The US 2020 Presidential Election & Attempts To Overturn It

[DOR]

So the employer sees it on their pay stub. So what? Definitely not hidden. I'm sure AR, TH, DOR, astralis and me we all know the tax is split 50/50.

If you think employers and employees have equal power in the workplace, then I'll agree the payroll tax is split 50/50. But, I don't see too many employers relying on food stamps to feed their kids, after working a 40-hour week.

[Double Edge]

Two terms of Obama. My sources then were NYT, WAPO, CNN, TIME, MSNBC.

That's what you use to understand a democrat administration. That's what you guys were posting here.

All said HRC would win.

It should have been a no brainer to pick one out of two.

One with experience or the other with no experience. Where in the world would the latter win ?

That's how i got blindsided.

Whether i'm making the same mistake again with Trump sources??

If Biden pulls off a surprise.

Need a 'democrat' Michael Walsh that goes travelling around the country watching for signs.

Who knows the pulse of the people.

Good old fashioned reporter.

Not sitting in some swanky Manhattan office typing out 'party talking points'.

[DOR]

Two terms of Obama. My sources then were NYT, WAPO, CNN, TIME, MSNBC.

That's what you use to understand a democrat administration. That's what you guys were posting here.

All said HRC would win.

It should have been a no brainer to pick one out of two.

One with experience or the other with no experience. Where in the world would the latter win ?

That's how i got blindsided.

Whether i'm making the same mistake again with Trump sources??

If Biden pulls off a surprise.

Need a 'democrat' Michael Walsh that goes travelling around the country watching for signs.

Who knows the pulse of the people.

Good old fashioned reporter.

Not sitting in some swanky Manhattan office typing out 'party talking points'.

So, what you're saying is that the Russians were not involved, that the redder states did not suppress minority voting, and that it was all above board and open in 2016 ... is that what you're saying?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I lived through it, too.

[Double Edge]

So, what you're saying is that the Russians were not involved, that the redder states did not suppress minority voting, and that it was all above board and open in 2016 ... is that what you're saying?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I lived through it, too.

I said what i said above. You added some thing extra which was not there.

But since you're asking i'm saying it should not have been as close.

[astralis]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/o...rump-2020.html

What Will a Post-Trump G.O.P. Look Like?
And consider, what will it take for the Republican Party to begin to heal itself?

Bret Stephens
By Bret Stephens
Opinion Columnist

July 27, 2020

If Donald Trump stages another come-from-behind victory in November — helped, in all likelihood, by the collapse of public order in American cities — the Republican Party will become an oddity for the Trump Organization: the only entity it owns but does not brand. Not only will Trump remain in office for another term, but the Trumpers will also dominate the G.O.P. for another generation.

Look for Tom Cotton to be the likely nominee in 2024 (with — why not? — Laura Ingraham as his running mate).

And if Trump loses? Then the future of the party will be up for grabs. It’s time to start thinking about who can grab it, who should, and who will.

Much depends on the margin of defeat. If it’s razor thin and comes down to a vote-count dispute in a single state, as it did in Florida in 2000, Trump will almost surely allege fraud, claim victory and set off a constitutional crisis. As Ohio State law professor Edward Foley noted last year in a must-read law review article, a state like Pennsylvania could send competing certificates of electoral votes to Congress. Interpretive ambiguities in the 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887 could deadlock the House and the Senate. We could have two self-declared presidents on the eve of next year’s inauguration.

Who controls the nuclear football in that event is a question someone needs to start thinking about right now.

But let’s assume Trump loses narrowly but indisputably. In that case, the Trump family will do what it can to retain control of the G.O.P.

Tommy Hicks Jr., the current Republican National Committee co-chairman, is one possible candidate to move up to become chairman, and run the R.N.C., but the likelier choice is Hicks’s good friend Donald Trump Jr. The Trumpers will make the argument that NeverTrumpers cost them the election and are thus responsible for everything bad that might happen in a Biden administration, from crime on the streets to liberal Supreme Court picks to some future Benghazi-type episode.

Something unpleasant might come of this. It tends to happen whenever a large mass of conformists convince themselves that they’ve been betrayed by a nonconforming minority in their midst.

Then there’s the third scenario: An overwhelming and humiliating Trump defeat, on the order of George H.W. Bush’s 168 to 370 electoral vote loss to Bill Clinton in 1992.

The infighting will begin the moment Florida, North Carolina or any other must-win state for Trump is called for Joe Biden. It will pit two main camps against each other. On the right, it will be the What Were We Thinking? side of the party. On the further right, the Trump Didn’t Go Far Enough side. Think of it as a cage match between Marco Rubio and Tucker Carlson for the soul of the G.O.P.

Both sides will recognize that Trump was a uniquely incompetent executive who — as in his business dealings — always proved his own worst enemy, always squandered his luck, never learned from his mistakes, never grew in office. Both sides will want to wash their hands of the soon-to-be-former president, his obnoxious relatives, their intellectual vacuity and their self-dealing ways. And both will have to tread carefully around a wounded and bitter man who, like a minefield laid for some long-ago war, still has the power to kill anyone who missteps.

That’s where agreement ends. The What Were We Thinking? Republicans will want to hurry the party back to some version of what it was when Paul Ryan was its star. They’ll want to pretend that Trump never happened. They will organize a task force composed of former party worthies to write an election post-mortem, akin to what then-G.O.P. chair Reince Priebus did after 2012, emphasizing the need to repair relations with minorities, women and younger voters. They’ll talk up the virtues of Republicans as reformers and problem-solvers, not Know-Nothings and culture warriors.

The Didn’t Go Far Enough camp will make the opposite case. They’ll note that Trump never built the wall, never got U.S. troops out of the Middle East, never drained the swamp of Beltway corruption, ended NAFTA in name only, did Wall Street’s bidding at Main Street’s expense, and “owned the libs” on Twitter while losing the broader battle of ideas. This camp will seek a new champion: Trump plus a brain.

These are two deeply unattractive versions of the party of Lincoln, one feckless, the other fanatical. Even so, all who care about the health of American democracy should hold their noses and hope the feckless side prevails.

As with the Democrats after Jimmy Carter’s defeat in 1980, it will probably take more than one electoral shellacking for conservative-leaning voters to appreciate the scale of disaster that Trump’s presidency inflicted on the party and the country. It will probably also take more than one defeat for the party to learn that electoral contests should still be waged, and won, near the center of the ideological spectrum, not the fringe.

But everything has to start somewhere. A decisive Trump loss in November isn’t a sufficient condition for the G.O.P. to begin to heal itself. It’s still a beginning.

[TopHatter]

Trump floats delaying the election, but he can't do that
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested that the 2020 presidential election should be postponed, claiming it could be ripe for fraud.

“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history," Trump tweeted. "It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

The president cannot unilaterally change the date of the presidential election, which is on Nov. 3 this year.

NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted that there has never been a successful effort to delay it.

Earlier in the morning, Trump tweeted that mail-in voting is “already proving to be a catastrophic disaster.”

“Even testing areas are way off. The Dems talk of foreign influence in voting, but they know that Mail-In Voting is an easy way for foreign countries to enter the race. Even beyond that, there’s no accurate count!” he tweeted.

Critics have voiced concern that Trump will press for the 2020 election to be delayed amid the coronavirus pandemic. At a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Attorney General Bill Barr was asked if a sitting president can change the date of the election.

“I haven’t looked into that question, under the Constitution,” Barr said.

While states have the authority to delay their primary elections, only Congress can change the date for the general election for president, because the Constitution gives Congress the authority to set the general election date.

Since 1845, Congress has required the appointment of presidential electors (now by election in every state) to take place on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which this year is Nov. 3.

In addition, the date for the expiration of the president's term is set by the Constitution, and is Jan. 20.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, warned in April that Trump would try to postpone the election by coming up "with some rationale why it can't be held" on the scheduled day.

When asked about Biden's comment a few days later, Trump dismissed the idea, saying: "I never even thought of changing the date of the election. Why would I do that? November 3rd. It’s a good number. No, I look forward to that election.”

Trump has since railed against mail-in voting, while Democrats have said they want to expand it because of the coronavirus pandemic, which could prevent many voters from physically going to the polls to cast their ballots. In June, the president said that the "biggest risk" to his re-election prospects is increased mail-in voting and whether he can win lawsuits to stop its expansion.

Several Democrats on Thursday immediately slammed Trump for floating the idea of delaying the election, arguing that he's trying to divert attention away from his handling of the coronavirus.

"Folks, don’t take the bait here. Trump has zero authority to delay the election," tweeted Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut. "But he wants to talk about it. This is his time-tested way to get you to not focus on 150,000 dead Americans and an economy in free fall. Largely because of his ineptitude."

Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington state tweeted: "Prez has no authority to delay elections. One more try at throwing a shiny ball out there to divert attention from: inept handling of the pandemic; ignoring intel on Russian bounties; devastating economic numbers; lack of action or plan on next COVID-19 relief package."
____________________

Nothing but distraction and obfuscation. Imagine if he took at shot at actually being the President?

[TopHatter]

Republicans to Trump: You can't delay 2020 election

Top Republicans have rejected Donald Trump's suggestion that November's presidential election should be delayed over alleged fraud concerns.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy both dismissed the idea.

Mr Trump does not have the authority to postpone the election. Any delay would have to be approved by Congress.

Earlier, the president suggested that increased postal voting could lead to fraud and inaccurate results.

He floated a delay until people could "properly, securely and safely" vote. There is little evidence to support Mr Trump's claims but he has long railed against mail-in voting, which he has said would be susceptible to fraud.

US states want to make postal voting easier due to public health concerns over the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Trump's intervention came as new figures showed the US economy contracted by nearly a third (32.9%) between April and June - the worst contraction since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

How have Republicans reacted?
Senator McConnell said no US presidential election had ever been delayed before.

"Never in the history of this country, through wars, depressions and the Civil War, have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time. We will find a way to do that again this November third," he told local Kentucky station WNKY.

Mr McCarthy echoed him. "Never in the history of the federal elections have we ever not held an election and we should go forward with our election," he said.

Trump ally Senator Lindsay Graham meanwhile said a delay was "not a good idea".

However, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to be drawn on Mr Trump's suggestion. Quizzed by reporters on whether a president could delay an election, he said he would not "enter a legal judgement on the fly". When pressed, he said the justice department would "make that legal determination", adding "we want an election that everyone is confident in".

The spokesman for Mr Trump's re-election campaign, Hogan Gidley, said Mr Trump had just been "raising a question". But Ari Fleischer, who was press secretary under Republican President George W Bush said Mr Trump should delete his tweet.

"This is not an idea anyone, especially POTUS [the president of the United States], should float," he said. "Mr President - please don't even pretend to mess with this. It's a harmful idea."

Donald Trump can't delay November's presidential election without Congress, partially controlled by the Democrats, first approving the decision. If he didn't already know this, someone has certainly told him by now.

The president also must know that tweeting about a delay - even framed as an "I'm just asking!" question - is sure to ignite a political firestorm, particularly after he has repeatedly refused to say whether he'd accept an adverse result in the upcoming presidential election.

Mr Trump appears to be doing everything in his power to undermine the credibility of November's vote, in which a record number of Americans are predicted to rely on mail-in voting to avoid the risk of exposure to the coronavirus. He's repeatedly made false and misleading claims about the reliability of the mail balloting and suggested broad conspiracy theories. Critics warn that he could be laying the groundwork for contesting the results - although the purpose may be simply to give him a scapegoat if he loses.

His tweet could also be an attempt to divert attention away from the truly dismal second-quarter economic numbers just released. He's been relying on a financial turnaround to breathe life into his re-election campaign, and instead the outlook appears exceedingly gloomy.

Whatever the reason, tweeting about an election delay is not the move of a candidate confident of victory - and could be a sign of more desperate moves to come.
____________

The GOP slams the door shut on it, but the Pompeo and Gidley just can't contradict the Dear Leader...not without looking for a new job. What a bunch of fucking COWARDS.

[TopHatter]

Why Trump Might Quit
There is logic behind saying to hell with reelection.
Politico.com

The purpose of the nationally televised Oval Office address was to announce new peace initiatives in Vietnam, but Lyndon B. Johnson saved the most startling news until the end of his speech on March 31, 1968. With his country badly divided over a grinding war, he didn’t believe as president he “should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes.” He was dropping out of the presidential campaign.

Now there was a president who knew how to shake up the plot.

Among Donald Trump’s problems in his long, hot and mostly housebound summer is that he has lost his once unparalleled gift for changing the story. He still can stir outrage, but even among his supporters he no longer has much capacity to surprise. “Every hero,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson a century before the president was born, “becomes a bore at last.”

But here is a way Trump could demonstrate that an old master still knows how to tear up the script and leave the audience gasping. It is late but not too late to pull an LBJ.

As it happens, the Trump Drops Out scenario is one I have trafficked to colleagues and sources for a couple years now, usually to dismissive grunts or quizzical stares. It is true that there is scant time left for the scenario to come to pass. It’s true also that, if I were a reliable predictor of Trump’s political fortunes, Hillary Clinton would now be running for reelection.

But even if one doesn’t really think Trump will drop out of the race—as a proselytizer of the theory I acknowledge it is a stretch—it is worth examining the reasons he just might, as a way of illuminating the bleakness of his situation with just over three months to go before the general election.

No doubt Trump would savor the validation of winning a second term. Under the current trajectory, that looks less likely than not; By the light of some evidence it looks highly unlikely. One question is whether Trump genuinely believes he has a plausible plan—beyond throw a lot of stuff against the wall and hope some of it sticks—to change that trajectory. The second question is how Trump conceives of the balance of his lifetime—and his historical reputation after that—if he were to lose to Joe Biden and join the ranks of defeated incumbents.

The Trump-drops-out scenario hinges on the assumption that Trump is less concerned with wielding the levers of government than he is preserving his role as disrupter at large in American politics over the next decade. The latter might be much easier to maintain if he avoids being tattooed as loser in November—especially if the margin is larger than could be attributed, even by his most conspiracy-minded supporters, to media bias or vote-counting manipulation by Democrats.

The scenario hinges also on an assumption that Trump’s political project is more weakened internally—in the psychological sense—than it is even in the external sense, as measured by polls and campaign coverage.

Trump in recent days has scotched a planned rally and canceled plans for a massive partisan extravaganza at the Republican National Convention. He has gone from saying the coronavirus pandemic would be quickly routed in the spring to acknowledging, five months into the crisis, that the situation will probably “get worse before it gets better.” After saying masks weren’t for him, and implying that they are for weak spirits, he finally began wearing one and urging others to do so.

Most of the coverage has been on the theme that Trump is now right and is tacitly admitting he was wrong before—wrong not to take these and other steps much earlier to unite the country around the importance of deferring to health experts and rigorous social distancing.

But Trump surely must wonder—on the question that matters most to him—whether he was right before and is stuck in the wrong place now. For decades, Trump has fashioned a leadership persona around the mystique of success and strength and indomitability. He has long acted as if he believes that mystique is highly perishable. That’s why he never apologizes or says he was wrong. Once one is exposed as having erred, or even having normal human doubt about the path ahead, perceptions change irreversibly from strength to weakness.

People who recoil at Trump’s boasting, bullying, and bombast generally know much more than he does about how conventional presidents act. But Trump surely knows much more than the critics do about how to manage the Trump persona. The pictures of Trump a few weeks ago after the weakly attended Tulsa rally—his tie undone, his face twisted in a dispirited scowl—suggest he knows that once his aura of success is punctured it will be difficult to recover. When was the last time Trump seemed to be really enjoying himself in the presidency?

Trump knows also that perceptions of power and success have an intimidating effect. As he looks to the fall, it is not opponents that he needs to keep in line. It is allies. Trump’s presidency has been propelled by two great engines of enablement. One of these, Fox News, has been robustly enthusiastic. He’s been great for business, and Fox News’ most loyal viewers are loyal to Trump. The other enabler, personified by Mitch McConnell, is not enthusiastic but sullenly transactional. McConnell and the business wing of the GOP don’t much like Trump, but they do like the chance to push their agenda on judges and deregulation.

What are the incentives of these enablers if, in late September or early October, Trump looks as beleaguered as he does in late July? In either case, an outright break with Trump is unlikely. Fox is concerned most about preserving its huge profitability. The network’s leaders would presumably be wary of potentially sustaining permanent brand damage with corporate advertisers by joining Trump in a last-ditch campaign of racially charged cultural warfare. That’s especially so if they perceive Trump is going to lose anyway. In the case of McConnell, he knows that Trump’s unpopularity is the primary factor that continued GOP control of the Senate is at best a toss-up. He and other Republicans already are trying to localize their races, not splitting with Trump but finding distance from him.

These incentives mean Trump could be a very lonely figure this fall.

Yes, but: Hasn’t Trump been lonely before, as after the "Access Hollywood" video in October 2016? True enough, although in circumstances in which the gravity of the nation’s challenges and the voter’s choice seem much less severe than now. And wouldn’t dropping out of the race brand him as something worse than loser, a quitter?

That one Trump could plausibly answer with an unusual approach: say something approximating the truth. This doesn’t sound much like how Trump talks but, in some moods, it may be close to what he thinks: Fellow Americans, I know I am a disruptor, and everyone knows I thrive on conflict. I believe that disruption is what Republicans and the country needed when I ran for president in 2016, and that is what I delivered. But I realize the pandemic creates a whole new agenda. I am going to devote the balance of my term to trying to get this country opened up safely, and allow someone without my sharp edges make the case for Republicans this fall.

Just this week Trump pondered why Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx have higher approval ratings than he does, even though he is their boss. “It can only be my personality, that’s all,” he told reporters.

Long term, forgoing the race with a measure of self-awareness conceivably could elevate Trump’s historical reputation higher than it would be if he loses reelection after a remorseless and demagogic campaign. In the near term, if a replacement nominee (presumably Vice President Mike Pence) would be indebted to Trump and subject to his leverage if he managed to beat Biden. If he lost, Trump could complain that his protégé blew it, and play GOP kingmaker (perhaps on behalf of one of his children or other allies) in 2024 without the stigma of having been expressly rejected by voters.

But how plausible is Trump reversing the astonishing decay in his political foundation in recent months? Winning a second term was always going to be a challenge for a president who has never had a majority job approval. At the start of the year, however, his advisers described a plausible path to reelection. The strategy had three main elements. One assumption was that, even if he was running slightly behind in swing states, his financial and organizational advantages, combined with the passion of supporters, would mean he would outperform polls by 2 to 3 percentage points. The second assumption was that Trump had room to grow his vote share with minority voters, especially African American men; even modest improvement by Trump could weaken the Democratic coalition in devastating ways. The third assumption was that Trump could repackage his divisive style as an asset. “He’s no Mr. Nice Guy,” the narrator intoned in a Trump TV ad that aired during the 2019 World Series, “but sometimes it takes a Donald Trump to change Washington.”

Five months into the pandemic, not one of those three assumptions looks secure. In key swing states, he is running much more than a couple points behind. After the George Floyd murder and Trump’s response, the notion of gains with African American voters is highly unlikely. His plan to portray himself as an ass-kicking chief executive who presided over a booming economy is in tatters, amid vast joblessness and the prospect that the pandemic will shadow virtually every corner of American life well into 2021.

In circumstances as grim as these, it would be surprising but not inconceivable if Trump decided it is time for a seance with LBJ.
_____________

I'm not counting on Trump dropping out, not for one second. Personally I don't want him to drop him. I want to see him destroyed at the polls worse than Mondale.

But he's that kind of coward that would do exactly that, if things continue to turn against him. I keep coming back to Nixon: He was invincible during 98% of the two year-long Watergate investigation....right up until he abruptly resigned.

[TopHatter]

Federalist Society Founder Calls for Trump’s Impeachment: Tweet to Delay Election Is "Fascistic"

I have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980, including voting for Donald Trump in 2016. I wrote op-eds and a law review article protesting what I believe was an unconstitutional investigation by Robert Mueller. I also wrote an op-ed opposing President Trump’s impeachment.

But I am frankly appalled by the president’s recent tweet seeking to postpone the November election. Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.

Here is what President Trump tweeted:

With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

The nation has faced grave challenges before, just as it does today with the spread of the coronavirus. But it has never canceled or delayed a presidential election. Not in 1864, when President Abraham Lincoln was expected to lose and the South looked as if it might defeat the North. Not in 1932 in the depths of the Great Depression. Not in 1944 during World War II.

So we certainly should not even consider canceling this fall’s election because of the president’s concern about mail-in voting, which is likely to increase because of fears about Covid-19. It is up to each of the 50 states whether to allow universal mail-in voting and Article II of the Constitution explicitly gives the states total power over the selection of presidential electors.

Election Day was fixed by a federal law passed in 1845, and the Constitution itself in the 20th Amendment specifies that the newly elected Congress meet at noon on Jan. 3, 2021, and that the terms of the president and vice president end at noon on Jan. 20, 2021. If no newly elected president is available, the speaker of the House of Representatives becomes acting president.

President Trump needs to be told by every Republican in Congress that he cannot postpone the federal election. Doing so would be illegal, unconstitutional and without precedent in American history. Anyone who says otherwise should never be elected to Congress again.
____________

[Bigfella]

Hands up ANYONE who ever thought they would see a co-founder of the Federalist Society talking like that. Not sure it will make much difference in the broader scheme of things, but it is a reminder just how far outside any acceptable bounds this President is.

[astralis]

Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.

really, this tweet, in the last year of the administration, was the one that persuaded the Federalist author that Trump has authoritarian tendencies?

that everything he did beforehand was just political hyperbole?

I mean, better late than never, but it takes a special type of delusion to think that Donald Trump is a philosophical champion of federalism and delegated executive power.

[TopHatter]

Supercut Shows Fox News Hosts Scorning Biden's Prediction That Trump Would Attempt To Delay The Election

[snapper]

You are fast approaching the Caesar/Rubicon moment. There was arguably a good reason Caesar crossed the Rubicon and refused to lay down his Consulship; he knew he would be prosecuted and (most likely) found condemned once the legal immunity of holding the Consulship (and several Legions of troops) ended. To his supporters the planned charges were naturally "malicious, politically motivated" etc but to his detractors - and the 'constitutionalists' of the time - it was just normal that an ex Consul could be sued in the courts the same as anyone else.

To my mind there is little doubt that Trump while President has broken a host of law - emoluments not least - but I would be wary of promising prosecution him and his ilk no matter their sins.

[Steph]

I am not following closely the US election campaign, but the extracts I read here are very frightening.
Trump is casting doubt in advance on the results' validity. That sounds like preparing a sort of coup, whether it means delaying the election or staying in power if he is not reelected.
What do you think could happen if he loses the election but says that it was "unaccurate and fraudulent" and refuses to quit the office ?

[TopHatter]

I am not following closely the US election campaign, but the extracts I read here are very frightening.
Trump is casting doubt in advance on the results' validity. That sounds like preparing a sort of coup, whether it means delaying the election or staying in power if he is not reelected.
What do you think could happen if he loses the election but says that it was "unaccurate and fraudulent" and refuses to quit the office ?

Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

If the Electoral College votes are certified to someone other than Donald Trump, then at noon on January 20th, he will leave the White House, willingly or not.

If the Election is somehow cancelled or delayed (impossible for the President to do but we'll pretend that he does it), then at noon on January 20th, he will leave the White House, willingly or not.