Seriously people. Executive orders mean exactly nothing to what Trump legally can or can't do to fuck with the election results (which is zero). Stop letting idiots make you crazy

There are two very simple, very basic reasons executive orders are meaningless here. Understand them, please
1) the president cannot issue an executive order that grants himself a power he does not already have. For example, the president could not issue an executive order saying that from now on he can make laws they don't need to pass Congress
(I mean, he could sign an executive order saying that, but it wouldn't have any legal effect)
2) the president can issue executive orders at any time.
Put those two rules together and what you get is this
Nothing in any executive order the President issued can expand his ability to screw with the election results. And if there was something he could do that he needed an executive order for but hadn't already done it, he could issue one saying that tomorrow
Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. If you're a trump fan who is hoping for a way out of losing an election, first of all shame on you, but second of all they're selling you hope. It's false hope
And if you're the type of person who thinks that election results should be respected, then they are selling you fear. Breathe.

More from Akiva Cohen

The judge in this case has now issued an absolutely brutal smackdown that you'll enjoy reading. It comes complete with a well-earned threat of sanctions.


Here's the decision. Some highlights follow

Pretty sure I said this, using slightly different words!


Hey, @questauthority, it sounds like Judge Boasberg was about as pleased about the long "none of this matters but we want to say it anyway" section as we expected him to be


You CANNOT run into court claiming there's an emergency and you need an expedited schedule so you can be heard before 1/6 and then just not bother serving anyone for 12 days

More from Trump

Picking up on @henryfarrell's comments here, one implication of my work on democratic breakdown is that the US should harshly punish GOP leaders who attempted to keep Trump in power despite losing the election and fomented insurrection to advance that effort. 1/n


I wrote a book a decade ago that used game theory to explore the ways democracies die and what that tells us about how and why they sometimes survive. 2/n

One implication of the formal model in that book is that normative commitments to democracy may matter less than expectations about the benefits and costs of trying to subvert democracy. 3/n

It's great when all the major players (ruling party, opposition party, and military) believe democracy is good in itself. If they don't, tho, then what matters most are their beliefs about how easily they can seize power and how costly it would be to try and fail. 4/n

I think it's pretty clear that many key players in the GOP don't see democracy as a good in itself ("we're a republic, not a democracy"). So that shifts their attention to their ability to usurp power and the costs of trying and failing. 5/n

You May Also Like