What does it mean that the Trump presidency will come to an end if Democrats win the midterms?
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What does that really mean from a practical political science point of view? What does that look like? We hear about it. Everybody says, oh, this is a big check on Trump if Democrats win the midterm. This is a big change. This means a big difference. Oh, Trump’s presidency is over.
So let’s talk about what it means if the Trump presidency is over or what it looks like if the Trump presidency is over. First of all, presidents are like ghosts when they’re lame ducks. They are still inhabiting the White House. They’re still floating around. They’re still kind of there, but their power’s pretty much gone.
And that happens immediately. The day after losing a midterm, people start downplaying the power and impact of this president or any president. But structurally, what changes is, and what’s going to change is that when we say a check, we mean an investigative check.
And if there’s one thing that Trump really fears of the outcome of this midterm, it isn’t an impeachment. As long as there aren’t any Republican votes in the Senate or enough Republican votes in the Senate to convict him of high crimes and misdemeanors and remove him from office, Donald Trump doesn’t care. Period. He doesn’t care.
It doesn’t matter. Impeachment is irrelevant to Donald Trump.
It doesn’t matter. He went through two of them. Nothing happened. As long as he’s got Senate Republicans with him, it’s not going to matter.
Democrats changed up their tactics. That’s why they’re not openly saying we’re coming in to impeach Trump because they know they’re going to win this election based on the economy and inflation and that impeachment isn’t the big issue. So, what does it mean? Well, it means investigations.
And this is where Trump is worried. This is where Trump is very worried because investigations lead to looking into the money he’s made during the presidency, the money he has brought in through various nefarious means by the abuse of his office, Investigations don’t mean that they’re going to come after Donald Trump, but, unlike his first term, there is a whole scope of people that aren’t covered by executive privilege or executive communications.
And Democrats have already signaled Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin, future Oversight Committee Chair and future Judiciary Committee Chair, respectively, have already signaled they’re going to go after those people. Those donors, those people in business with Trump, those companies that are paying for the ballroom, which the Washington Post just released the whole list of major donors, all of those people and companies are going to get the exact thing they don’t want, which is a nice long appearance in front of several sessions of Congress to explain why they gave Trump the money, what they expected in return, or what they were promised.
So companies that are incredibly sensitive to consumer perception are going to see their CEOs and other officials call before Congress, and they’re now going to have to explain what they were paying for, what they got in return, what the administration may have promised them. Not saying there are quid pro quos, but let’s just say Elon Musk gave Trump money when he needed it for his campaign, and then Elon Musk got the federal investigations into his companies to go away. That is what scares Trump every single day. And to be honest, if you want to know something that’s going to stop that corruption, dead in its tracks and make people afraid to give Trump that money or do business with the Trump family or pull back or lay low, it’s that. It’s those investigations. It’s the perception of public pressure.
If you go before Congress and perjure yourself, You could face criminal charges. We’ve seen it the first term. We’ve seen it with the first impeachments. We’ve seen it with the 1-6 investigation. That’s what happens. So now it’s not just a toothless threat of, oh, you could face criminal charges.
No, you will face criminal charges if you go before Congress under the Democratic majority and lie to them. On the Senate side, now that’s just the first phase of what’s got Trump so worried.
The second phase involves the Senate and the House, and you’re hearing this come from Democratic senators as their odds are increasing that Democrats could take the Senate majority as well. You’re hearing two words over and over again. Purse strings, they say. Well... We control the purse strings, meaning the House and Senate and Congress in general. We decide. Why is this important to Trump? Why would Trump care?
Because the White House has no other source of funding besides congressional appropriation. If Democrats decided that Trump has gone too far for whatever myriad of reasons, they could cut off funding to the White House. It’s that simple. They could pass funding bills for the rest of government and vital services and everything else.
And just not fund the White House. Just not fund the administration. Trump has no more money. That means no more freebie flights to his golf clubs on the weekends. No more trips. No more travel. No more spending of White House funds on whatever Trump wants. In fact, the White House wouldn’t necessarily be able to make payroll in some circumstances. It’s a big problem.
And it’s coming down the pike. And Democrats have been really clear about what they’re going to do. And it’s a combination of things. This really works well together. They can simultaneously fight corruption and do things like restore the ACA subsidies and SNAP benefits.
They can restore the health insurance subsidies, which are the ACA subsidies, but there’s a couple of different variations there.
How can they do this? You’ll say, well, Trump will just veto. Well, the problem is there are several over the next two years critical funding deadlines and moments, debt ceiling, government funding deadlines.
There are several of these over the next two years. If Trump doesn’t want his legacy to be even worse than it already is, and he doesn’t, Democrats have a lot of leverage. Democrats have a lot of ways to apply pressure. Democrats have a lot of ways to get things out of him.
So that’s what people mean by the end of the Trump presidency. The end of Trump being unfettered and being able to do whatever he wants. The accountability returns. Oh, and one more point. This is a big one as well. All those lawsuits against the administration for various things they’ve done that have failed because of lack of legal standing in the court system, guess who has legal standing in almost all these issues?
Congress.
So when the majority of the House of Representatives or the majority of the Senate or both sue the president, That’s where the game changes as well.
So everything will start to come back into balance in a way that it hasn’t been since Republicans voluntarily surrendered their power to Donald Trump. And essentially by the middle of next year, I think the first Democratic presidential debate is scheduled for June or July of next summer. As soon as that happens, all attention’s gone on Trump.
The end of the Trump presidency won’t be fast. It will be a gradual breakup. After the midterm election, members of Trump’s administration will leave, and national political attention will move toward 2028.
The Trump presidency is ending, and it is only a matter of which will unravel faster: the administration or the president’s mental state.
What do you think about the ending of the Trump presidency? Discuss it in the comments below.
