Tanks storm the Capitol, bloody violence erupts throughout America… and Western democracy collapses: As the US votes right this moment, FREDDY GRAY imagines the worst-case situations for the following 48 hours…

As Americans head to the polls today Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are still neck and neck in one of the most closely fought presidential elections in history.

And if there is not a clear result by tomorrow or shortly afterwards, it could become known as the ‘litigation election’, with the outcome disputed, lawsuits over procedure and an extremely bumpy transfer of power.

If Trump narrowly misses out, will there be violent uprisings like the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021? If Harris is pipped at the post, could she resort to legal nitpicking and drag the process out?

Here, FREDDY GRAY – imagines first what might happen if Trump is victorious, and then if Harris comes out the winner.

Are we likely to see an orderly transition – or is Western democracy itself under threat? Read on to find out…

IF TRUMP WINS

At 11.28 pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, November 5th, 2024, a victorious Donald Trump walked into the packed conference centre at the Hilton Hotel in West Palm Beach, Florida, not far from his Mar-a-Lago home.

‘You know, they say revenge is sweet,’ he began. ‘But this is just… beautiful!’

‘USA! USA! USA!’ roared the crowd.

‘How’s Kamala doing? She ok?’ added Trump. ‘She probably oughta have conceded by now.’

Some 900 miles away, in Washington, DC, a gloomy silence reigned. At the Democratic Election Night ‘watch party’ at her alma mater, Howard University, Kamala was nowhere to be seen. Her staffers, dressed in blue T-shirts, rushed in and out of back rooms, whispering furiously.

On his Twitter/X platform, Elon Musk, Trump’s richest backer, posted an AI-generated video of Kamala crying and drinking vodka. ‘Where is she?’ he asked, adding several cry-laugh emojis.

‘Our fight is never over,’ Barack Obama’s official Twitter/X account had declared at 11.05 pm. Minutes later, however, CNN became the first network to ‘call’ the result. Trump had won Pennsylvania, the key state he needed to surpass 270 Electoral College votes. ‘We can confirm it,’ said anchor Anderson Cooper, grimly. ‘Donald Trump will be the next and 47th president of the United States. It’s over.’

At half past midnight, the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz appeared on stage. ‘Folks, she’s fine, don’t worry,’ he said, as tears began streaming down his cheeks. ‘We have a lot of concerns and unanswered questions about what happened tonight. But for now, please, it’s time to go home.’

Three miles away, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former Chief Strategist, who had been released from prison in Danbury, Connecticut only seven days earlier, held a ‘Victory Party’ in a townhouse in Georgetown. ‘The regime has fallen, the revolution can begin,’ he declared. ‘They can’t steal this one. If they try, the brave men of the United States will burn this city down.’

Later, somebody threw a petrol bomb through Bannon’s front window. Luckily no one was injured. Two hours later, DC police arrested three suspects, members of a local ‘antifa’ group.

The next day, global stock markets began tumbling. At noon, President Joe Biden addressed the nation from behind the Resolute Desk in his Oval Office. ‘This is another dark day for America,’ he said. ‘But the difference between our side and theirs is we accept democracy. There will be a peaceful transfer of power.’

Kamala Harris’s campaign, however, briefed the press that the president had no authority to speak on behalf of the campaign. ‘Joe’s just gloating because he thinks he’d have won,’ said a staffer off-the-record. ‘What he doesn’t know is that we did win and we’re going to prove it.’

Later that afternoon, Kamala Harris’s office filed three lawsuits contesting the counts in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Her campaign manager, David Plouffe, accused ‘Republican thugs’ of intimidating Democratic voters in four counties and ‘suppressing the vote through nefarious means’ in Allegheny country, Pennsylvania.

That day, world leaders including Benjamin Netanyahu, Viktor Orban, Xi Jinping, Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau and Vladimir Putin all called Donald Trump to congratulate him.

Keir Starmer did not. A Number 10 spokesman said that the British Prime Minister was waiting for the result to be confirmed. Nigel Farage took to social media to call the delay ‘an outrage’ and ‘a national disgrace’. In a video, he said: ‘I have just spoken to Donald Trump, who loves Great Britain with all his heart. He’s baffled and offended – and he’s right to be.’

At 8pm, reporters spotted Kamala Harris climbing into a black SUV. Her motorcade made its way up Pennsylvania Avenue and through the White House gates. She did not re-emerge until 2.30 am.

Two hours later, Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social media campaign: ‘Just had a call from Kamala Harris, congratulating me on my VICTORY! VERY NICE!!!’

Later that morning, Vice President Harris called a press conference at the Naval Observatory. ‘I will never respect Donald Trump,’ she said. ‘But I do respect elections. We haven’t yet turned the page on the bitterness of the last eight years. But we will.’

Rumours spread through Washington that Harris and Biden had brokered a deal to persuade her to accept defeat. The details of their agreement remained unclear. The stock markets began to recover.

By 9am, on Friday, Keir Starmer’s office finally confirmed that the PM had called Trump to offer his congratulations. A Downing Street memo called the conversation ‘civil and cordial.’

That afternoon, David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, resigned. A Labour spokesman said the decision has ‘absolutely nothing to do’ with his remarks in 2018 calling the American president-elect a ‘neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath’.

On Saturday, November, 24th, two million women descended on Washington for the ‘We won’t go back!’ pro-abortion march. Sixteen were arrested on charges including gross indecency and assaulting police officers. A 48-year-old female had to be detained after she relieved herself on the steps of the Capitol building.

In response, Donald Trump promised that he would support a ‘national compromise’ on abortion. He named his wife Melania as head of a new federal Office for Women, Children and Freedom. Mrs Trump released a video, shot in black-in-white. 

‘Ever since my time as a model in the fashion industry,’ she declared. ‘I have believed with all my heart that women must have full control of their bodies.’

On November 26, the President-elect’s transition team confirmed that Stephen Miller, a longtime Trump loyalist, would be the next White House Chief of Staff. In an interview, he promised that ‘starting on day one, the US government will deport at least a million illegal immigrants by any means necessary.’

Two days later, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice revealed that it had ‘fast-tracked’ Donald Trump’s criminal trial over his ‘conspiracy to defraud the United States’ in the run up to January 6, 2021. ‘We must act before he tries to pardon himself,’ said an official.

In reply, Vice President-elect J D Vance observed that, since the Republican Party had now won back control of the Senate, ‘all this ‘lawfare’ can and will be stopped in Congress. Trump has won. Now let us govern.’

On December 4, Joe Biden officially pardoned his son Hunter over his illegal gun-buying conviction, despite having insisted earlier in the year that he would not do so. ‘I love my boy,’ he said, by way of explanation.

The following morning, however, President Biden stunned the world as he announced that he was suffering from Parkinson’s and would be resigning with immediate effect – with just two months to go before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Moments later, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB), next to the West Wing of the White House, Kamala Harris was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. ‘I got there before you Donald!’ she said, cackling, as she began her impromptu inaugural remarks. ‘I haven’t got much time,’ she added. ‘But we have to put in more guardrails to protect our democracy.’

Twenty-five minutes later, Keir Starmer appeared outside 10 Downing Street. ‘I’m proud to be the first leader to congratulate President Kamala Harris on making history in becoming the first woman Commander-in-Chief of the United States,’ he said. Nigel Farage said the PM’s statement was ‘an insult’ and ‘farcical’.

In response, the Trump transition team declared it would be imposing punitive 25 per cent tariffs on all imports from China, Brazil, Pakistan and the United Kingdom. The European Union would be exempt. 

Moments later, Elon Musk, as incoming head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, declared on Twitter/X: ‘Sorry UK, the US government just declared a trade war on you!’

The next day, the Justice Department announced it had new evidence of Trump’s complicity in the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill on January 2021. And that further legal proceedings were imminent…

IF HARRIS WINS

At 10.15 am, Eastern Time, on Friday November 8, after three nights and two days of wrangling over votes in the state of Pennsylvania, the Harris-Walz campaign finally declared victory.

Outside the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, a beaming Kamala Harris appeared. ‘I would like to thank my opponent,’ she said. ‘But Donald Trump is too busy, yet again, trying to deny the will of the American people.’

An hour later, in London, Keir Starmer appeared outside Downing Street. ‘I’m proud to say that I was the first leader to call Kamala Harris to congratulate her on making history as the first woman Commander-in-Chief,’ he said. ‘The glass ceiling has been broken.’

Other world leaders followed suit: Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Xi Jinping all praised Harris on her success. ‘When we fight for democracy, we win!’ declared President Zelensky of Ukraine.

Some 900 miles south, in his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Donald Trump brooded. ‘She’s always lying,’ he declared in a video broadcast. 

‘We won, everybody knows it, and it cannot be denied.’ The Trump campaign filed more than 100 lawsuits in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, alleging large-scale voter fraud.

On his Twitter/X platform, Elon Musk initiated his ‘Stop the Steal 2024’ campaign. He posted videos apparently showing ballot counters in Arizona shredding millions of documents, photos of US Postal Service staff incinerating boxes of papers outside sorting facilities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and hundreds of images of fraudulent voter tabulations.

Musk proposed a ‘Take our country back!’ march on Washington, to be held on November 16th. ‘Patriots assemble!’ he posted, along with an image of him, Donald Trump, J D Vance and Robert F Kennedy Junior dressed as Marvel Superheroes.

On Friday, November 8th, however, the Biden administration invoked emergency powers and ordered the shutdown of Twitter/X on National Security grounds. And the Department of Homeland Security declared that all ‘insurrectionist’ marches had been banned and all ‘election denying protestors’ would be arrested.

An arrest warrant was put out for Musk, who had flown to Saudi Arabia allegedly on business. On his Truth Social platform, Donald Trump declared: ‘FREE SPEECH IS UNDER ASSAULT! Patriots must now use Truth Social EXCLUSIVELY, which is better anyway (sorry Elon!).’

Two days later, in the early hours, an FBI SWAT team stormed the townhouse in Georgetown of Trump’s former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. ‘I am not afraid!’ shouted Bannon, as he was dragged away in handcuffs. ‘The people will be heard!’

He was taken to a nearby detention centre and charged with ‘seditious conspiracy’. The Washington Post promptly reported that Bannon has been plotting overthrow the US government. His ‘violent coup’ was allegedly planned for January 5, 2025, the day before the official certification of the presidential election.

On Monday, November 25, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a well-armed, 250-strong ‘patriot militia’ attacked the Pennsylvania State Capitol buildings. 

The rebels killed three police officers, seized control of the complex, took members of the State Election Board hostage, and ransacked the offices. 

That evening, an anonymous account on Truth Social began posting photographs of documents, allegedly detailing a plot to corrupt election results by tampering with the ballot-counting machines.

Donald Trump re-posted all the images. He then went on Fox News and urged the patriot militia to give up their weapons and hand themselves in. ‘We must have peace,’ he said. ‘This is exactly what they want.’

In a statement released to the Press, the Republican Vice Presidential nominee J D Vance said: ‘Although I have grave doubts about the integrity of the election. I cannot stand for this violence. As a Christian, I have reached the conclusion that we must accept the corrupted result for the sake of national stability.’

At 2am, a convoy of tanks from the Pennsylvania National Guard rolled towards the Capitol Complex as three helicopters buzzed overhead. Several explosions went off, followed by loud exchanges of heavy gunfire.

A shocking video showing a wounded rebel, his blood spilling on to the carpet inside the rotunda, went viral on TikTok. By 4 pm, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania declared that the state had regained control of the Capitol building. All the militia members had been killed or arrested.

On Wednesday, November 27, a visibly frail President Biden appeared in the White House briefing room. The now President-elect Kamala Harris stood behind him. Biden confirmed that he had placed the National Guard on ‘high alert’ for ‘acts of sedition and insurrection’ across the country. ‘I am determined to protect democracy if it is the last thing I do.’

‘Donald Trump is now the head of a terrorist organisation, ok?’ added Harris. ‘He must be brought to justice.’

In Florida, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor, declared that he would ‘not allow the corrupt, radical Biden-Harris administration’ to arrest Trump in his state. In reply, Don Jnr, Trump’s eldest son, thanked DeSantis as a ‘man of honour’. He also accused the ‘deep state’ of having secretly orchestrated a ‘false flag’ operation in Harrisburg.

In the following days, more violent ‘Stop the steal’ protests were quelled in Georgia, Texas, and Arizona. Kamala Harris’s office announced that Washington, DC would be placed under ‘strict lockdown security measures’ until after her inauguration ceremony, on January 20, 2025.

Meanwhile, inside the Kremlin in Moscow, Vladimir Putin grinned as he addressed a room full of reporters. ‘How can the Americans lecture us about democracy?’ he asked. ‘The United States is now worse than a banana republic. It is a tyrannical regime. Western liberalism is finished.’