We are only a week in to the unelected US Resident’s sole term in office (because there won’t be a second), and people are justifiably frightened and appalled by dictums from the dictator, worried that this will continue for four years. I don’t believe the circus clown Petty Cash is the one we should be worried about when there is something far worse.
If a US president leaves office, the vice president is promoted to the position. If the president leaves with less than two years remaining, then the vice president can still run for two full terms as president. I suspect Petty Cash is simply there to fill the seat for two years. His dictums are merely a distraction from the real concern, the power hehind the throne. Pence is the one making the policies that will stick.
As many are well aware, there are a large number of buildings with the name “Trump” on the, but Petty Cash does not actually own them. He is temporarily affiliated with a business at the beginning, but really only licenses his name. He continues to profit from them after he leaves.
I am beginning to suspect the same is true of him as the unelected Resident. He gives the false front of “being an outsider” while in reality is a puppet of those even wealthier than he is. These early atrocities are naught more than cutting off a cat’s tail, make the public ignore the more serious things going on behind closed doors. I suspect he is simply a cut out and will quit (I wouldn’t call it resigning) sometime in 2019, which would allow Pence to run for two full terms until 2028 – three terms in terms of the actual power he wields.
Sorry, I disagree. I think Pence is just as flabbergasted by this as everyone else. Not that he would necessarily mind if his boss had a little accident…
The wealthy people hate unpredictability. They want to turn the clock back to a “simpler” time because, when there are fewer pieces on the board (not so many uppity minorities, for instance) they can control things better. But someone who does random stuff every day with no advance warning is bad for the market, bad for business, and bad for them too.
Yeah, Pence will be pretty horrible in his own right. But I doubt he’ll lob a nuke at anybody just because they badmouth him, and like everyone else, I fear that’s a real danger with the guy we’re stuck with now.
At this point it seems Steve Bannon and his clique have moved ahead in the internal WH power struggle, and we hear relatively little of the other players – but I wouldn’t count out Kushner, Flynn, and certain others. Pence has kept his head pretty low (having an independent Constitutional position, he can afford to sit out the immediate scramble for Glorious Leader’s short attention), but you have an excellent point in that we need to beware the prospect of his gaining real power.
However, given the crisis just provoked this weekend, it seems unlikely for Trump to last two full years and give Pence a shot at 2.5 terms – either he will go soon, or the Constitution will.
Pence is a wannabe theocrat, so there’s that. But he also isn’t going to start the next World War by tweeting whatever bullshit flows from his brain to his typing fingers, and he has more respect for the rule of law than the Angry Cheeto (see also: “damning with faint praise”). If your only choices are breaking a leg and having that leg amputated, the broken leg is the least-bad of the options.