How dangerous would a second Trump term be? The conventional wisdom says that after learning his lesson during his first term, Trump would be unleashed in a second term to do anything he wants with no one to push back against him. Maybe so. But I've never been too sure about this. For starters, keep in mind the three main things that motivate Trump:
- Appearing tough and getting the best in negotiations.
- Retribution against those who have laughed at him (elites) or who caused him real or perceived harm.
- Flapping his mouth and always being the center of attention.
Given all this, what is Trump likely to do in a second term? I'm reluctant to confess this, but my take has long been that it won't be a lot worse than his first term. Let's break this down by all the actions he might take. These are in no particular order:
- Stop aid to Ukraine. He might. A lot of Republicans would be on his side, and he's always been mad at Zelenskyy over the events surrounding his first impeachment.
- Appoint lunatic cabinet members. Yes, to some extent. But even a Republican Senate full of loyalists will place limits on this.
- Build the wall. This makes him look tough, so he'll probably do it. Republicans prevented this in his first term but won't in a second term. However, although this is a waste of money, it's not likely to do lasting harm.
- Deport 20 million illegal immigrants. This is big talk, like "Mexico will pay for it." But it's not feasible. It would require enormous manpower and enormous expenditures, and even at that it wouldn't work. What's more, the business wing of the party would fight hard against it. In the end, Trump might beef up ICE, but not a lot more.
- Place 10% tariffs on everything from everybody. It's unclear what Trump really wants to do on tariffs, but the maximal version isn't workable. National security goes only so far as a justification, and Trump is bound by treaty obligations just like any other president. I wouldn't be surprised if he tightened tariffs on China, but not much more.
- Appoint lots of conservative judges. Yep.
- Cut taxes on businesses and the rich. Yep.
- Kill the Inflation Reduction Act. He might very well try to do this. It's a signature Biden initiative, so it would fit his retribution motivation, and green spending is unpopular among Republicans.
- Tell the Justice Department to indict his political opponents. This is mostly big talk, used as a campaign device. Once he wins, he won't really care that much.
- Tell the Justice Department to end its cases against him. Absolutely yes.
- Repeal Obamacare. This is hard to call. He might want another crack at the one big piece of retribution that failed in his first term. But with the ACA now ten years old, it's not clear if he'd have the votes.
- Replace 4,000 civil servants with political loyalists. Again, this is mostly big talk, though Trump would probably love to do it. The problem is that he'd likely need congressional approval, and I think there would be some Republican holdouts. Plus Democrats would filibuster it. Plus there are practical issues involved in trying to hire this many people. In his first term Trump (along with every other president) had trouble even filling the thousand or so presidential appointees already on the books. Plus Democrats would get to do the same thing the next time they're in office.
- Drill for oil everywhere. Yes. But honestly, we pretty much do this already.
- Ban abortion nationwide. Trump knows this would be political suicide, and he cares way more about his own reputation than he does about abortion. He won't do it. Nor could it pass Congress anyway.
- Project 2025. This has gotten lots of attention recently, but it's really just standard boilerplate from the Heritage Foundation. Trump has given no serious sign that he plans to use it as a blueprint, and he isn't really a blueprint guy in the first place.
- Refuse to leave office after four years. This won't happen. The Constitution requires him to leave and there's no way around that. There is zero possibility of amending the Constitution and zero possibility of Trump rounding up the physical force necessary to stay in office illegally.
- Destroy democracy. Trump's assault on the 2020 election was obviously an enormous assault on democracy. But everything else Trump did was handled in the ordinary way. Bills passed through Congress. Supreme Court justices were confirmed by the Senate. Court orders were obeyed. This will continue.
- Endless chaos. Absolutely yes. This is all part of Trump's pathological desire to always be the center of attention.
- Pull out of NATO. Trump has mostly gotten what he wanted from NATO (bigger defense spending), and in any case NATO is pretty popular in Congress. He'll keep up the big talk, but he won't seriously try to leave our oldest and most basic military alliance.
- Freedom cities. Oh please.
- Sending the National Guard into high-crime cities. This is big talk, but it won't happen. Crime has plummeted since Trump left office, and if he gets back in it won't be long before he proclaims America safe once again.
- Close the Department of Education. Congress has to do this, and it probably won't since plenty of them would object (it's a source of power). And even if Trump did manage to close it down, it's meaningless unless he also shuts down all the programs currently managed by the department. He's given no indication that he plans to do that.
- Roll back Biden-era rules on electric vehicles. Yes, he'll probably do this. He has the authority; it would be a poke in the eye to Biden; and Republicans are mostly on board with it.
Aside from the usual Republican practice of cutting taxes and appointing conservative judges, Trump will probably build the wall, increase some tariffs, gut the environment, and appoint some nutballs. He might try to overturn Obamacare, kill IRA, and end aid to Ukraine.
That's it. That's my best guess about what a second Trump term will be like. Unlike most incoming presidents, I don't think Trump has anything that could seriously be called a policy agenda. He just wants to prove he can win. Once in office he'll preside over a potpourri of unrelated bad policy initiatives, but probably not anything too out of the ordinary for a Republican president.
Plus endless chaos. And, admittedly, a lot of tail risk that you wouldn't have with an ordinary Republican.
But by far the most likely outcome is that a second Trump term would be bad but not catastrophic. The United States is a very big ship, and even Trump can't turn it much in only four years. There's even an upside: If Trump wins, maybe it will give Democrats some time sit back and think seriously about why so many people refuse to vote for them even when the alternative is Donald Trump.
gut the environment - well that is a big frigging deal. We are already hitting end times despite what my gov, the DeSpised DeSpot, declares.
You've forgotten at least three big items:
1. corruption: he'll crank that up into the stratosphere, and this time there won't be anybody to stop it. His cronies will feast. This will all come at a cost to the economy and the nation.
2. He's going to give Putin and Xi whatever they want. And this idea that somehow what TCFG -wanted- from NATO was for them to increase their spending -- that's such bullshit, Kevin, really. It was a -pretext- for him to run NATO down. If it hadn't been that, it would have been something else. He's going to gut NATO. He's going to betray Taiwan.
3. Abortion? He's not going to ban it: of course not! He'll leave that to his SCOTUS, and the states. Same job, no fingerprints.
4. Everywhere, he will allow haters to predate on the vulnerable. people of color, LGBTQ, uppity women, and others will all get their fair share of abuse. And this happened during his first term, so he's got form there.
5. Oh, and this idea that somehow the Dems will be able to fight back in 4 years? Sure, -maybe-. But it's just as likely that he does in the US what Orban did in Hungary, and we never have a truly free election again.
I'm surprised you missed these issues. And hell, there are lots more. To riff off of scopeland above, he'll gut any attempts the US was making to rein in climate change. Fucked we will be, good and hard.
The first one is revolting, but it's not really an existential threat if Trump and some of his friends increase their wealth through graft.
I'm also not sure about your #2. How does he actually "give Putin whatever he wants"? The US is a superpower, but it doesn't control anything and everything. And if Trump pulls the plug on Ukraine, it may be that the Europeans (including Britain they have a GDP nearly as big as America's) at this point could provide enough aid to keep the Russians locked in quagmire. I hope so! That's not a guarantee, mind you, but it's also not a guarantee that at this point Ukraine can survive only with large-scale aid from America (to be clear I fully support our giving Ukraine what they need).
Also, regarding Taiwan, I think your contention that he'll abandon that country is an open question. While on the one hand his MAGA base hates foreign entanglements, they also hate China and the CCP. And certainly the bulk of the GOP foreign policy establishment is likewise maximally hostile to China. I'm not sure Trump cares about the issue enough either way to pick a fight with his own people over Taiwan, especially if the latter can provide an ego-flattering "payment" to the US for its defense. That's the thing about Trump: he's far more transactional than ideological.
I think that an American pullback from Ukraine is potentially disastrous. I believe Western Europe would step up its support, and might well be convinced that more than aid is necessary. Any less indirect support, say sending technicians into Ukraine, could be taken as a provocation by Putin, who is clearly prone to miscalculation — he might take Trump at his word and assume he could strike some NATO targets without the US responding. What happens then?
I think that an American pullback from Ukraine is potentially disastrous.
Potentially, yes.
Agreed. I think Kevin yields to his preferred theme of "nothing is as big a deal as some people make it out to be." But I think this is where Kevin and many others fail to realize the depth of damage that trump did in his first term: the absolute corruption of our politics. It struck me the day he was elected in 2016 that unless he was completely humiliated and delegitimized, his brand of politics would be transformed from a collection of taboos into a recipe for success. That already happened. And in a second term, the next step would be the legitimization of corruption from top to bottom.
No, I don't agree that he would "end democracy" or become "dictator for life" as some on the left claim. Instead, he would turn us into a full kleptocracy inside a democratic shell, with an electorate that would become so cynical that no decent person will want to enter public service again. The institutional structures would still exist, but the underlying moral logic would be gone.
Sort of like Putin's Russia.
What is the difference between "full kleptocracy inside a democratic shell" and dictatorship?
Ceratinly Putin's Russia is a dictatorship.
trump is psychopathic lunatic who people always underestimate. just look at the three scotus fanatics who he signed off on and what the damage they're doing.
In Minesweeper you can often get to a point where the only thing you can click has a 50/50 chance and there's no way around it.
How many such chances does it take to kill you? In the past month we've had about five rolls of these dice.
Trump just scraped in in 2016, much to his own surprise. He had no idea how government worked, or who to appoint to his cabinet. He faced more or less open hostility from half the Republicans in Congress including the Speaker. It took him years to start getting on top of this presidenting stuff, and by then his party had lost the House. He was preoccupied above all with getting re-elected and making money.
Apart from the preoccupation with making money, none of that would apply to a second term. His chief concerns this time will firstly be using his office to make Trump businesses some of the most consequential in the world, with multi-billion dollar partnerships with Middle Eastern governments. He'll also sell out Ukraine of course, so he can win a Nobel Prize.
His other driving ambition will be to achieve TOTAL AND COMPLETE VINDICATION. He considers himself the greatest president since Lincoln, if not of all time, and he'll be obsessed with getting that confirmed as the official record. This will mean not only quashing all his indictments and convictions, but getting his prosecutors condemned themselves as liars and traitors.
Meanwhile President-in-Waiting Vance will be pursuing the Project 2025 agenda in partnership with Republican leaders in Congress, who will presumably control both chambers. Kevin's confidence that there would be "some Republican holdouts" is nothing but wishful thinking; they'll all be gone the way of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Oh, and they could get to appoint two new hard right Supreme Court justices: one to replace Sotomayor if she dies and another for Thomas if he dies or retires, thus extending a Republican majority on the court for another 20 years or so. As we've seen from the last four years, that could be the most consequential outcome of all.
Agree.
OK Einstein, don't keep us in suspense. Why, in your opinion, do so many people refuse to vote for the Democrats even when the alternative is Donald Trump?
Why, in your opinion, do so many people refuse to vote for the Democrats even when the alternative is Donald Trump?
Mostly cultural stuff. Despite the assurances from the Warren-AOC wing to the contrary, a lot of voters who should be natural Democrats (and who used to be) prioritize cultural issues over economic deliverables. That doesn't mean Democrats can or should abandon their traditional championing of equality, fairness, environmental stewardship, scientific truth and so on. But it does mean they should be a little savvier about how they market themselves, which issues they feature most prominently, what language they employ in political campaigns, and which candidates they nominate.
Unfortunately, significant swaths of Democratic leadership believe their own BS that we'll attract a huge explosion of turnout if we but push hard enough to the left. And a lot of the Democratic operative and advocacy class really don't care either way if we win or lose, because they do perfectly well (maybe even better, financially) when in opposition.
IMHO many people refuse to vote for the Democrats BECAUSE the alternative is Donald Trump.
yup.
the only election since 2016 that wasn't a bloodbath for the gop was 2020 with Trump on ballot.
the downballot gop hasn't had an unquestionably good election nite since the 2017 georgia special when karen handel, uh, handily defeated TERRIBLE CANDIDATE jon ossoff for the seat trump dhhs secretary tom price gave up.
^This! The largest faction of today’s GOP is a cult of personality. They align with Trump’s bullying, prejudices, misogyny, unabashed self-seeking, vengefulness, bluster, performative ‘strength’, etc. He is inconsistent and erratic enough that his fans can project their own ill-informed views on him in the cases where they might not otherwise be in enthusiastic agreement. When their views do align with his, they feel affirmed. They don’t need debating, they need deprogramming.
“The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of who will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”
Davis X. Machina
A classic!
Everything will be fine in Kevinland, nothing to worry about.
Agreed. As an older, straight, married, white, man, with no kids, I probably won't *personally* be hurt. But many people that I like, love, or don't even know will be devastated.
In spite of his utter incompetence, his first term was a catastrophe that unleashed untold misery. Remember kids in cages? Pure Nazi shit.
My feeling is 2016 was TEOTWAWKI. 2024 is the coda.
Nobody has ever said the most important thing about Charles Manson is his age.
Kevin: he won't be able to physically deport millions of people. But he will massively fuck with the legal immigration system. He did so in 2017-2021 and this time around the Stephen Miller team will be more experienced.
I wonder how long Trump's tech bro friends will stick with him when it becomes next to impossible to bring in a top engineer from India?
Call me cynical, but I find it hard to believe those clever dudes wouldn't have assured themselves they're buying an open-ended supply of H-1Bs (or whatever classification they need) with all the money they're throwing at his campaign now. Oh, and by holding (deductible) corporate events at trump properties, of course. But since all the cool kids will be doing that anyway if they know what's good for them, it hardly bears mentioning.
Call me cynical, but I find it hard to believe those clever dudes wouldn't have assured themselves they're buying an open-ended supply of H-1Bs
Probably.
Kevin has described the least toxic possible Trump administration. He says, “Yes, yes, they're horrible, but it won't be so bad.” That's what people said about the W Bush administration, and the costs of that administration were tremendous. They weren't related to our Constitution and fundamental laws. Another Trump term would mean more Conservative judges and justices and a very long dark period for America.
We know Trump would be corrupt as ever and would employ unqualified people and would treat people horribly. That's a given. But, as someone who believes in climate change and the dangers of that, are you okay with rolling back laws related to stopping that trend? Are you okay with NOT progressing further on that score?
Trump has already said Putin can do whatever he wants, and presumably Trump would get a payoff for that. But, are Americans ready for a rejuvenated Putin, Russia, and OIL? Would Europeans ever forgive us? Would the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy continue to grow and devour Democracies around the world?
Given Trump's stupidity, we can expect the economy will misbehave, and he won't know how to fix it. While he was riding high on the Obama economy, he didn't have to do anything, but over time things may happen. What would he do then?
There's a short list of important things he could foul up:
Climate change, Democracy, Law, the National Debt and Economic health
At the current time, the State Department issues passports for trans people in their transitioned gender. I expect Trump to put an end to that, and perhaps invalidate all the passports already issued. Just like he, you know, banned gender-affirming care in the military during his first term.
Sure, it's not on *your* radar. It is definitely on ours.
Conservatives only care about an issue if it directly concerns them or perhaps someone they care about. Sometimes not even then. Empathy is not something Conservatives are known for. It's the self absorbed, self centered world view they share with Trump.
He doesn't need a law to impose an abortion ban, he'll just fire up the Comstock Act and halt movement of pills thru the mails. And then have someone from the 5th Circuit claim the 14th Amendment covers fertilized eggs (and backed up by SCOTUS) to declare fetal personhood and it's pretty much pre-Roe America.
And if he has the Senate, they will GLADLY remove the filibuster to SAVE THE BABIES!1! to pass a bill outlawing abortion.
And he's already started gutting environmental and labor law with gutting Chevron. We're not just voting for Biden to 'finish the job' we're trying to 'stop the damage.'
mr. drum's take on all this is so monumentally bad i felt compelled to comment which required me to go to the trouble of resetting my password so i might login and . . . drum roll . . . the aristocrats.
on a more serious note, is there no one in mr.drum's life who is trans? or currently enjoying marriage equality? or serving in the military while gay or trans? or suffering from a dangerous level of melanin? or . . .or . . .
mr. drum must live the most boringly white-bread life imaginable because i'm a 63 year old white guy in rural texas and i know many people in those categories who are acting as if their hair were on fire. with purpose i have several acquaintances who are leaving the south for good, people who were born into the south or moved here years ago. i know two trans women who have left the country and applied for ex-pat status in south america. i have a cousin by marriage who has moved to canada to get away from u.s. laws regarding trans issues.
whatever mr. drum is smoking may have given him apathia and athambia but it has not given the rest of us aphasia.
corrected for spelling and redacted of identifying references.
He will use an executive order to reclassify thousands of civil service employees as political ones. He doesn't need Congress for this. He already did it with Schedule F near the end of his first term; Biden rescinded it after taking office.
Aside from the obvious corruption and incompetence problems with this, it will also allow him to place people who will not resist his (now immunized) unconstitutional orders for retribution.
Today is a true classic in the "That Thing You're Worried About (Donald Trump ruining the country)? It's not a big deal to Kevin Drum" genre. Really upping his game here, you love to see it.
Pretty sure most of these fall under the "he won't do that because the law will stop him" category that has been rendered meangingless by the Supreme Court's current "he can do whatever he wants" policy.
I can't believe the same guy is pushing both "Biden must resign immediately" and "Eh, no big deal if a treasonous felon wins", maybe there are some side effects to the treatments that aren't immediately obvious.
I think you're wrong about a nationwide abortion ban. He probably could get Congress to do it if the R's control the House and Senate; they'd just get rid of the filibuster rule for abortion related laws.
He can probably also get the FDA to ban any drug related to abortion treatment. He might be able to get the FDA to ban D&Cs.
I also think you're wrong about the ACA -- he almost got rid of it last time, and he will probably try again. He really hates Obama, he'd get a lot of love from the Heritage people, and he's motivated more by revenge than anything else. And that would mean lifetime caps on coverage, and refusal to insure people with pre-existing conditions, even for some company plans.
His first term was a spoiled toddler screaming at adults in a room; his second term will be no adults in the room. Imagine even his first term but without the Rex Tillersons and Mike Milleys. Add four years of nurturing grievance and making up myths. Then add a lot of people who will take the place of the adults in the room this time around, and whose primary intent is indeed to: "17: Destroy democracy."
Who CARES if he can't succeed at mass deportation?! The fact that this is not only a stated goal but the centerpiece of his campaign, and half of American voters are apparently good with it, is more than enough reason to try to stomp this out now.
And anyway it is just a fig-leaf for creating a Trump-loyal militia, so he can use it to suppress the population.
The first mistake here is assuming that the President is like the Wizard of Oz, furiously pulling levers and flipping switches behind the curtains of the Oval Office.
The vast executive bureaucracy runs on autopilot even with th emost engaged of Presidents.
With Trump having no discipline or ambition, anything...ANYTHING...that the Project 2025 or Claremont folks want to do, will become law.
To test this, look at the abortion issue. Yes, I know Trump doesn't care about it, but that's the point. Even if he personally doesn't want a nationwide ban, he won't prevent it.
And in case something starts to have negative blowback, he can be easily led by the nose like a toddler following an ice cream cone.
This is what’s wrong with Democrats:
“There's even an upside: If Trump wins, maybe it will give Democrats some time sit back and think seriously about why so many people refuse to vote for them even when the alternative is Donald Trump.”
First of all, this is not the time to think of upsides to a Trump win. F*#k you. This is the time to get to work and dedicate ourselves to Trump’s defeat.
Also, instead of wasting time on fatalistic blog posts about a second Trump term, dedicate yourself instead to nonstop columns about Trump’s corruption, his felony convictions, his bankruptcies, his first administration failures, and his obviously impaired mental state.
He has no business being President, and that is the only G*d D@mn thing that any Democrat (or any intelligent person) should be writing about.
Then we need to get behind our candidate who at this point in time is Biden. Don’t like Biden? F*#k you. The alternative is worse, so grow the f*#k up and get over yourself.
And in addition to writing nonstop coverage about the manifest failure that is Trump, we also need to be laser focused on Biden’s stunningly successful track record as President. That is, in fact, the very least we can do.
We can also donate to the Biden campaign, donate to other Democratic campaigns, support campaign events in whatever way makes sense for us, and, of course, vote for Biden and other Democrats.
I do not actually promote blind partisanship. There’s a time and place for debate and course correction. But no one can force Biden to step down. And if he stays in (as I believe he will if his health permits), then the only intelligent option at that point is to support him with everything we’ve got.
Did he wound your pride by failing to obey your infallible wisdom when you decided he should step down? Again: f*#k you. And f*#k your pride. And f*#k your nihilistic gloom. Do you want be Eeyore or do you want to win?
Show some f*#king dignity and fight.
THIS^^^
A thousand times.
Kevin's analysis and conclusions are Panglossian at best. Dead wrong, really. I've heard these points before from an old white guy - far older than Kevin - and I have cut him off as bad for my blood pressure. This pattern of thought that 'nothing will be as bad as you think' when right-wing fascists take over is way beyond naive that I begin to wonder about the color of the sky on his planet. It's not just Trump - it is the dangerous and pretty clever enablers who will run the show, making sure to accomplish as much dismantling of the remnants of democracy so that there are no real future elections and that all non-whites are effectively suppressed.
It's time to wake up from whatever pastoral lethargy you have chosen, Kevin. This is a war. Stop being precious. Pick a f______ side.
I think what we all agree on is this: Biden is a coma would be a far better President than Trump in as full health as he can possibly be. This is why I am angry at the Biden-step-down battles that are carried out in full sight.
Too few people act as if this had ever occurred to them.