and he will deploy every means at his disposal as president to win reelection.

If he is forced out, he will refuse to leave without a golden parachute.

It will be a nasty public spectacle.

to tell him that he had NO support in the Senate any longer. It was Barry Goldwater. Mitch McConnell is NO Barry Goldwater.

I doubt that he will resign. He lacks the self-awareness necessary to see that that is his only recourse. He will NOT be getting any "sweetheart deal" from this Congress.

I'm sure he's also very aware that the Southern District of NY will pounce on him immediately afte he's no longer president.

Once that happens, he will not be protected by being in the presidency.

And then they will have him.

SDNY and Robert Mueller will be arguing over who gets to indict him first.......... he is literally fighting for his freedom and the presidency is the only thing shielding him.

and Pence becomes president. It all depends on how bad things get for him. If he is facing removal for real (it has to get really bad for him before the Senate Repubs would remove him) or if it looks like a certainty that he will lose the election (harder for him to swallow, and far from certain at this point), he very well may resign before his first term ends so Pence can pardon him.

Either if he resigns (which is 100% unlikely), loses this election (resign before the President comes in), or resigns sometime after the next election (that is unless his VP wins election). I am not exactly sure if his VP wins the next election. In that case the executive freeze out will continue.

to protect his KGB ass.

McConnell has made it next to impossible for anybody to live here who isnt a white, straight, protestant male.

And have a conscience and awareness.

there is a very good chance he would resign in an attempt to save face if only in his own mind.

He's counting on the Senate making a mockery of the trial, as they more than likely will.

The only scenario where I see him resigning is if it's publicly known that the numbers for removal are overwhelmingly high. Then, I could see him doing a Nixon.

But Pence is also saddled with the same problems.

Golden Parachute and Amnesty for himself and his Criminal Kids and he is gone.

And then learn the Supreme Court is not involved at all.

SCOTUS Roberts will preside over the Senate trial. Impeachment happens in the House. Two separate things.

and his only function is to be sure the Senate follows its own rules (which aren't the same as normal courtroom rules). He does not decide the outcome.

I'm sure that witness testimony or evidence that is blocked via executive privilege is something that will be appealed to the SCOTUS by Team Trump - tax returns as well.

every time in the past when faced with a serious problem, or actual failure, he has simply walked away and claimed victory. He could get away with that back then, since nobody really cared.

Even when the banks finally caught up with him and forced bankruptcy, killing off his credit lines, he still claimed he won. He used the fact that the banks had over extended themselves so much that actually closing him down would break them, too to claim victory.

My best guess is that he will find some escape route that will allow him to claim a win and he will believe he will go out on top.

The rest of us will just breathe a sigh of relief.

Buckle up

...until he takes the Hitler way out.

He believes that he is perfect. Committing suicide would be admitting that he is not, and this thought would never enter his head.

He's started to show the first small cracks regarding a Senate trial after an impeachment. That isn't like him: ordinarily he'd be bragging about a very short Senate trial , totally supporting Trump.

He will be unable to continue in office and unable to answer to further legal scrutiny in NY.
The mental break down , stroke, heart attack, bone spur flare up, will spare him any further legal responsibility for his crimes.
Or ...
He will double down and get away with it...like he always has.

First off, bankruptcy has been one of his standard business tools. He cuts and runs from failing enterprises.

Second, if Pence isn't impeached, a guarantee of a pardon from him would be a powerful influence on Trump if he thinks he might end up in prison. He'd take that option in a second if it looked like he'd face serious federal charges if impeached and removed.

Finally, Trump is a coward at heart. He will take the course of least resistance if he faces disaster. Guaranteed.

A Federal pardon won't do jack shit for him on those.

He knows he is well and truly fucked if he ever leaves the office of President. Which is why he will never leave unless he's physically forced out.

That makes you wrong.

Trump will go to the grave believing he is the best thing ever for America, a Second Coming, a God-Child destined to rule.

Death or victory. Trump fights on, to the bitter end.

I wouldn't put it past him to fake a medical crisis to to be able to walk away with some public (his base) pity.......

Hell, he's been rolled by Putin, Kim, Erdogan and who knows who else, but in this case, his exit would have to be guaranteed from punishment or any kind of financial penalties for him and his children. Such a deal could be made since the rethugs via Barr control the justice department. They could tell the SDNY to cease and desist in their pursuit of all ongoing investigations, pending indictments, etc. of him, his family and for Pence, who could issue him a pardon (and for any other family member who may be under investigation or facing an unknown indictment). It's possible. His history is one of retreat, but he's never been in the fix he's in right now.

My hope is that he'll continue to escalate his staggeringly horrendous decision-making (short of destroying the planet by nuclear deployment) to the extent that the retrumplicans, specifically Moscow Mitch, will be forced to remove him because of the disastrous consequences of his decisions and the resultant negative opinion of the voters that are moving the poll numbers into the basement for him and the party. And the odds are horrifyingly high that tRump will do just such a thing.

Not sure how he can say it directly and indirectly any more clearly how he wants to be this country's first dictator and hand the job off to his idiot spawn when he dies ...

If things stay as they are at this point in time, I don't see it, but if the situation continues to deteriorate over the next couple months and the risk of GOP senators turning on becomes more plausible, I might see it happening.

Physically remove him.

He is not going anywhere, for any reason, under his own power. Even when (not if) he loses the fucking election.

that is actually saving face. He'll just blame everybody else for not being able to govern. But he'd only do this if he lost the Senate GOP.

mcturtle would avoid an actual removal vote like the plague.

if he had the whip count and determined that donnie would get removed, then he'd have that conversation with donnie and figure out a way to convince him to go "voluntarily".

having an actual vote to remove would be far too damaging to the republican party, and there's really no upside for donnie to stay in office for another 24 hours at that point.

he would pretty easily be convinced to issue some last minute pardons, declare victory and that he's accomplished everything he wanted to even before his term was up, and resign, while in the same speech promoting trump tv and his hotels.

i don't see donnie knowingly accepting the public humiliation of an actual vote to remove if he knew he was going to lose. he'd much rather go out "voluntarily".

one in which he has managed to convince himself that if he gives up the presidency he will become the heroic leader of a resistance movement to overthrow the Deep State. I do think he's that delusional, but the actual likelihood that he will resign is very, very small.

There is no way in hell Trump will leave the White House with his honor intact. That is because he HAS NONE to begin with.

Trump will demand much in exchange for leaving office. He will want Pence to pardon and defend him in the public sphere, thus costing Pence the 2020 election. The ghost of Gerald Ford around his neck to be exact.

As soon as Trump is out of office, the State of New York will pounce on the entire Trump family for State crimes. Pence has no jurisdiction over that. THAT is what Trump fears the most.

he wont leave even after he loses. The Republicans will demand a recount and accuse the Democrats of fraud.

Resigning would be admittedly defeat and he could never do that. But he could drive himself completely mad.

Everything positive he ever thought about himself would lose meaning, he's in it to the bitter end.

He's desperately trying to keep it all together, looking for the oranges of the covfefe resistance he is experiencing. Who to blame, who is behind all this?
(At this stage, a true Mafia boss would be sending out hit squads to 'smoothen the waters.')

Victory or Death! And the death may be psychological, and not physical.

If he's out of office and powerless, he's of no use to Putin any more. So no more Russian money.

Without Russian money, he'd become bankrupt and homeless, until the NY AG puts him in jail.

The only way I see him resigning is if he defects to Moscow and resigns from there. At that point, he'd be useless to Putin except to reassure Putin's other assets that they'll be taken care of. He'd be in roughly the same state as Snowden.

He won't be convicted in the Senate.

He'll start pardoning right and left (figuratively) as soon as McConnell engineers the Acquittal. Once he's cleared, he'll become the Authoritarian he always wanted to be. He'll have the corrupted DOJ begin show trials as an election-year circus, and exact every ounce of revenge he can.

This nightmare is nowhere near ending.

and that would include some in very high places in the Party. Trump has taken over the party, and not in a good way.

how he leaves. Just that he does, and very soon.

The vile, contemptible asshole needs to find a new planet, hell, a new galaxy. Boot his ass out of here. The stench is overwhelming.

He won't willingly leave office, whether he's impeached or loses the 2020 election. He's already shown over and over that he cares nothing about the Constitution; today's statement about the "phony Emoluments clause" was only the most blatant example.

We have to be ready for that. I only hope the military won't support him when (not if) he declares he has a right to the White House and refuses to leave.

The Democrats can protect him from Putin. The Republicans can't.

It isn't out of the realm of possibility. I mean, listen to the podcast titled 'Bagman' about Spiro Agnew and Nixon and how they had to force Agnew out because if both he and Nixon were impeached at once and removed then a Democrat, House Speaker Carl Albert, would become president.

Pence has been implicated in the Russia scandal, and Trump has gone full-out traitor.

The establishment money, the old money that is greater and more powerful than the Russian oligarchs may well be getting fed up. They may force Pence out, then have Trump appoint a 'clean' VP, followed by his own resignation on a deal of immunity. And don't split hairs - I know about the state investigations as well as all of you, and that in theory a presidential pardon doesn't cover them. But that does not mean it couldn't happen. Because when a law becomes inconvenient, power simply changes the law so it becomes convenient.

The alternative? Impeachment and removal with Trump calling out the army, the militias and the National Guard, claiming that the Democrats are staging a coup-d'etat and they need to protect him. That seriously could happen, as well.