I AM sure like me you have everything crossed for a hopeful result in next Wednesday’s US presidential election. I’m also keeping an eye on what the American media is saying in the run-up to the final vote.

There are many interesting speculations in papers and TV reports, not just on the result, which still isn’t a foregone conclusion, but what will happen to President Trump if or when he loses.

The various theories range from arrest and impeachment to fleeing the country, perhaps seeking political asylum with Putin in Moscow. 

A worse lookout for us is that he ends up living in some kind of permanent self-imposed isolation on one of his vast Scottish golf courses courtesy of his almost identical twin blonde haired bumbler Prime Minister Johnson.

Of course Trump is not even considering defeat. Why should he? He won last time despite getting three million votes less than his opponent Hillary Clinton.

Let me spell it out: Trump won 62,985,106 votes. That is 45.9 per cent of those who voted. Clinton’s figure was 65,853,625 votes (48.0 per cent), yet because of the curious mechanism involving swing states Trump got the job.

Trump is in a weaker position this time, with his administration sinking in a pool of bad news. It has given up fighting the coronavirus that infects 75,000 and kills over 500 every day. Trump has been made immune by God.

Rising infection numbers mean slower economic recovery, the stock market just had its biggest drop in a month. Even US financiers are so tired of Trump they are pouring five times more money behind Biden.

Biden is of course, although a million miles better than Trump, no socialist candidate. His many years as a vice president means his strengths and his weaknesses are well known to US voters, but most commentators think this is an election that Trump will lose rather than Biden will win.

Trumps team are already crying “foul”  about early votes, postal votes and a score of other ways they say the election results can and will be challenged.

Trump has already said he may not accept a result that goes against him. He could well end up refusing to vacate the White House. He could barricade himself in with his many young women advisers and refuse to go.

Whatever he ends up doing if he doesn’t win, he’ll be doing it without First Lady Melania, it seems. Media speculation says she will speedily dump the husband she so clearly finds boring, embarrassing and repulsive.

How will law enforcement, the FBI and the army react to a president who refuses to go? Will they simply shoot him? Perhaps speculation here isn’t a good idea.
 
It might all end up in court. Why else has Trump appointed no less than four new judges who support him to the Supreme Court, a record number for any president?

And that’s not the only danger. Trump may have lost a lot of supporters — but he still has an army of well-armed rednecks ready to come down from the hills to defend his right to four more years Making America Great Again.