This article is liberal satire.
What? He’s not the most popular president ever?
Jonathan Chait, writing in New York Magazine, posits that “Trump has begun grappling in public with the possibility he may lose the election,” and suspects he wasn’t joking when he told a rally crowd, “Could you imagine if I lose? I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.” (Read story here.)
As Chait pointed out, Trump “doesn’t make jokes, at least not in the ordinary manner most people do. His ‘jokes’ are almost always the barely disguised expression of underlying distress.” Nor is it lost on Chait that Trump “did not joke about leaving the country if he lost in 2016,” when prosecutors weren’t after his tax records.
Trump has much to be distressed about. Like owing $471 million he can’t pay, and maybe going to prison if he loses presidential immunity, which actually might be the safest place for him if he doesn’t pay his debts.
Back in 2016, Trump was a somewhat popular reality show host. Today, he isn’t merely unpopular. He’s so unpopular that even making voting illegal, which is more or less what the GOP is trying to do, probably won’t save him. So it makes sense that he may be shopping for another nationality. Put another way, rats know when to jump ship. (Note: Dan Rather thinks this comparison is unfair to rats. Read his analysis here.)
So which country will it be? Nearly everyone’s knee-jerk answer is, “Russia.” But if Trump can’t repay Putin, why would Putin want to get stuck with feeding him, too? And why would Trump turn himself over to gangsters he can’t pay? I’m betting he’s not thinking about fleeing to Russia.
We can’t know for sure what he’s thinking, of course. However, we can immediately rule out any country where he can’t get a visa or entry permit, which is most of them. In other words, he’s not emigrating to New Zealand or Iceland. Nor is he going to any country with an extradition treaty with the U.S.
There are lots of theories. Even a third world shithole must look better than a concrete box in Colorado, or a ditch in Siberia, which opens up a lot of possibilities. Mexico might take him, but only as an illegal, i.e. if he sneaks over the border and hides under a sombrero in some dusty little village. China, no, but Sheldon Adelson might put him up in one of his Macau casinos.
However, the likely answer is he doesn’t know or have a plan. He didn’t for the pandemic, the debate, or the townhall. So he’ll most likely wing it this time, too. In which case, Tom Hanks has just the place for him. There’s even a companion waiting there for him.