YOUR PARANOID QUESTIONS

Your Most Paranoid Questions About Trump’s Refusal to Concede, Answered

Joe Biden will become president on January 20, 2021

Ben Jacobs
GEN
Published in
5 min readNov 13, 2020

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Donald Trump leaves after placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Veterans Day. Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump’s refusal to concede and accept the results of the presidential election has sparked anxiety from many about the state of American politics in 2020. Despite it now being mathematically impossible for Trump to win 270 electoral votes, the incumbent’s insistence that only massive fraud has prevented his reelection has led many to question the stability of American institutions.

But, is there anything Trump can actually do to change the result of the elections, or will his 18 Brumaire simply be an extended tweetstorm and scurrilous litigation?

Will Donald J. Trump be president on January 21, 2021?

No. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will be.

You sure?

Yes.

So what’s the point of this piece?

It’s that things could get really weird between now and then and Trump could spark a constitutional crisis. As Ned Foley, an expert on presidential election law and professor at Ohio State University, told GEN, “at the moment it doesn’t have…

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Ben Jacobs
GEN
Writer for

Ben Jacobs is a politics reporter based in Washington. Follow him on Twitter at @bencjacobs.