Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

Real question: As the head of the Federal executive branch, who would stop him?

Judges in every district, appeals court, and the SCOTUS. An injunction would be put in place not more than an hour after such a deceleration by the POTUS was made.

Genuine question: What would happen if there was a massive conspiracy to just plow through with the plan despite the injunction? Sure, Congress could impeach him again and “convict” him, but what if the people with the power to literally remove him refused to cooperate?

I know this is a very massive hypothetical, but it’s one I’ve wondered for a while. Basically, as the head of one of the branches, he could have subordinates forcefully removed, but who’ll forcefully remove him in this case?

Well, considering how huge that branch is, if he didn’t stop once the courts ordered him to, Congress could remove him from office, and he’d be “escorted” out of the White House by the Secret Service.

Didn't Congress already impeach the president but the Senate voted to keep him in office?

You're describing a coup. We haven't had one in the US, but many other countries have. In a coup it starts to matter a lot who has the actual power and where their loyalties lie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

>What would happen if there was a massive conspiracy to just plow through with the plan despite the injunction?

In real terms, what are you imagining here? Trump having the NSA execute a DDOS against Twitter? I feel like you have to get to some pretty fantastical action-movie type plots to make this happen.

When in the course of human events...

Yes. But ignoring the courts would be a different thing: incompetence. See the 25th Amendment § 4[0]:

> Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

> ...

Basically, if Congress decides Trump is incompetent, Pence will immediately become President. No impeachment trial will be necessary. And if Trump refuses to leave the White House at that point, he will be forcefully removed. Whether that’ll actually happen remains to be seen; Section 4 has never been invoked since its ratification.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_...

have you not been paying attention? Those things you mentioned have been increasingly reseated with Trump loyalists.

There's no mechanism to make it happen.

It would have to happen through the courts, and the courts won't allow it.

They can bully Twitter and threaten to e.g. withhold federal contracts (though even this runs into legal trouble) but how does the executive branch just "shut down" a platform?

You can't just send in the FBI and put a halt on things.

This will just be more of his mindless rage that a certain portion of the population gobbles up. His real goal is to discredit Twitter et al, which is unlikely to have much impact.

Typically it's the military that holds the real power once a coup starts.

Yes, the House impeached him, but the Senate did not convict and remove him.

I don't think it's massively hypothetical. It can happen and can get real, real quick.

"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it." Presidents have ignored the Supreme Court before and suffered no consequences.

Remove their DNS records.

As long as the senate doesn't cooperate there is no way apparently to remove or have any influence over the president or the executive branch. He is just making sure he doesn't step too far so the GOP will consider voting against him. I think this would go too far, but have thought so many times before.

The good news is that the presidency (and the leader of the executive branch) is very time limited. The constitution is so clear that there is no wiggle room at all, no matter what happens between now and January next year, the only way he stays in power is by winning the election. Also it seems pretty clear there will be a democrat as acting president if we fail to vote for a new one, but that is mostly coincidences and luck this time around.

The last four years have shown that there are no real checks and balances and they depend on one party keeping its own members in line, and that the GOP have moved far, far, to the right as they are loosing the potential to win fair elections. Winding this down is not going to be pleasant, and in the long run we desperately need reforms. Also it seems like the current best case is that the GOP get voted out everywhere, but that is also a terrible outcome, we need a real opposition party and competition of ideas.

The President was brought up for incompetence to Congress in 2017 when he fired FBI director Jame Comey after Comey refused the President's request to drop the election-meddling investigation involving the President's personal friend. It's right there in the wikipedia article. The President got a pass. How would this be any different?

DDOS? It would be much simpler: a few people with guns.

Trump sending armed federal/military agents to all the Twitter buildings on US soil in order to shut them down is even more Hollywood than NSA DDOS.

That's essentially a coup; it's how democracies die. I think it's highly unlikely that the security and military services would go along with a coup over _Twitter_.

In this bizarre hypothetical, Twitter would presumably just fail over to servers outside the US, as would all other significant tech companies. Or, y'know, California might secede. It's such a weird proposition that it's hard to speculate about.

They haven't ignored _impeachment and removal_, though, which is what the post you're replying to suggests.

Again, how? Cyberattack, court order, or people with guns?

If I understand correctly, it takes more than the President being charged with incompetence. It takes the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet agreeing. That didn't happen, not by a long shot.

Doesn't have to be that complicated. The DOJ announces an investigation into Twitter advertising practices. They get a friendly judge to issue some kind of injunction against showing ads for the duration of the investigation. No more revenue. Whether they actually find anything is irrelevant.

That probably won't happen though, this is really just about stirring up a frenzy of right-wingers so Twitter will have to bow down to them and give them more and more concessions in hopes that somehow, someday they'll stop accusing everything of being biased against them.

It's a silly question because the senate wouldn't convict him.

Considering the President surrounds himself with people who only support him, such as firing all the IG's that were investigating any Republican party members, what's to keep that from happening again in this instance?

Well, yes, it’s a silly question. I’m essentially asking what would happen in a coup (as other people have said it is), and that’s not going to happen in the US anytime soon it seems. But it doesn’t mean we can’t ask, “what would probably happen?”

Nothing. The correct thing happened last time, too.

See, "incompetence" doesn't mean blundering. It means senility or insanity. Firing Comey may be many things, but it's not incompetence.

You want him gone? Get in line; a lot of people want that. But you're going to have to either vote him out or impeach him. And to impeach him, you're going to have to persuade more than one Republican Senator that he's crossed the line - which means you need something that the other side recognizes as an actual case.

> The correct thing happened last time, too.

See, the thing is, during the trial in the Senate, Trump’s lawyers literally said:[0]

> Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest, and mostly you're right. Your election is in the public interest. And if a president did something that he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.

The fact that all but one GOP member voted to acquit is extremely concerning.

> Firing Comey may be many things, but it's not incompetence.

It may not be incompetence, but it sure as hell is corrupt.

[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/29/politics/dershowitz-quid-pro-...

OK, fine, "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office". That still doesn't apply to firing Comey.