[The 2024 election will not resolve the authoritarian attraction
that the Trump vote represents. So it’s time to prepare now, not
later, for the political crisis that will undoubtedly emerge from that
event, whatever the vote count may prove to be.]
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WHAT A SECOND TRUMPOCRACY WOULD MEAN THE COMING CRISIS OF 2025  
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Clarence Lusane
October 26, 2023
TomDispatch
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_ The 2024 election will not resolve the authoritarian attraction
that the Trump vote represents. So it’s time to prepare now, not
later, for the political crisis that will undoubtedly emerge from that
event, whatever the vote count may prove to be. _

, Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 /
Flickr

 

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
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While still almost three million
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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.

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
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he gained 74 million
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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
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separate charges), being found liable
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sexual abuse, and a stated plan to exact retribution
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his enemies in a second term. And yet he will undoubtedly again
receive many tens of millions of votes.

In fact, you can count on one thing: the 2024 election will not
resolve the authoritarian attraction that the Trump vote represents.
So perhaps it’s time to prepare now, not later, for the political
crisis that will undoubtedly emerge from that event, whatever the vote
count may prove to be.

THE AUTHORITARIAN THREAT CONTINUES

A year from the next election, multiple scenarios are imaginable
including, of course, that neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden will be
contenders. While Biden’s health seems fine at present, he will be
only weeks away from his 82nd birthday on Election Day 2024. A lot
can happen, health-wise, in a year. When it comes to Trump, however,
Biden is now likely to be significantly healthier (mentally and
physically) than him. Among other things, no blatant lies or
well-tailored suits can hide his unhealthy obesity.

And while he relishes castigating Biden’s cognitive state, it was
Trump who only a few weeks ago, while giving a speech attacking the
president’s capabilities, stated
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he beat “Obama” in an election, that Americans needed IDs to buy
bread, and that Biden would lead the country into “World War II,”
which just happens to have ended 78 years ago. While some of Trump’s
GOP opponents like Vivek Ramaswamy
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Ron DeSantis
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and Nikki Haley
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indeed launched ageist attacks against him, it’s true that he’s
roughly in the same age group as Biden.

Meanwhile, don’t forget that Donald Trump’s legal health is on
life support. It’s a good bet that, in 2024, he will spend more time
in courtrooms than on the campaign trail. He may very well face that
moment of truth when he has to decide to cut a deal that keeps him out
of prison _and_ out of the White House.

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. 

TRUMP REMAINS A DANGER

Trump has already made it clear that he won’t accept any losing
outcome. 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
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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
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As he wrote on one of his social media posts (in caps) those
individuals are to him “RIGGERS
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That stable genius’s use of a term that rhymes with a racist slur
against Black people was undoubtedly no accident. After all, he spends
a considerable amount of his private time branding people. White
supremacists wasted hardly a moment in beginning to use the term
online, in part, to get around censors on the lookout for explicitly
racist terminology.

He is, in other words, already laying the foundation to claim election
fraud and creating the basis for another MAGA revolt. While there’s
plenty of reason to believe he won’t be able to draw tens of
thousands of his supporters to attack the Capitol again, not the least
being the Justice Department’s prosecution of hundreds of those who
tried it the last time, he’ll certainly have GOP members in Congress
ready to resist certifying a Democratic victory.

Trump’s desperation to win is driven not only by the prospect of
multiple convictions in his various trials, drawn-out appeals (that
are unlikely to be successful), and possible prison time of some sort,
but also by the brutal public dismantling of what’s left of 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
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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
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international sources alone, and a grand total of more than $1.6
billion
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all sources, during his presidency. As CREW put it
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“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.”

TRUMP’S VIOLENCE ADVOCACY GROWS

Trump’s legitimate fear of losing 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. His visit
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the Palmetto State Armory gun shop in Summerville, South Carolina, on
September 25th was an unambiguous message to them: get ready for war.

There, he admired a Glock pistol and was visibly eager to purchase it.
However, he ran into a legal snafu
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His spokesperson, Steven Cheung, initially posted a video on social
media celebrating Trump’s purchase of the Glock, a special “Trump
edition” that had a likeness of him and the words “Trump 45th”
etched on it. According to the _New York Times_, Trump
gleefully said
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“I want to buy one.”

However, after a staff member apparently realized that no one under
federal indictment could legally do so, the post was deleted and a
subsequent statement
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put up that read, “President Trump did not purchase or take
possession of the firearm. He simply indicated that he wanted one.”
The store would also have been liable under federal law 18 U.S.C. 922,
given that it would have been hard for its proprietors to deny that
they knew the former president was under multiple indictments.

That visit was more than just a message to his followers to arm
themselves. There are 158 gun stores
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South Carolina and yet Trump selected the very one linked
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a mass killing of Black people in Florida. At least one of the guns
used in those murders had been purchased at that very gun shop. On
August 26, 2023, white supremacist Ryan Christopher Palmeter went to a
Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, and murdered
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African Americans — Angela Michelle Carr, 52; Jerrald Gallion, 29;
and Anolt Joseph Laguerre Jr., 19 — and then killed himself as the
police closed in.

The shooter had two guns, a Glock and an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle,
one of them from the South Carolina Palmetto State Armory gun store.
Palmeter also left behind several racist manifestos
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That carnage occurred just a month before Trump’s visit and his
implicit decision to associate himself with that explosion of bigoted
violence — like an earlier trip to Waco, Texas, the site of a deadly
gunfight between federal law enforcement agents and antigovernment
extremists — helped reinforce the idea on the far right that violent
force is acceptable for political ends. In his speech
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Waco, his first “official” campaign rally for election 2024, Trump
stated, “I am your warrior, I am your justice… For those who have
been wronged and betrayed… I am your retribution.”

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.

All that said, Trump losing and sending his supporters into the
streets amid tantrums by congressional Republicans and Republican
state governors and legislatures would hardly be the worst possible
scenario.

After all, 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.

He would undoubtedly engage in a series of personal vendettas with the
sort of viciousness and resolve never before seen in Washington. He
would take a victory, no matter how marginal or questionable, in the
Electoral College as a mandate to attack all his perceived enemies
with whatever power his new presidency could muster. He’s also well
aware of a Department of Justice policy (of questionable legality) not
to prosecute a sitting president, which he’ll interpret as a license
of perpetual lawlessness. Trump’s persecution administration would
harken back to the worst days of McCarthyism and beyond.

And lest you think that’s the end of the matter, it only gets
worse. 

TRUMP WILL HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY MORE HELP IN A SECOND TERM

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
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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_
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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.

It also offers hundreds of new policies on issues ranging from the
environment and labor rights to education and health care. Its
underlying assumption: that, post-2024, a conservative president will
be in power for some time to come. (If so, Trump will, of course, have
the backing of Republicans in Congress, who again may control one or
both chambers, and a 6-3 Supreme Court majority.)

Count on this: resistance will be swift, massive, and enduring. Trump
and Republican minority rule would not go unchallenged and the
repression sure to follow would only generate yet more resistance and,
undoubtedly, a generation of political turbulence.

On the other hand, a significant electoral defeat for the Republicans
and Trump (along with his conviction on any number of criminal
charges) would certainly prove a major obstacle to future
authoritarianism. However, tens of millions of his voters will not go
quietly into the night, while far-right elected officials in Congress
and state legislatures will continue to push extreme conservative
policies. White nationalists and radical evangelicals will mobilize as
best as they can. Financial and political resources will be available.

The effort to defeat MAGA at all levels and in all ways politically
will go on, but progressives need to prepare for the challenge of 2024
and the perilous years to follow.

_CLARENCE LUSANE, a TomDispatch regular
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science professor and interim political science department chair at
Howard University, and Independent Expert to the European Commission
Against Racism and Intolerance. His latest book is Twenty Dollars and
Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice and
Democracy
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Lights)._

_Tom Engelhardt launched TomDispatch in October 2001 as an informal
listserv offering commentary and collected articles from the global
media to a select group of friends and colleagues. In November 2002,
it gained its name and, as a project of the Nation Institute (now the
Type Media Center), became a web-based publication aimed at providing
“a regular antidote to the mainstream media.”_

_In the 18 years since, TomDispatch has regularly published three
original articles weekly on subjects ranging from the American way of
war and this country’s “forever wars” to economic inequality to
the climate crisis. It has served as a syndicated source for websites
ranging from Alternet and Common Dreams to the Nation magazine
and Salon. Republished in newspapers, magazines, and scores of
websites worldwide over the years, TomDispatch articles have
garnered millions of pageviews, been translated into more than a dozen
languages, and been cited in publications from the New York Times to
the Washington Post and myriad media outlets in between._

* elections
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* Donald Trump
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* Joe Biden
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* Fascism
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* Authoritarianism
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