In trays

With the presidency almost in Biden’s bag, one wonders what Trump will do after he is forcibly removed from the White House (notwithstanding my previous blog). If after his departure he retains any political ambitions he will probably try to create some sort of alternative White House. As is the case in the US he will continue to be called ‘Mr President’ even when he isn’t the president, and this will probably mean a lot to his fan base which is unlikely to whither away even as more stable Republicans distance themselves from Trump and begin considering how to repair the damage. How soon will a field of 2024 GOP presidential hopefuls emerge, and how will they depart (if they do) from the Trump years? Some of these hopefuls apparently exist in the Trump clan, another reason why the dynasty may seek to keep itself in the spotlight, much as the Bush dynasty did before it. I don’t see Trump himself actually running again, largely because he couldn’t face defeat twice, indeed he doesn’t seem able to cope with it once. On the other hand he’s a serial bankrupt so perhaps we shouldn’t discount the possibility.
 
Right now, all eyes should be on the special senatorial election in Georgia next January to see whether the Democrats can take control of the Senate. This will determine whether President Biden (or indeed President Harris) can get anything done, if indeed they should propose anything mildly radical. At least Biden could spend his first week in office reversing every single executive order Trump signed in the full knowledge that all of Trump’s orders by definition were borderline criminal, destructive, vindictive, senseless and self-promoting. In particular Biden does have the power to rebuild the Environmental Protection Agency, sack climate change deniers and halt the oil industry’s despoliation of Arctic nature reserves. He has pledged of course to take the US back into the Paris climate change agreement, but given how ineffective that agreement is, it won’t make a whole lot of difference (although in giving the impression that it is ‘action’ it may fool people into believing that something is being done sufficiently to tackle the problem). There also one or two deserving cases for a presidential pardon too, but I doubt Biden is any great fan of Manning, Snowden or for that matter Assange.