Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

To bring up an a question from a while back about Trump cancelling the election, a lawyer explains the process of what would happen.

So can Trump just remain president for life by simply cancelling the election?

The short answer: It’s no.

The long answer: ||He can try, but his term is hard coded in the Constitution twice over to end 4 years after his election, specifically at noon on January 20th 2021. Unless he’s able to ram through some kind of Constitutional Amendment that overturns both other Amendments in the 9 month period between now and January, he’s out.

Then it falls upon the Chain of Succession to determine who’s the president. Since Mike Pence’s term as VP also ends Jan 20th, 2021 he’s also out. Things get weird after this. After that the Speaker of the House takes the reins, but since their term also ends Jan 20th they would also be ineligible unless the state governors elect emergency House Representatives to fill the role. Unless that happens then the Chain moves on to the next person, who would be oldest person in the Senate’s majority party. Currently that is Chuck Grassley.

Thing is about 2/3 of the Senate is up for reelection. In this stage of the hypothetical, either Grassley (who’s not up for reelection) would take the presidency, or every state’s governor can simply elect their own interim Senators. In the latter scenario, since there’s more Democratic governors in the states up for reelecting their Senators, this would mean the Democrats get a Senate majority and thus the Chain would fall on whomever is the oldest Democrat Senator at that time.

So the bottom line is, except in the most extreme and blatant defiance of all laws and Constitution (basically a full-on coup), any attempt by Trump to suspend the election will backfire not only on him but the Republican party as a whole.||