The remaining 12 days of Trump’s Presidency - A worry for US

“My gut reaction to today is that it’s unprecedented in American history. We’ve never had someone behave like this,” said Robert Shrum, a political-science professor and expert on presidential elections at the University of Southern California, after Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol on Wednesday. The assault on Capitol Hill shook the US and the world. The worst fears of some commentators who had predicted a violent attempt by Trump’s followers to stop the Biden presidency have sadly come true.

“This was an attempted coup,” Shrum told MarketWatch, a website that provides financial information and a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, adding that if Trump manages to stay in office, the next 13 days of January “could be very perilous.”

“A lot of this has been sown over the last four years,” Chris Haynes, Associate Professor of political science at the University of New Haven, said. “But at this point, I don’t think I am being too overdramatic in saying that the nation could be in grave danger if we allow him to continue unchallenged (till the completion of Trump's term),” he said.
But many others in the U.S. are not as charitable as Chris Haynes. A growing chorus of lawmakers, officials and trade groups said that they want to see Trump removed from office after the Capitol was taken over by his supporters, with some even calling on Vice President Mike Pence and the White House cabinet to invoke for the first time the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution deals with presidential succession and disability. It clarifies that the vice president becomes president if the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office, and establishes how a vacancy in the office of the vice president can be filled. It also allows the president to temporarily transfer his or her duties to the vice president, for example during a planned medical procedure. Finally, it provides that the vice president, together with a majority of certain Cabinet officers, may declare the president unable to carry out his duties, after which the vice president assumes the duties of the president; if the president opposes to such a declaration, Congress resolves the question.

From politicians to political pundits, everyone is wondering with a sense of dread what the next two weeks will be like in the United States after pro-Trump mobs stormed the US Capitol building in Washington D.C. that led to the deaths of five people including a police officer.

Reports in the US media indicate that the wounded president is in a very dark mood and ever more delusional, paranoid and out of touch with reality, as his time runs out at the White House. Every day, as he sees power ebb away from him, it will only get darker. The next 12 days could be the longest 2 weeks in America.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is worried about the Trump's hand getting on to the nuclear buttons. Nancy Pelosi said she has spoken with the senior-most US military official about President Donald Trump and the safety of nuclear codes in his remaining days in office. Pelosi said she spoke with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley about “available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike” in his remaining days in office. Social media giant Twitter is worried that President Trump may incite further violence. It announced on Friday that it is permanently banning US President Donald Trump from its platform, citing "risk of further incitement of violence". "After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them - specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter - we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence," Twitter said in a statement.

Another social media giant Facebook took a more calibrated step. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement on Thursday that both the President’s Facebook and Instagram accounts would be blocked ‘indefinitely’, and at least until a ‘peaceful transition of power is complete’.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, is worried that "the president is the country’s greatest national security threat.” “What he did yesterday, he could do again tomorrow. He could call another 50,000 people to Washington DC on Sunday to do whatever. He can use the power of his office to incite violence and insurrection again any day for the next 13 days” Walsh said. Senate Minority Leader and the New York Democrat, Chuck Schumer is also equally concerned that President Trump is no longer fit to hold office. He called on Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to invoke the Constitution's 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. The sense of implosion in Trump’s last days was underlined by the resignations on Wednesday of four administration officials including Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff and a former White House press secretary.

United States has played a centuries-long role as a bastion of democracy and self-rule by a free population. The unprecedented chaos and violence at the U.S. Capitol, the heart of American democracy, has made the U.S. to realise that the remaining few days of President Trump's rule could be more dangerous than the decades long rule of North Korean despots. This is what happens when the majority population of a country turn supremacists, when intellectuals become hypocrites, when social media giants focus more on profits than the disharmonious trends and lawmakers give more priority to partisan interests than to national interests.

( V Venkateswara Rao is an alumnus of IIM, Ahmedabad and a retired corporate professional.)