He has been stretching the envelop of behavior ever since he took office in 17. He hasn't gone to prison, yet.

Because he stretches the envelop. He doesn't call out the troops to illegally shoot the envelop full of holes.

Envelop-stretching lets you do all kinds of damage, but it doesn't get you absolute power - or even a third term.

Trump's a TACO kind of guy. He'll do all sorts of horrible crap, but only so long as he can hold up that envelop and have his lawyers argue that he only stretched it. And as soon as he's unable to get what he wants with just stretching, he always chickens out. Always. That's why he's so pissed off with the Senate, why he's always complaining on Truth Social, why all he can do is get his opponents primaried (where they can still do him lots of damage in the YOLO caucus) rather than send someone to pay them a visit in the middle of the night to change their minds on the filibuster.

He's an unpersuasive whiny coward who wants everyone to believe he's a big tough man. But he's not a big tough man, he's just someone who likes asserting dominance when he's completely safe from reprisals.

Which is why I'm continually puzzled by people who talk about him as if he was a big strong guy. As if he was the kind of risk-taking, ruthless, and hardnosed leader who could pull something like this off, instead of that whiny coward. He doesn't have the balls to try, and doesn't have the brains to succeed - and he knows it.