already being put out there and we aren’t even out of the first 100 days of his second term.