A rational look at what Trump will/won't/can/can't do in his next term

Politics & Elections
1

Right now I realize we are all feeling a mixture of panic and despair but I think it might be good to step back and think about what actual policy changes Trump will have the interest and ability to implement.

First we need to take a look at where we are. We are not actually Germany 1933. We aren’t a country suffering from massive hyperinflation and an humiliating defeat desperate for a strong leader to bring us back to our former glory. Instead we are a nation of marginally attentive voters who saw the price of hot pockets go from $2.50 a box to $3.89 and believed it when the media said it was the fault of the current administration. Outside of the die hard MAGA group I don’t think that there is much appetite for a dictatorship.

Trump has a conservative court, and will probably have the majority in both houses of Congress, but his support is not entirely ironclad. The House membership couldn’t even elect the speaker he wanted last time around. Further the Supreme court is really the McConnell court. It will support Trump so long as his his agenda matches that of the Federalist Society, but I don’t think that they actually like him very much. And certainly don’t want to hand all of their power to him. Lower courts are even more diverse, not every Federal judge is as pliant as Cannon, venue shopping can work wonders but not every decision is going to go Trump’s way.

So now after that long preamble I want to get to what constitutes the majority of the discussion in this thread, looking at individual Trump/conservative priorities and evaluating how they will play out. The list below is just some of what is on my mind at the time, feel free to add new topics

Remaking of the Federal Bureaucracy: This is the big one, the rock on which Project 2025 was built, and will heavily influence how much can get done on items further down the list. I think that they will find this much harder to do than they thought. I suspect that rather than getting a strong decisive govenment ramrodding the conservative agenda through lady liberty to bring the utopia of Giliad. I think that is will be filled with people being put in power who have no idea how the system works, resulting in disfunction, chaos and infighting. Its going to be bad in that we won’t have a functioning government but it won’t really do what they want it to do.

Trump going after poliitical enemies: I don’t see much success going after individuals. most likely it will consist of a bunch of tax audits (assuming he can successfully take over the IRS) and investigations by the justice department, on random charges. This will be annoying and expensive in terms of lawyer fees for those targeted but I doubt that they will lead to many if any actual successful prosecutions. Going after businesses and most importantly media companies who piss him off is another thing. If he can strong arm the SEC, and FEC to go after undesirably companies he could pressure then to do his bidding.

Abortion: I don’t think that this is something that Trump really wants but his conservative base does. On the other hand Republicans realize that this is not an issue that they have popular support with. I suspect we will get a push of a nationwide total ban, which will be watered down to a 12 or 16 week ban with cut outs for rape, incest and health of mother. I give it a 50/50 shot of passing, if it passes Donald will sign it.

Ukraine Unfortunately this is something that merely requires inaction rather than action, so it will be easy for Trump to succeed. Europe and Ukraine are on their own.

Climate change as with Ukraine it just depends on inaction, so pretty much any attempt to halt it will be stopped.

Tariffs and the Economy: As much has Trump loves his Tariff idea, big money doesn’t and will push back against him if he tries this. I think he will get a few token Tariffs out that he can point to to claim as an accomplishment, but not the 20-30% cross the board taxes he promised. Tax cuts for the rich are of course a done deal. The real question I have is how much he is able to insert cronies into various bureaus that send out economic statistics he can make them as rosy as he wants. Of course it will be obvious and he will be called on it, but that never stopped him before. And the main effect of it will be that no one will be able to trust these numbers leading to great uncertainty in the markets.

Immigration: As with Tariffs deporting millions of undocumented immigrants is not going to make big money happy. But unlike Tariffs this is something that his base really cares about. So I think he will have to make an attempt. However once it starts and he finds that it isn’t as easy as he thought, and when the reality of ICE busting down doors and hauling off people who have been your neighbors for years start coming out, it will lose its popularity. In the end I think that it will lead to a really bad year or two, but fall well short of promises, very much like his beautiful wall.

Get out of jail free cards The charges against Trump himself will be dropped, and pardons will be handed out to the Jan 6th crowd and anyone else who was convicted due to actions supportive of the big lie. Additional pardons will be given on a case by case basis depending on the degree to which the convict can successfully demonstrate his usefulness to Trump. Gratuitiees are of course accepted. Which bring us to …

Grift There will be plenty of this at all levels in every conceivable way. The supreme court has legalized bribery for official acts at the presidential level so long as he doesn’t get impeached by 2/3 of the senate. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes out richer than Musk at the end of it.

Cancelling future elections I think by the time 2028 rolls around Trump will be ready to retire. He will not be facing any legal issues that require him to remain in power, and he will have grifted more money than god, and actually working is kind of a drag. Further the people who really decide these things for the most part are the courts, and as I stated above they really aren’t going to be interested in living in a dictatorship, neither are the lawmakers who have adapted to the current system (it got them in power in the first place didn’t it) so I really don’t think this will happen.

This post has gotten way too long so I’ll stop here but I look forward to hearing other thoughts expecting many to say that I am being hopelessly naive and will learn the truth when I’m packed off to a MAGA reeducation camp.

2

Of all of what he can do, this is the one that makes me the most angry. He’s going to go to his grave having never taken responsibility for his actions. It makes the Rule of Law merely a suggestion which can be ignored if you’re wealthy and/or powerful enough.

Trump is a solid argument for why the Presidential Pardon power needs to be seriously rethought.

3

Germany was not suffering from hyperinflation in 1933; the era of hyperinflation and devaluation of the “Papiermark“ was done by the end of 1923, and the currency was replaced by the Reichmark (with a brief interlude of stabilizing Rentenmark) which appreciated steadily in pace with the moderate inflation into the 1930s. By 1928 Germany was experiencing “The Golden Age of Weimar” with massive increases in discretionary consumer spending fueling thriving manufacturing industries and had also negotiated war reparations payments over a much longer schedule:

This view and your list below read as if you are assuming that this is all just politics as usual with a slight right-sloping bent, and not the off-ramp to democratic governance that Project 2025 portends. Whether the House or federal courts aid or resist a Heritage Foundation-enabled Trump Administration is almost irrelevant; the entire point is the implementation of “unitary executive power”, which is really only limited by how well Trump—or rather, the flunkies appointed into his Cabinet and senior positions as figureheads for their backers—can manage executive bureaucracies, which is to say, they’ll probably be better at tearing things down than building them up and using existing agencies to their intended ends, but it can still do massive damage to both the economy and social ‘safety net’ programs, which this band of monkeys will happily dismantle without consideration for what the public thinks. And if the courts get in the way, Trump can just have compliant members of Congress gin up a new court for him (with the precedent of FISA courts), which is exactly what Hitler did with the Sondergericht when the Weimar courts gave him grief about attacking political opponents and minority groups.

The idea that “We are not actually Germany 1933” is a very dangerous minimization of a would-be demagogue who has openly expressed the intent of being a dictator (“only on Day One,” as if any autocrat ever voluntarily gives up power once they have it), and a deep look at US society and the economy shows disturbing and even stunning parallels to late Weimar Era Germany. I’ve been reading Volker Ullrich’s Hitler: Ascent 1889–1939 in which these similarities are stark and frankly terrifying, and should be required reading for anyone trying to prognosticate about what a Trump Administration will try to do. If you don’t have the time or inclination to read an almost thousand page tome, Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works is quite short at barely two hundred pages and is breezy prose for an unfortunately topical issue. Please read one of these if you really want some context for what emergent fascism looks like and why people just assume it can’t happen in their country even while it is literally occurring at their doorstep.

Stranger

4

However if it is limited to newcomers a lot of people may get behind it, especially in urban (blue) areas.

And if he does, we now have inflation. I hope his Sec’y of Commerce can convince him that he can have tariffs or lower inflation, not both.

They got what they want, states rights re: abortion. I think they realize they would never get a national ban on abortion otherwise this SCOTUS would have already given it.

Not from state attorneys

Business as usual

I’m going to group this with the rest of, “Trump will do X, Constitution be damned.” Not going to happen.

5

I suspect we are going to see the FBI greatly expanded with 2x more funding as a political weapon and a tool to go after anyone Trumpers don’t like, especially LGBT people accused of being groomers.

6

Then why are we talking about this? There’s no point if there’s no barriers whatsoever. We just lie down and die. Or else start committing capital federal crimes.

7

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the enforcement arm of Department of Justice. Trump hates Justice and the FBI and will never rely upon them as a “political weapon and tool” (nor should he; for all of its flaws there is too much independence in the ranks of the FBI to just become a political weapon). It is far more likely that Trump will expand Homeland Security, either using Customs and Border Protection or expanding Immigration and Nationalization Service, or perhaps even creating a new law enforcement service within DHS which was, after all, created to satisfy a political aim.

I didn’t create the o.p. but there are numerous assumptions underlaying it that, in my opinion, are in no way assured. It is very clear that the objective of the authors of the Project 2025 ‘blueprint’ fully intend to subvert legislative authority, dismantle any part of the bureaucracy that might obstruct or publish inconvenient data contradicting their positions, and invest unrestricted power in the executive to the maximum extend possible. Trying to use tenets and conventions of democracy against a political regime which has just flatly decided to reject those tenets and disestablish those institutions is an flawed, ineffectual strategy.

Stranger

8

I agree. I think at some point, possibly quite soon after his inauguration, Trump is going to suspend the Constitution and order the FBI and military to start rounding up his political enemies. What happens next depends on whether they choose to obey those orders. I don’t have any faith that any other guardrail will hold at this point.

9

Trump promised to get revenge. Here are his targets.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/06/trump-retribution-enemy-list-00187725

10

I don’t know that Trump actually needs to suspend the Constitution (which would be a radical step); for all of the reverence people have for it, it is ultimately just words on parchment that are interpreted by the courts in whatever way they are inclined to read it. I think trying to get the FBI (or the US Marshal’s Service) and the especially the military to do his ‘dirty work’ of arresting political enemies is going to run into a lot of administrative and logistical hurdles, but the president has a lot more control over the Department of Homeland Security, and Customs and Border Patrol can actually operate hundreds of miles inland from the border. CBP is not really constituted for this kind of ‘mission’ but it could certainly provide a framework to bring in a bunch of would-be paramilitary groups with military or LEO experience, or just establish an entirely new enforcement arm within DHS, which, as I noted previously, was created expressly to have an umbrella for law enforcement agencies not attached to Justice and more compliant to direct executive authority. It’s one of the many ways the United States has been inching its way to autocracy long before Trump ever got a bee in his bonnet to the the Republican nominee for president.

That’s a lot of ‘usual suspects’ to round up. But Elon Musk is renowned for carrying on petty, one-sided feuds with minor functionaries of a toothless regulatory agency, so using his investigative skills, fleet of unsellable Cybertrucks, and legion of Twitter Street Irregulars should be a good first task to demonstrate what a good little toady he can be so he can get more government contracts for Starlink and his flying dildo machine.

Stranger

11

I don’t think it will be the FBI, I think he will effectively gut and neuter the FBI.

As others have suggested, CBP is a much more likely vehicle for this, as they’re basically stormtroopers already. I would look for their jurisdiction to be changed from 100 miles from external US border, to 100 miles from any internal port of entry. That would include every international airport and hence every major city plus its metro.

I don’t think it will be just CBP. The man likes creating new forces. I think he’ll create a new special secret immigration police force that will be given the power to do basically anything.

12

AKA Cyber Force One

13

Not possible.

14

As best I can tell, Trump has largely shrunk his dad’s business. But, that said, he’s probably had at least several tens of millions of dollars worth of assets available to him, even at the worst of times. At that level, if you don’t want to work, you don’t need to work. He could have spent his whole life from the time he was 20-something to now just watching TV and eating burgers.

Running the country, almost certainly, is a drag but that’s not Trump’s interest. Just as with his businesses, his primary two elements of excitement are:

  1. Seeing people talk about him.
  2. Rolling the dice on some reckless course of action and seeing what happens.

And given that he’s inherently the boss, he gets to decide what part of the job is his own and which is better delegated. Trump delegates almost everything so he can cut up magazines with his name on them and call in to Fox news. He doesn’t do the drudgery.

I wouldn’t bet on him feeling ready to step down. And there’s no reason to think that he won’t create new incriminating issues for himself during the next four years.

While it may be that he won’t be able to gain the presidency for life, I generally expect him to try for it, and I definitely fear what it will do to the country when he gets desperate enough about it.

15

Not according to the supreme court.

16

My read of that decision was that it largely reaffirmed earlier decisions. It was already generally clear that the President is immune so long as he’s doing his duty and not-immune if he’s doing other stuff.

It was not ground breaking and I didn’t see anything in it that was surprising, as someone who was already aware of the lay of the land.

17

This is getting a bit off topic, but the big difference was that you could no longer look into his motives for doing taking an official act, nor could you subpeona anyone around him about anything that was an official act. So sending the FBI to investigate your enemies, or taking a five billion dollar bribe to look the other way when China invades Taiwan, not a problem.

18

The depends on how peripheral it is. You’re free to make the case, and back it with evidence. You’re just not free to treat it as a given that the President is any other citizen.

19

Between people self-deporting from fear of being grabbed by ICE and roundups of low-hanging fruit – agricultural workers, factory line workers, and so forth – throwing out masses of those folks will crash the economy for major segments. Crops rotting in the field, chickens and hogs not being processed, etc. – watch grocery prices skyrocket. Big Ag will not be happy; consumers will not be happy; Trump may ignore (or not be told) protests but Congresscritters will hear the howls of anguish and fury.

20

Why, when there’s so much he can do already legitimately as president, especially with Congress on his side?