DONALD Trump’s "doublespeak" has always made predicting his next move tricky to say the least. Even as America still reels from his incendiary speech yesterday and the “insurrection” that followed along with Congress's subsequent decision to certify president elect-Joe Biden’s election victory, Trump is at it again.
While on the one hand he promises an orderly transition of power on January 20, he still “totally disagrees” with the election outcome. Given such duplicity what then might we expect Trump’s next move to be? If recent observations by some of his allies are anything to go by then the signs are not good
“It's going to get worse before it gets better,” one of Trump's allies is reported to have told US broadcaster NBC in the wake of yesterday's storming of the US Capitol.
“He's lost re-election. So, for somebody who has no sense of shame, there's no downside to him letting all the crazy out,” the source is reported to have said.
Perhaps the most important thing to bear in mind when considering Trump’s next move is that there are two phases involved.
The first phase is that short of being frog-marched out of the White House should the fourth article of the 25th amendment be invoked allowing for his removal, he remains president for almost the next two weeks. The second phase of course would be after Biden’s inauguration on the 20th when Trump would find himself re-entering private life.
To take the first of these and his next fortnight in office, Trump might still choose to up the political ante among his supporters. This, after all, is a presidency that has already shown its appetite for creating chaos. If true to form given that he has failed to get his way over the election result, Trump might well settle for leaving carnage in his wake for its own sake or with a view to him re-entering a presidential race at some later stage.
Then there is the persistent question of whether he might use the military to declare martial law or invoke the Insurrection Act. But both these scenarios are unlikely now given the congressional certification of Biden as the next president and the fact that senior military officials have already taken the unusual step of declaring that they will not play a role in deciding any American election.
Stymied on the domestic front Trump might also look overseas of course for a way to create more chaos, launching some kind of military operation to create a state of emergency at home, but again the possibility of this seems to be fading. Which brings us to the second phase when Trump is out of office and the capacity to make fresh moves offer more realistic opportunities.
Some observers believe that as the fervour around the election fades, so too will Trump’s influence. Others however think it is by fighting from the wings while in private life that he has the capacity in the future to make the most trouble.
Staying focused on politics however will not be easy for him given the financial and legal challenges he faces the moment he leaves the White House.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon: We saw Donald Trump inciting insurrection in Washington last night
American business magazine Forbes estimated in September that Trump’s net worth had dropped an estimated $600m in the previous year, to $2.5bn. The New York Times meanwhile has reported that Trump had personally guaranteed $421m of his companies’ debts.
It’s important to remember too that once Trump leaves office, he will have to confront these challenges that are made all the more threatening because he will lose the legal protections afforded a sitting president.
This some say will deter him from making another presidential bid pointing to the fact that there is no infrastructure to formally launch a 2024 campaign in the coming weeks, as was once discussed immediately after the November election.
That said, it's estimated that Trump has already raised a campaigning war chest of more than $200m since election day with some reports suggesting he has moved some of those funds into a new political action committee he formed in the wake of the election.
Should he choose to make another White House bid, what seems almost certain now is that this would make life difficult for those other Republicans considering a 2024 run. These include vice-president Mike Pence, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, and senators Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton.
READ MORE: Lesley Riddoch: After deadly US violence, Trump must not be allowed into Scotland
All would have to weigh up whether to take on Trump, and right now an ever-increasing number of Republicans appear to be distancing themselves from the sitting president as his term ends on a catastrophic note.
Either way it's doubtful that Trump will vanish from the political scene, but at the very least instead will continue to snipe from the side-lines causing trouble and plaguing the Biden administration in the process. Indeed, it might very well prove that Trump doesn’t need to make any next move himself to further change the course of American politics and democracy.
As yesterday’s events in Washington showed there are already those who have tapped into the right-wing ideology Trump espouses. He has set in train a momentum that either Biden’s “healing” of America will neuter or that momentum could further accelerate on its own throwing up even more dangerous leaders than Trump.
All of this of course is subject to the unpredictability of Trump himself. The talk for now might be of invoking the 25th amendment to end his presidency. But even if that were to happen, we will not have heard the last from Donald Trump.
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