Joshua Geltzer is a lawyer who teaches at Georgetown and served in the Obama administration as an adviser on the National Security Council. He has written a column for CNN that defies parody.
Geltzer is concerned that Trump might not accept the results of the 2020 election if he loses. You know, like Democrats and the media with the 2016 election.
Geltzer writes:
What if Trump refuses to accept defeat in 2020?President Donald Trump’s critics are increasingly focused on the question of which Democrat will challenge him for the presidency in 2020. It’s an important question, but another one might be even more important: Regardless of who runs in 2020, if Trump loses, will he leave the Oval Office peacefully?Let’s start with why we need to ask this question: Trump is increasingly proving himself to be a President eager to overstep his authority. Just last week, Trump displayed his willingness to invoke unprecedented presidential power to declare a national emergency utterly without justification.This week has brought a startling report from the New York Times that, for the past two years, Trump has tried to undermine the investigations by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and other parts of the Justice Department in order to, in the words of the Times, “make the president’s many legal problems go away.” In light of these overreaching assertions of his own authority, it’s at least plausible that Trump might attempt to cling to power in ways previously unimaginable by an American president.Thankfully, there are four steps that key actors across the American system of governance can take to get ahead of this possibility…All told, there’s real reason to worry here. So, what can be done now to avoid a potential constitutional crisis and ensure that the 2020 election results — whatever they might be — are respected and that any transfer of power occurs peacefully?
One rarely gets to see such a stunning lack of self awareness.
This isn’t the first time we’ve been down this road. In October of 2016, right before the election, The Week did a cover story which worried about what would happen if Trump lost. Would his supporters accept it, or would they riot as the image suggests?
Of course, we all know who did riot after losing the 2016 election, and it wasn’t Trump supporters.
Featured image via YouTube.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY