My guess is he does not.
My theory is that the rich billionaires don’t want to destroy America and turn it into a dictatorship, per se, because dictators will take their money by force; just as Putin has done many times with Russian billionaires that stepped out of line.
They don’t want Trump to have that much power. They want a puppet government they can control to make life ideal for them; not an actual dictator like Putin with absolute power of life and death over them.
Were I writing fiction, my plot would be a quiet death of the President in the 3rd year, to be succeeded by a loyal and younger puppet Vice President, and then rigging the elections in the swing states to ensure that VP is elected to two terms and choose for him another loyal young puppet Vice President, ad infinitum. So Democrats become a permanent minority party in the USA without federal power.
Remember, Putin got elected in a fair election in 2000 with 53% of the vote. Then he immediately set about rigging all the voting apparatus to ensure he would never lose another election, so he routinely gets “elected” with about 95% of the vote.
That is what happens next; setting about empowering all the States with Republican legislatures to try and pass laws that rig their elections so no Democrat will get their electoral votes; and to the extent possible cannot get into any high state level government office, or House or Senate office.
They’ve been claiming forever that the fair elections were rigged, now they change oars to claim forever that their rigged elections are fair.
This is how Democracies die.
Right now, it’s 50/50 whether Trump lasts his full term. His recent Ukraine “meeting” has put him in an incredibly vulnerable position. He’s not just disrupting politics—he’s blowing it up, both domestically and internationally. Radical ideas may be popular, but those who operate above the presidency are likely weighing their options. A JFK scenario is no longer unthinkable.
His inner circle now resembles a Mafia family—bound by loyalty but gripped by fear. Thousands of government staff have been fired, NATO has been declared worthless to the U.S., and global alliances are crumbling.
Since 1945, the world has operated within certain boundaries to maintain peace. But Trump’s actions have undoubtedly rattled those in power—inside his administration and beyond.
And he’s not going to be tamed. His ego is pure Napoleonic: grand, fragile, and obsessed with legacy. Winning a second term wasn’t enough. Beating the Democrats wasn’t enough. At 79, he’s chasing something bigger—immortality in the history books.
But when you cast yourself as a savior, when you compare yourself to Washington himself, you set yourself up for a historic fall. The felony charges? He doesn’t care. The scandals? His base has outlasted every one of them. Trump has no more shits to give—the field is barren.
Yet power has its limits. There is a boundary, and Trump may have crossed it. Whether he survives his second term—politically or physically—will be history’s judgment. Right now, the odds are against him.
First, to directly answer the question asked: No, given the snakes with which Trump has surrounded himself, if his health problems don’t remove him, the 25th Amendment probably will.
But I’m going to offer a counterintuitive hope here. I hope Trump manages to eke out the entire for years. Anyone who knows me will be surprised at that hope coming from me. But I believe it is the best we can hope for. Trump is a lot of vile and petty things but most of all he is stupidly narcissistic.
He is willing to stomp down the path of least effectiveness if it garners his self image the slightest advantage. Which might just mean he will tank all the intricate plotting of Project 2025 by insisting to drive the car himself. In any situation he believes – and declares – himself to be the only person capable of doing, well, anything.
Don’t get me wrong. I also happen to expect that Trump will cause a lot of damage that will take far longer than four years to dig out from. But it will be the damage of a two year old on a lawn tractor, unfocused and random, not the damage of a would-be Hitler inside a modern military tank, plowing a path to fascism.
