Is Trump going to spend the rest of his life in jail? Be executed? Get away with it and milk the clueless until he dies? Get re-elected and become dictator? Start a civil war and be drug out into the streets and killed? Flee to Russsia or another non-extradition country? What's your prediction?
With things click-click-clicking along on the track they are, jail. But Trump's loony followers keep injecting chaos into the system, and that makes it hard to predict. Maybe they bust him out like the end of "Joker". Maybe in trying to bust him out, they fuck up, and kill him. Maybe having bust him out, Texas and Florida secede, and he becomes their president/dictator. Madness and chaos follow the man like bottleflies after a shit wagon. The fly-cloud is too thick for me to see through.
Execution is off the table. Just like McConnell just pulled a "I'm just not gonna confirm him, cuz I'm just not gonna, so ner!" I think the people who decide that will pull a "you just can't kill a president because you just can't and we say so so ner!". Doesn't matter how much precedent and logic and history you pull out. They'll ignore it. They just won't kill a president, and that's that. Don't even dream of it.
I think he'll get away with it and milk the clueless until he dies. That's regardless of what the DOJ does. His lawyers will just file motion after motion trying to delay any action against him, and if anything criminal does make it to trial, there will end up being at least one MAGAt on the jury who will refuse to convict no matter what the evidence says. Besides, he is not in good shape. I'd be surprised if he can haul his bloated carcass more than 250 feet at a time. He obviously has good genes or he wouldn't have made it this far, and of course he can buy the best health care in the world, but his famously unhealthy lifestyle is bound to catch up with him soon.
As for whether he'll run again, supposedly Melania and Ivanka are begging him not to. https://okmagazine.com/p/melania-ivanka-begging-donald-trump-not-run-president/ Of course, Javanka are desperate to get back into the swanky Manhattan circle and get invited to all the cool parties again, so they may have planted that story.
I don't see that as a solution - if he karks it for any reason in the near future, the conspiracy theorists are going to be going hog-wild on that shit, even if it's clear that he'd basically turned his internal organs into pate with a relentless diet of hamburgers and chocolate cake.
I think the closest you're likely to get for a former president is house arrest, which is roughly the same as one of those cushy country club prisons. Which is probably for the best, since it might be cheaper overall, and a former POTUS would probably require the equivalent of solitary confinement anyway.
Ideally, something like this: Though, I've said before, that I think they'll just drag out the prosecution in such a way that it causes him to have a stroke/heart attack and die before it ever comes time for him to be sentenced. There is another possibility, however: They drag prosecution out just long enough and make it so hard on him, that he's basically forced out of the public eye until well after the mid-terms. (So, instead of being able to go to rallies, he's got to give a deposition, or testify in court, with no cameras being allowed in the courtroom.) This enables those hoping to replace him as the head of the GOP to take the spotlight, and for him to be largely forgotten but the public, so when he's convicted/sentenced, nobody really gives a shit.
His worst nightmare is being irrelevant and forgotten. I suspect that his calls to his erstwhile sycophants aren't being answered and/or returned and that's got to eat at him as well.
I misread that sign in the background as "Stillborn for Senator" and thought "yeah, the GOP will probably go there eventually now Fetal Personhood is a thing". Mike the Headless Chicken was real too.
For what it's worth, I hope he escapes his secret service handlers during his next violent coup attempt and ends up the next Ashli Babbitt. I also hope AOC personally does the job with a katana.
Riots in the streets, eh? Could happen, but how long will they last when a few of these incel, dick-challenged gun lovers start getting shot and a lot more of them start going to prison? A prolonged effort also requires strong leadership and I don't see a Martin Luther King, Jr. or John Lewis (no I'm not comparing their quality as human beings, just their ability to sustain and lead a dangerous movement) among those shitheads.
No charges actually stick. The Republicans refuse to put him on their ticket, so he runs independent and loses badly, then runs out his days claiming to the five people who still listen that it was rigged.
There's a difference between MAGA folks and those who backed MLK, etc. The MAGAs give up and go home, and their lives won't really change. Sure, those caught on camera breaking the law (smashing windows, beating cops, etc.) will go to jail, but the vast majority of them didn't do things like that, so they'll just be able to resume their lives as if nothing happened. Contrast that with anyone who belongs to a minority group that's presently under threat: If they don't gain some kind of concessions to their demands, then they're fucked. They can't melt back into society with the knowledge that nobody will notice them. Without those concessions, they're absolutely screwed, because the automatic assumption will be that they did something. They may not be able to get everything that they want, but if they get an improvement, then they at least have the chance at continuing to improve their lives. Without that, they don't have much incentive to go home.
Do you really believe Trump would ever put himself in anything even vaguely resembling physical danger, though?
This is why I'm not sure the "Trump lunged for the neck of the Secret Service guy" thing is real. Unless he was 100% sure that guy was whipped like the biggest bitch since Ted Cruz (and, fair point, the evidence does support that), that's a pretty good way to get your own head twisted off.
He wouldn't consider it dangerous though, because he'd be the one in control of the violent mob. He'd consider it the greatest political rally in his name to ever take place, complete with human sacrifice. Remember when the fans at his rallies assaulted protesters while he shouted that he'd pay the attackers legal bills? That's how Trump imagines his coup going.
DeSantis continues to build up his national presence, and becomes the clear forerunner for the 2024 Republican nomination. Trump has been formally charged, but getting to trial is going slowly. He announces he isn't running, saying something like. It is clear that America wants ME your FAVORITE PRESIDENT in the White House again (in fact I should have been there still if not for the WIDESPREAD 2020 ELECTION FRAUD!) but these FAKE CHARGES from a CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION need to be FOUGHT and DEFEATED so that the so called president Biden (plus his criminal of a son!) and his FBI CO-CONSPIRATORS can have their ATTEMPTED COUP exposed for the FAKE NEWS it is. I hereby announce that I, DONALD J TRUMP WILL NOT BE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN THE 2024 ELECTION (perhaps 2028?) and will in due time be endorsing another PATRIOT to continue my legacy and keep MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. God bless you all (even the haters) and GOD BLESS AMERICA which we will SAVE from the ONES WHO HATE IT AND ALL TRUE PATRIOTS. He'll at some point afterwards appear at an event where he endorses DeSantis, and subsequently try to claim any success by Desantis as a result of his generous endorsement. Behind the scenes a deal will have been made where in exchange for the endorsement and not running Trump gets a pardon. If DeSantis wins, Trump is pardoned of any charges, but never runs for office again. If Biden wins Trump isn't pardoned but works out a plea deal that essentially leads to a slap on the wrist and he lives out his days in Florida.
Barring some personal catastrophe -- say, getting diagnosed with cancer or something -- I think he will run again. The dude's not a Trump-level narcissist, but he's still got an ego. (You pretty much have to, in order to run for president.) He'll see things that are still undone, and he'll want to be the one to do them. Plus, historically, the best way to get elected president is to ... already be the president. He'll see running for re-election as Democrats' best chance to hold onto the White House.