I'm frustrated by these articles as they imply that he has a choice. No US President can remain in office after losing the election. The election means the incumbent lost the office, which we granted. If Trump continued to physically occupy the residence after his term, well then he will have to be physically removed. If not by the Secret Service or other government policing force, then by the citizens themselves. Trump is a public servant. He's not a leader the day we collectively decide that he isn't.
I don't think Trump is going to maintain power past a defeat in the election (and in that sense I agree that the article is hyperbolic), but I do think there's danger of Trump not acknowledging the results of the election. I'm worried about the fallout from forcibly removing Trump from power; Am I going to be arguing with family members over Thanksgiving about whether the democrats "stole" the presidency? How could this be spun by pundit media outlets like Fox to whip up the nationalistic peaks of Trump's base? If there's an armed force of citizens removing him from power as you suggest, are we contending with the military? How does the military decide who to follow - will there be a rift in our armed forces over who to support as president even if the law is clear on the matter? Do we host a contingent election if things are looking grim enough? I completely agree with the spirit of your comment - if Trump continues to physically occupy the residence after his term, he will have to be physically removed. To pull kleinbl00's comment into this, the odds that his followers stick by him seem pretty slim to me as well...But Trump himself is a fucking moron, and if he doesn't transfer power peacefully, what happens? Best case scenario in my mind is that he's physically removed and tried for treason. It also seems likely that he'd just become a private citizen spouting some bullshit akin to his birther movement, except with the rhetoric of, "I should be president!" Worst case scenario, people actually listen to him. Maybe I don't need to be worried. I hope I'm being nervous for no good reason. But my faith in Trump and his followers (both citizen and senator) to follow the rule of law could not be lower, and I can't make myself stop feeling nervous.
I think the most pragmatic way to look at to get Machiavellian on it. The people executing Trump's policy at this point are the ones that are willing to stomach Trump to get ahead. They stomach Trump up to the point where they no longer get ahead, at which point they stop stomaching Trump. Most of the time, Trump is the one who kicks them out at which point they snipe back (follow Scaramucci on Twitter) but lately, we've seen a number of people making the calculation that it's better to stop now while you're ahead. Make no mistake: Mark Esper is not qualified to be Secretary of Defense. He's probably qualified to be VP of government relations at Raytheon, which is what he did before being Secretary of Defense. And at some point last week, Mark Esper decided that he needed to preserve his future at Raytheon et. al. from his present at Trump Inc. That's as a cabinet member in an administration up for re-election. And, as b_b points out, Esper isn't alone. We've heard over and over about how the relationship between Trump and his own White House is adversarial, and how Trump's White House has an adversarial relationship with everyone else. They can afford to be adversarial because they're in power but as soon as that power is contingent on everyone extending them that power, the whole thing collapses. If Trump wins cleanly he gets to be President. If Trump wins uncleanly he probably gets to be President - at this point I think enough allegations of voter suppression might just get us a do-over. If Trump loses, even uncleanly, this shit's over.
There are a few chinks in his armor forming: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/us/george-floyd-protests.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/opinion/trump-inspectors-general-grassley.html They're small, but as Leonard Cohen said, a crack is how the light gets in.