Donald Trump was soundly defeated by Joe Biden, his efforts to overturn the results have been wildly unsuccessful, and the electoral college has made his loss official. In two weeks, lawmakers will meet to certify Biden’s win—and a longshot challenge Trump’s allies in the House are planning is unlikely to stop the inevitable. Constitutionally and legally, Trump will have no constitutional or legal claim to the White House.
But what if, after all that, he just...refuses to leave? What if he refuses to pack his shit and go back to Mar-a-Lago? What if he chains himself to the Resolute Desk? That prospect may sound comically outlandish, and is indeed unlikely to come to pass. But it’s hardly as far-fetched as it might seem, as Trump refuses to concede and continues to insist he won last month’s election in a “landslide.” In fact, he has actually raised the idea with aides recently, as CNN reported. And while few advisers think he’ll actually go through with it, no one really knows what would happen if he does try to overstay his welcome.
According to the Daily Beast on Wednesday, the Secret Service isn’t so sure what it would do, either. One former agent suggested he’d get dragged out like any other civilian would be if they were in the Oval Office unauthorized. “I guess by law he would be a trespasser,” the former agent told the outlet. “We’d have to escort him out.” But the Secret Service and the military may be reluctant to take part in what would be such a dramatic scene, and could take more subtle action, like pressing his inner circle or Republican officials and family members to make him leave. “The Service and the military would just not want to get involved,” another former official said. “It’s not our role.” It could also simply do the equivalent of changing the locks: “When the staff leaves on January 19, don’t let them back into the complex the next day,” an ex-agent said. “He can’t do anything without his staff.”
Again, this is all (thankfully) hypothetical at this point, and the chances of it becoming more than that are still likely remote. But it’s hard to avoid engaging with the prospect as Trump goes to greater and greater lengths in his effort to remain in power, even though a record number of American voters told him to get lost and the electoral college formalized his loss. “It’s scary,” an administration official told CNN.
It’ll only get scarier in the coming weeks. Already angry at allies who have acknowledged his loss and turning for comfort to crackpots like Sidney Powell, Trump is likely to take ever more desperate and reckless action to impose his own version of reality. His own White House on Tuesday briefly undercut his fantasy that “maybe the next administration will be me” when it sent an email to staff with instructions to begin departing the White House January 5. But by Wednesday, the White House Management Office had backtracked: “Please disregard the below message,” read an email to staffers obtained by the Washington Post. “Updated information will be shared in the coming days.”
So with less than a month until Biden moves in, Trump is still insisting he may not have to leave, and his administration is still not prepared to start packing. Harmful as all this nonsense may be to the transition, they can all keep playing make believe as long as they like. But in doing so, they run the risk of arriving at the White House in a few weeks to find the doors locked and their stuff in a heap on the South Lawn.
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