From the Atlantic in June 2020 by Peter Nicholas: Say Joe Biden wins the presidential election in November. On the morning of January 20, Donald Trump will enter the Oval Office and leave a handwritten letter to Biden on the Resolute desk. Later, Trump and his wife, Melania, will stand in the White House’s North Portico to await a visit from the president-elect and his wife, Jill. After the armored limousine glides up the driveway, the couples will exchange pleasantries and maybe gifts before heading inside for coffee.
Trump’s pictures would already have been slipped from oversize frames that, for the moment, hang empty on the walls. Workers will pull down drapes and roll up carpets that don’t suit the incoming family’s aesthetic. Sometime before noon, the couples will leave the White House in separate cars and meet again on the Capitol’s west portico. Trump will be in the front row, watching as Biden places his hand on the Bible and takes the oath of office. Back at the White House, Trump’s senior aides will pack up and leave. After the ceremony, the 45th and 46th presidents will walk side by side to a waiting helicopter on the Capitol plaza for a final goodbye. Trump will salute, board, and fly away.
Or maybe not.
Every four or eight years, the clock hits noon on January 20 and the nation learns whether the old president accepts the legitimacy of the new.
“The current presidential term ends at noon on January 20. Full stop,” Joshua Geltzer, a Georgetown Law professor, told me. If Biden wins, that’s the precise moment when his term would start. It’s democracy’s most dangerous instant: the interval when power changes hands, testing whether the nation stays moored to self-governance.
That tradition’s endurance depends on Trump’s cooperation—or the resiliency of the country’s democratic institutions should he withhold it. There’s no assurance that Trump will accept the validity of the election results. He’s already described mail-in voting as a plot to steal the election. And he’s trolled critics with the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that, by popular demand, he might stay in office beyond the Constitution’s eight-year limit.