[ExI] Trump suggests letting Iran 'take out' Los Angeles and San Diego

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 13/10/2026 02:46, spike wrote:
> ... ideally from my POV the office of POTUS should change hands every election.  For the past decade, it has.  This time it might not, which leaves too much embedded power in place in the executive branch, which is a bad thing.  


Do you really think that the current excess of power in the executive branch would be reversed if the democrats won the next election?

It's a general observation, generally true, that anyone in a position of power will try to obtain more power. There are vanishingly few instances of someone (or some institution) in power voluntarily relinquishing even a part of their power.

So Trump has probably permanently shifted the landscape in favour of the incumbent president having a lot more power than he should have.

I hope that I'm completely wrong about this, and don't understand the political system in the US well enough to know what I'm talking about. (Heh, I think that's the first time I've ever hoped that I'm ignorant about something!)

What mechanisms exist to reverse Trump's usurpation of the balance of power, assuming someone else, opposed to his authoritarian tendencies, becomes (and remains) president? Is it likely that they would restore the checks and balances on presidential power that Trump has eroded or dismantled?
-- 
Ben
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." - Pablo Casals, via Albert Einstein