Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

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?

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...

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?”