Bob Sheak, Nov 18, 2023
Introduction
This post considers the threats to U.S. democracy from Trump, who has the support of wealthy and powerful groups and a huge electoral base of tens of millions of Americans. Trump’s rhetoric has become increasingly violence-prone and with fascist overtones. 12 issues are identified that substantiate the extremist and anti-democratic goals of Trump, as he runs for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 without, at present, any serious Republican opponents.
What is fascism?
Here are a few responses.
#1 – Distinguished philosophy professor Jason Stanley defines fascism as “ultranationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, cultural), with the nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader who speaks on its behalf” (How Fascism Works, p. xiv). When it infuses politics, one of its dangers is that “it dehumanizes segments of the population,” “leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, ad expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination” (p. xv).
#2 – The Council on Foreign Relations offers the following answer. (https://world101.cfr.org/contemporary-history/world-war/what-fascism).
“Many experts agree that fascism is a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of both the nation and the single, powerful leader over the individual citizen. This model of government stands in contrast to liberal democracies, which support individual rights, competitive elections, and political dissent.
“In many ways, fascist regimes are revolutionary because they advocate the overthrow of existing systems of government and the persecution of political enemies. However, when it advances their interests, such regimes can also be highly conservative in their championing of traditional values related to the role of women, social hierarchy, and obedience to authority. And although fascist leaders typically claim to support the everyman, in reality their regimes often align with powerful business interests.”
#3 – The Merrium Webster Dictionary defines fascism as “ a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition” (https://www.merriam webster.com/dictionary/fascism).
Fascist systems then have the following characteristics: (1) a strong, dictatorial, leader; (2) the leader controls the government and other major institutions of the society; (3) the checks and balances of liberal democracy are eliminated; (4) the interests of the rich and powerful are advanced; (4) the opponents are repressed; (5) the rights, or many of the rights, of even his electoral base are taken from them.
Fascism vs. authoritarianism
Doctor Paradox adds to the meaning of “fascism” by contrasting it with authoritarianism (https://doctorparadox.net/dictionaries/authoritarianism/authoritarianism-vs-fascism).
“Fascism is a specific type of authoritarianism. Both are forms of government characterized by tightly centralized power, either under a sole dictatorship / demagogue or a small cadre of rulers — typically of wealthy oligarchs — where rule is absolute and the vast majority of people have little say in policy-making or national events. Identifying authoritarianism vs. fascism isn’t always a clearcut distinction, particularly given that one of the hallmarks of fascism is often that fascist leaders tend to conceal or hide their ideological aims until they achieve power and sometimes even beyond — so as not to alert the public to their true plans until it’s too late for people to fight back.”
“Under both authoritarianism and fascism, there is little or no political freedom and few (if any) individual rights. Authoritarian governments often use force or coercion to maintain control, dissent is typically suppressed, and political violence is tacitly encouraged so long as it is in support of the ruling regime.”
Trump’s anti-democratic promise
While the United States is not yet a fascist society, Trump and much of the Republican Party hold views and engage in actions that threaten to take America toward such a society. If they win control of the White House and Congress in 2024, Trump tells us they will take steps to weaken, if not destroy, democracy, and advance an agenda that embodies extremist values and undemocratic institutional arrangements.
Here I organize a critique of Trump fascistic slant around 12 issues. The point is to alert readers, as many have done, about this unprecedented threat to American democracy.
#1 – Trump the LEADER and the big lie
Trump remains the leader of the Republican Party. He unceasingly claims that he won the 2020 presidential election, despite the overwhelming evidence that he did not (e.g., The January 6 Report by the House January 6th Committee). The evidence. “In total, the Trump Campaign and allies of President Trump filed 62 separate lawsuits between November 4, 2020, and January 6, 2021, calling into question or seeking to overturn the election results. Out of 62 cases, only one case results in a victory for the President Trump or his allies, which affected relatively few votes, did not vindicate any underlying claims of fraud, and would not have changed the outcome in Pennsylvania.” Indeed, “In every state in which claims were brought, one or more judges specifically explained as part of the dismissal orders that they had evaluated the plaintiffs’ allegations or supposed proof of widespread election fraud or other irregularities, and found the claims to be entirely unconvincing” (p. 210).
#2 – The Big Lie is widely accepted by Republicans
Most Republicans in the U.S. Congress accept or go along with this false claim, as reflected in the recent vote in choosing a Speaker taken by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. The litmus test for House Republicans was that a Speaker should be someone who accepts Trump’s lies about winning the 2020 presidential election and his right-wing agenda. Marc Elias provides some information on the new Speaker Mike Johnson’s views and record (https://democracydocket.com/opinion/a-big-lie-ring-leader-becomes-speaker-of-the-house). The article was published on Oct. 30, 2023.
“The newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (La.) is no ordinary Republican election denier. He was a ringleader in one of the most dangerous efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He used his position as a lawyer and member of Congress to legitimize the fringe legal theory underpinning the ‘Big Lie.’ Other than former President Donald Trump, he is arguably the most culpable federal elected official in what transpired on Jan. 6, 2021.
Johnson “combines MAGA Republicanism with Christian nationalism. Shortly after becoming speaker, Johnson told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that anyone looking to understand his world view should ‘go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.’
“When it comes to issues of democracy, Johnson is an avid vote suppressor and an accomplished election denier. He is best thought of as a cross between Jim Jordan and John Eastman.
“Like Jordan, Johnson is a solid MAGA vote for Trump in Congress. He has a history of advancing the racist ‘great replacement theory’ — that Democrats want to bring undocumented people into the country to vote. He voted against the bipartisan law that reformed the Electoral Count Act as well as the voting rights bills that Congress tried to advance over the last two years.
“No federal officeholder, other than Trump himself, bears more responsibility than Mike Johnson for the destruction and degradation of democracy we saw that day [Jan. 6, 2021].
“Like Eastman, Johnson was a lawyer for 20 years before joining Congress and advocated for deeply conservative and right-wing causes. And like the now-indicted Eastman, Johnson espoused dangerous and anti-democratic legal theories aimed at allowing Trump to remain in power in the aftermath of the 2020 election.”
“…Johnson argued that the results in several states were invalid. Relying on a virulent version of the fringe independent state legislature theory, he argued that since some courts had altered state election procedures to protect voting rights during the pandemic, the result of those state’s elections were illegal and should be rejected.”
“Trump called the case “the big one.” Johnson agreed and was ready to go all in.
On Dec. 9, Johnson sent an email to House Republicans, asking his colleagues to sign onto a brief supporting Texas’ effort to disenfranchise tens of millions and flip the election results. Leading this legal effort in the House, Johnson made sure to note that Trump was “anxiously awaiting the final list” of members who signed on.
The fact that the House Republicans’ attorney reportedly told Johnson that his arguments were unconstitutional made no difference. Ultimately 126 Republican members signed onto the brief with Johnson proudly leading the pack. The Dec. 9, 2020 email sent by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) to House Republicans asking them to sign onto an amicus brief in Texas v. Pennsylvania.
“A day later, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition 7-2. But the damage had been done.
“Johnson had laid the legal groundwork for Republicans to reject the election results and gave a patina of legitimacy to the illegitimate aims of those set to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. Most importantly, he had given Trump a three-week head start in creating the list of Republican members who were with him and those who were not.”
#3 – Trump’s electoral base is unwaveringly committed to him
Support for Trump is widespread in the society. Currently, according to polls, he is by far the most popular presidential candidate for 2024 among Republicans. His supporters agree with Trump’s assertions that he won the election, the Big Lie. They like his agenda and thuggish style. His corporate and wealthy backers like his positions on reducing taxes, deregulation, support for maximizing the extraction, use, and export of fossil fuels, and cutting federal spending. His massive electoral base of tens of millions of right-wing voters stick with him because he promises to shake up and transform government, protect maximum gun rights, endorse the primacy of ultra-conservative Christian positions, ban or severely limit reproductive rights, take military action to make the southern border secure against most immigrants, and, as president, get rid of Democrats and moderates in federal agencies while replacing them with sycophants.
#4 – A lot of Americans embrace Trump’s “authoritarianism”
Philip Bump, a Washington Post columnist based in New York, analyzes why so many Americans “embrace Trump’s authoritarianism”
(https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/10/lot-americans-embrace-trumps-authoritarianism). He writes:
“With every hour that passes, Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination grows tighter. Every day in which his opponents aren’t gaining ground on his position is a day in which he gets nearer to appearing on the ballot next November and nearer to possibly being inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025.
“To many observers, there’s an incongruity to this. After all, recent days have also brought new awareness of Trump’s plans should he be inaugurated on that day, plans that are often unvarnished embraces of an authoritarian use of power. Trump plans to root out disloyal bureaucrats and install ideologically sympathetic ones. He’s speaking openly of using the Justice Department to target his opponents, including to hobble possible political opponents. And that’s just to name two recent examples.”
Disturbingly, many Americans support the turn toward authoritarianism. Bumb refers to the annual American Value Survey released by PRRI [Public Religion Research Institute] in October and other evidence.
“Last month, PRRI released the results of its annual American Values Survey. The pollsters asked respondents a slew of questions measuring their views of the country and its politics in the moment. Included among the questions was one that specifically addressed the question of authoritarianism: Did they think that things in the U.S. had gone so far off track that we need a leader who would break rules in order to fix the country’s direction?
“About 2 in 5 respondents said they did. That included nearly half of Republicans.”
“Back in early 2016, political scientist and consultant Matthew MacWilliams identified support for authoritarian tendencies as a key indicator of support for Trump among Republican primary voters. Before the 2020 election, he revisited the idea, noting that ‘approximately 18 percent of Americans are highly disposed to authoritarianism, according to their answers to four simple survey questions used by social scientists to estimate this disposition.’
“One asked a question similar to PRRI’s, about willingness to let a ‘strong leader’ do what he or she wants. Another centered on perceptions of the media. A third focused on opposition to diversity.
“The American National Election Studies survey conducted around presidential elections included questions that approximated the ones asked by MacWilliams.
“Less than half of respondents objected to the idea that we need a strong leader, even if the leader bends existing rules. A plurality of conservatives endorsed that idea. Less than half of respondents similarly expressed concern that the government might want to muffle critical reporting with a plurality of conservatives again expressing a lack of concern about that possibility.”
“CNN’s most recent polling, conducted by SSRS, shows that Trump leads Biden nationally by a 4-point margin, statistically even. Even given Trump’s response to the 2020 election, though, and the myriad criminal charges he faces, respondents were five points more likely to say they would be proud to have him as president then said the same of Biden.
“CNN’s poll also asked people to measure Biden and Trump on personal characteristics. Most respondents said that they thought Biden had respect for the rule of law; only about a third said the same of Trump.
“But remember: 49 percent of respondents prefer Trump over Biden. Meaning that at least 14 percent of respondents both think that Trump doesn’t respect the rule of law and want him to be president.”
Bump continues. “The issue of Trump’s legal challenges is itself instructive. For years, he’s argued that investigations into his actions are inherently political, efforts to subvert his political success. He frames this as an elite response to his fighting for average Americans, a message that resonates with his base. Despite the obvious evidence for Trump’s wrongdoing — the Capitol riot, the documents found at Mar-a-Lago, the attempts to overturn the election results in Georgia — most Americans told YouGov pollsters in August that they viewed the charges as intended to block Trump politically.
“About 4 in 5 Republicans held that view. That they would then shrug at Trump doing the same to his opponents is unsurprising.”
#5 – Trump says his opponents are “vermin”
Trump’s rhetoric is filled with threats against opponents, calling them “vermin,”
according to a report by Azi Paybarah, (https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/13/white-house-biden-trump-vermin). Paybarah quotes Trump from a campaign speech he gave.
“‘We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,’ Trump said in New Hampshire, repeating the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. ‘They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.’”
Such language is reminiscent of Hitler. “Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, said in an email to The Washington Post that ‘calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.’”
Paybarah continues. “In the Saturday speech, Trump also called himself a ‘very proud election denier,’ and said ‘the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. Because if you have a capable, competent, smart, tough leader, Russia, China, North Korea, they’re not going to want to play with us.’”
#6 – Many in Trump’s “base” believe that violence is justified in support for Trump.
Kenny Stancil cites research that “12 Million US Adults Think Violence Is Justified to Put Trump Back in White House” (https://commondreams.org/news/12-million-us-adults-think-violence-justified-to-restore-trump-presidency). The article was published on June 9, 2023. He writes,
“More than two years after the deadly January 6 insurrection, 12 million people in the United States, or 4.4% of the adult population, believe the use of violence is justified to restore former President Donald Trump to power, The Guardian reported Friday.”
“We’re heading into an extremely tumultuous election season,” Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor and CPOST director, told The Guardian. “What’s happening in the United States is political violence is going from the fringe to the mainstream.” [CPOST is the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats.]
“The CPOST survey conducted in April found that 20% of U.S. adults still believe ‘the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president,’ down only slightly from the 26% who said so in 2021.
“‘What you’re seeing is really disturbing levels of distrust in American democracy, support for dangerous conspiracy theories, and support for political violence itself,’ Pape told The Guardian.”
“‘Once you have support for violence in the mainstream, those are the raw ingredients or the raw combustible material and then speeches, typically by politicians, can set them off,’ said Pape. ‘Or if they get going, speeches can encourage them to go further.’”
“Several right-wing candidates who echoed Trump’s relentless lies about President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory lost in last year’s midterms. But more than 210 others—including at least two who participated in the January 6 rally that escalated into an attack on the U.S. Capitol—won congressional seats and races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, underscoring the extent to which election denialism is now entrenched in the GOP and jeopardizes U.S. democracy for the foreseeable future.”
“The research center’s most recent survey found that ‘almost 14%—a minority of Americans, but still a significant number—believe the use of force is justified to ‘achieve political goals that I support,’ the newspaper reported. More specifically, 12.4% believe it’s justified to restore the federal right to abortion, 8.4% believe it’s justified to ensure members of Congress and other government officials do the right thing, 6.3% think it’s justified to preserve the rights of white Americans, and 6.1% believe it’s justified to prevent the prosecution of Trump.’”
“More optimistically, the survey found that over 77% of U.S. adults want Republicans and Democrats in Congress to issue a joint statement condemning any political violence.
“‘There’s a tremendous amount of opposition to political violence in the United States,’ Pape remarked, ‘but it is not mobilized.’
#7 – Trump as the Martyr and Savior
Marc Fisher considers why Trump’s fans go along with viewing the ex-president as a martyr like Jesus (https://washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/10/11/trump-jesus-why-he-casts-himself-martyr-why-fans-go-along).
“When Donald Trump’s civil trial on fraud allegations began in Manhattan last month, some of his most avid fans pictured him sitting alongside the archetypal martyr, Jesus. Trump quickly circulated the faux courtroom sketch to his social media followers.
“At rallies, in fundraising letters and wherever he can find an attentive listener, the former president — who faces 91 felony charges, four criminal trials and, in the New York civil case, the prospect of a court-ordered dismantling of his financial empire — has taken up a new mantra: ‘They’re not after me; they’re after you,’ said the headline plastered across the top of Trump’s campaign website when the trial began. ‘I’m just standing in the way.’”
“Over the pasteight years, Trump has often devoted as much attention to touting his victimhood and the attacks upon him as to expressing his goals or ideals for the country.
“The showman who parlayed his personal brand and a life in the gossip pages and on reality TV into the presidencyhas cultivatedan identity as Trump the martyr. Claiming he has been ‘harassed, investigated, defamed, slandered, and persecuted like no elected leader in American history,’ as he put it in a fundraising appeal last fall, Trump now routinely appeals to supporters to view him as the single figure who will weather attacks on their behalf, standing up for those who’ve been left behind by the country’s wealthy and powerful forces.”
From his earliest feuds in the New York real estate world half a century ago to his characterization of his 2024 presidential campaign as a “Final Battle” against those who would take him down, Trump has positioned himself as the one who will suffer on behalf of his followers or customers, said Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer and attorney who broke with his former boss midway through the White House yearsand spent more than a year in prison after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress.
“To protect his incredibly fragile ego, he needs to create this victimization,” said Cohen. “The problem can’t be him, so who else can it be? That’s where the martyrdom comes in: He has to shift the blame on someone else, and then he can say, ‘The only one standing in between them and you is me.’”
“With each new charge, Trump sent out fundraising letters in which he presented himself as a perpetual victim of the authorities’ attacks. ‘No matter what our sick and deranged political establishment throws at me, no matter what they do to me, I will endure their torment and oppression, and I will do it willingly,’ he said in a fundraising appeal last fall. ‘Our cruel and vindictive political class is not just coming after me — they are coming after YOU.’”
“Although Trump has recently stepped up his portrayal of himself as a martyr, the instinct to tout his suffering on behalf of ‘the forgotten men and women’ has been a mainstay of his rhetorical repertoire throughout his venture into politics. In his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly offered himself as the one candidate who would absorb the disdain that the country’s elites aimed at the ‘deplorables,’ the mantle many Trump supporters adopted after Democratic nomineeHillary Clinton tarred them with that description in a fundraising speech.
“Trump regularly positions himself as the one man who will selflessly sacrifice on behalf of ‘the forgotten men and women of this country.’ Yale historian Timothy Snyder has called Trump ‘the martyr in chief, the high priest of the big lie,’ creator of a sacred cause — the reinstallation of Trump in the Oval Office — for which his followers sacrificed themselves on Jan. 6, 2021, during the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Although Trump is not particularlyreligious and privately scoffs at the devout, he has happily adopted apocalyptic language and welcomed comparisons to Jesus.
When Trump was arraigned in New York in April, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a Trump acolyte, said he was ‘joining some of the most incredible people in history” who “have been arrested and persecuted by radical corrupt governments …, including Nelson Mandela and Jesus.’
“‘There is a kind of theological motif to his rhetoric, oddly enough for Donald Trump,’ said Roderick Hart, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has written extensively on Trump’s use of language. ‘When you see Trump in church, he doesn’t know what to do. He stands there totally perplexed.
‘But he uses the language of the martyr, who so thoroughly believes in his propositions that he’s willing to die for it. But the thought of actually sacrificing himself is not likely to occur to him. He says, ‘I’m taking this for you,’ but then he says, ‘Now let’s talk some more about me.’”
“Unlike many charismatic figures, Hart said, Trump wins supporters not by saying what he will do for them, but by promising to withstand pain for them.”
“To his supporters, ‘Trump is a martyr; in his mind, he has been sacrificed,’ said Hart, the Texas professor. ‘He’s profoundly cynical, but he really believes someone with his stature can’t possibly be rejected by sentient human beings.’
When Trump describes the court cases against him as ‘an attempt to hurt me in an election,’ when he calls polls that show him to be unpopular ‘fake,’ when he contends baselessly that the election he lost in 2020 was “stolen,” he comes off to those who loathe him as a dangerouslyparanoid narcissist. But to those who admire him, he is a righteous warrior martyred by people who want to undermine their country.”
#8 – What A Second Trumpocracy Would Mean
Clarence Lusane, a political science professor and interim political science department chair at Howard University, and Independent Expert to the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, considers what a “second Trumpocracy [or presidency] would mean”
(https://tomdispatch.com/what-a-second-trumpocracy-would-mean). The article was published on Oct. 26, 2023.
One thing is already clear, Lusane maintains. “If he becomes the official nominee of the Republican Party in next year’s presidential race, Donald Trump will receive tens of millions of votes in the general election. He may get less than the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. He may get more. Regardless, tens of millions of GOP, conservative, and extremist voters will cast their ballots for him.
“In 2016, despite his history of elitist, racist, and sexist behavior, failed businesses, lack of governing experience, and no demonstrated past of caring for anyone but himself, he won nearly 63 million votes. While still almost three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton got, it was not just enough for a victory in the Electoral College but a clear warning of things to come.”
Lusane continues. “In 2020, after four years of non-stop chaos, the death of more than 200,000 Covid victims at least in part because of his mishandling of the pandemic, a legitimate and warranted impeachment, abuse of power, ceaseless corruption, and more than 30,000 documented public lies, he gained 74 million votes, even if, in the end, he lost the election.
“Now, in addition to all that history, you can add on the incitement of a violent insurrection, a second impeachment for attempting to overthrow the government, four criminal indictments (91 separate charges), being found liable for sexual abuse, and a stated plan to exact retribution against his enemies in a second term. And yet he will undoubtedly again [in the 2024 presidential election] receive many tens of millions of votes.”
“In any case, the current trajectory remains Biden vs. Trump 2.0 while, whatever the outcome of the election, this nation seems to be headed for a crisis of historic proportions. No matter who wins, next November 7th will do nothing to end the divisions that exist in this country. In fact, it’s only likely to exacerbate and amplify them.”
#9 – Trump will not accept defeat in 2024
“Trump has already made it clear that he won’t accept any losing outcome,” according to Lusane. Neither will millions of his followers. For modern Republican Party leaders and their base, election rejection (if they lose) has become an ironclad principle. On the stump, Trump has already begun to emphasize that the spiraling legal cases against him are ‘election interference,’ that the Democrats are putting the pieces in place to steal the election from him, and that the Black judge and prosecutors holding him accountable are ‘racists.’” He insists that he can only lose the 2024 election if there is rampant fraud and illegal votes for the Democratic presidential candidate, probably Joe Biden. He will “certainly have GOP members in Congress ready to resist certifying a Democratic victory.”
Trump particularly fears losing his financial empire.
“The civil suit New York Attorney General Letitia James brought against Trump and the Trump organization has already resulted in a devastating judgment by Judge Arthur Engoron. He ruled Trump and his adult sons liable and immediately stripped them of their control over their businesses. Trump may now not only lose all his New York business properties but have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution. For someone whose whole identity is linked to his purported wealth, there could hardly have been a more crushing blow.
“In his mind, a second term as president clearly has little to do with benefiting the country, the Republican Party, or even the rest of his family. It’s his only path to shutting down the two federal cases against him in Florida and Washington, D.C. However, even such a win wouldn’t help him with the election interference case in Georgia or the hush-money criminal case in New York. Convictions in either of those would mean further accountability sooner or later. A second term would undoubtedly offer him another chance to monetize the presidency, just as he did the first time around, in a fashion never before seen.
“His record is still being investigated but, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Trump raked in tens of millions of dollars that way. It reports that Trump’s businesses took in more than $160 million from international sources alone, and a grand total of more than $1.6 billion from all sources, during his presidency. As CREW put it: ‘Trump’s presidency was marred by unprecedented conflicts of interest arising from his decision not to divest from the Trump Organization, with his most egregious conflicts involving businesses in foreign countries with interests in U.S. foreign policy.’”
#10 – Trump says violence is aceptable
According to Lusane, Trump’s legitimate fear of losing the 2024 presidential election is “pushing him toward ever more strident and violent language. He’s also signaling to his followers that the use of force to put him in power (or go after those who deny it to him) is all too acceptable.
“The chaos and disorder likely to follow any Trump loss in 2024 will only be further enhanced if the GOP keeps control of the House of Representatives or wins control of the Senate. A number of congressional Republicans have shown that they will not hesitate to do all they can to put Trump back in the White House, including igniting a constitutional crisis by refusing to certify Electoral College votes.
Even worse, “if Trump were to win, the extremists in and out of government would immediately be empowered to carry out the most right-wing agenda since the height of the segregationist era. A reelected Trump will find the most loyal (to him) and corruptible cabinet members possible. Their only necessary qualification will be a willingness to follow his orders without hesitation, whether or not they’re legal, ethical, or by any stretch of the imagination good for the country.
Count on one thing: it wouldn’t be an America First but a Trump First and Last administration.
#11 – Trump will know better how to create a submissive executive branch in a second presidential term
Jonathan Swan, Maggie Hagerman and Charlie Savage report that “Mr. Trump and his backers want to increase presidential power over federal agencies, centralizing greater control over the entire machinery of government in the White House” (https://nytimes.com/article/trump-2025-second-term.html). Here’s some of what Swan and his colleagues write.
“They have adopted a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory, which says the president can directly command the entire federal bureaucracy and that it is unconstitutional for Congress to create pockets of independent decision-making authority.
“As part of that plan, Mr. Trump also intends to revive an effort from the end of his presidency to alter civil-service rules that protect career government professionals, enabling him to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists. After Congress failed to enact legislation to block such a change, the Biden administration is developing a regulation to essentially Trump-proof the federal work force. However, since that is merely an executive action, the next Republican president could simply undo it the same way.
Lusane also reports, “Beyond Trump’s individual sociopathic behavior, a far-right agenda is being created that will provide a certain ideological clarity to his bumbling authoritarianism. The policy work, not just from the Trump campaign but from Project 25, should scare everyone. A $22 million initiative by the rightwing Heritage Foundation, Project 25 has already produced a 920-page book, Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise, detailing plans to reshape the federal government. If implemented, its strategy would write ‘the end’ to the classic separation of powers, checks and balances, and even a non-partisan civil service. Every single federal department and agency would instead be restructured to fall under the complete control of the president.”
#12 – “The Far Right Has a ‘Battle Plan’ to Undo Climate Progress Should Trump Win in 2024”
Kristoffer Tigue reports on this on August 1, 2023
Tigue writes, “The proposal, called Project 2025, would gut environmental spending, stymie clean energy development and fundamentally shift how federal agencies regulate U.S. industries.
“Far-right conservative groups are promoting a sprawling ‘battle plan’ to obstruct and undo the federal government’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis, with hopes of quickly enacting a series of sweeping changes if Donald Trump, or any other Republican, gets elected as president next year.
If implemented, the plan “would not only undo any progress the Biden administration has made to reduce emissions and fund clean energy development and other climate-related efforts, but it would make it far more difficult for a future administration to pursue any policy that seeks to address global warming at all, according to a report last week by POLITICO. The plan would even make it challenging for federal agencies to carry out common environmental protections that have been practiced in the country for more than 50 years.
The plan was written by more than 350 right-wing hardliners—including former Trump staffers—the plan would block wind and solar power from being added to the electrical grid; gut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency; eliminate the Department of Energy’s renewable energy offices; prohibit states from adopting California’s tailpipe pollution standards, transfer many federal environmental regulatory duties to Republican state officials; and generally prop up the fossil fuel industry.”
Concluding thoughts
Trump and his allies want to undermine U.S. democracy. If they win control of the White House and both chambers of the U.S. Congress they will have ample opportunity to do this.
U.S. history is, at least in part, a history of violence against indigenous people, people of color (especially, African-Americans), immigrants, workers and unions, women’s rights, and others. It is reflected in the Civil War, as southern white plantation owners and their government and grassroots supporters fought a losing and bloody war to expand slavery in the west. Adam Hochschild recaptures the government’s suppression of war opponents, socialists, and trade unions during WWI in his book, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis. Kevin M. Krouse and Julian E. Zelizer edit a collection of essays by historians “to take on the biggest legends and lies” in American history. The book’s title: Myth America. Dana Milbank analyzes the “twenty-five year crack-up of the Republican Party” in his book, The Destructionists. Dan Pfeiffer focuses his book on the “big lie” promoted by right-wing media (Battling the Big Lie: How Fox, Facebook, and the Mega Media are Destroying America). Among the most troubling books is the book by Malcolm Nance, They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency.
Malcom Nance does not mince words. He is a globally renowned expert on terrorism, extremism, and insurgency and best-selling author. He offers the following description of Trump’s electoral base in his book titled They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency (publ. 2022). This base is anti-democratic and willing to accept violence if necessary to achieve their goals.
“The Trump worshipping base has become an openly fascist movement. It endangers the nation with near constant threats to take up arms and create political instability through violence. The goals of TITUS [Trump Insurgency in the United States] are not just to alter and coopt the national dialogue but to dismantle the framework of government and the Constitution itself. They openly advocate the destruction of America’s diversity, multiculturalism, and equality. They continue to demand that an unelected dictator be put back into office. They want a strongman who will impose the will and ideology of forty million misguided people over the voices and lives of all other Americans” (p. 241).
Vital issues - challenging pol and econ power 