# A rational look at what Trump will/won't/can/can't do in his next term **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [November 7, 2024, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876 "2024-11-07T17:59:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/101 "2024-11-09T21:12:03Z")
That doesn’t really refute my point. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/102 "2024-11-09T21:20:01Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > I think it is fair to say that the logistics of rounding up immigrants, processing them, and physically deporting them would overwhelm such an effort long before it gets to the “millions served” mark, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try. Hitler managed to round up and kill millions of people just fine, so the claim that “it can’t be done” is historically demonstrated to be wrong. Especially when the people they want to get rid of can be identified at a glance by their skin tone. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/103 "2024-11-09T21:25:05Z")
I mentioned that once in a Pit thread. It’s an unfortunate screen name/post pairing on **Stranger’s** part ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/104 "2024-11-09T21:57:37Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > @Smapti just wants you to point and laugh at them, ignoring all of the things the openly say they plan to do, because that always works to stop demagogues and their enablers. I want people to point and laugh at them because it pisses them off, and because laughter is healthier than this “DEMOCRACY HAS FALLEN, A THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS IS UPON US AND THERE’S NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT” mindset that’s been getting preached around here. We can’t fight them by giving up. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/105 "2024-11-09T22:00:23Z")
> Bluto’s right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now, we could fight 'em with conventional weapons. That could take years and cost millions of lives. No, in this case, I think we have to go all out. I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part. [**SOURCE**](https://speakola.com/movie/john-belushi-animal-house-blutos-big-speech-1978) ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/106 "2024-11-09T22:13:12Z")
> [@DavidNRockies](#): > > That doesn’t really refute my point. @Smapti is going to die on his hill of “This is going to be the same as the first go-around”, regardless of whatever difference there are in the composition of the Supreme Court, how the GOP has almost completely purged all non-MAGA followers in Congress, the extreme grievance and obsessive desire to persecute his ‘enemies’ that Trump expresses, or that there is a far-right think tank that has drafted an extensive plan for the first year of his administration which, even if they only succeed in implementing a small fraction of it, would do severe damage to government administration and the institutions of democracy. According to @Smapti, you just need to “point and laugh at them” and they’ll basically shit their pants and crawl away, a tactic drawn from the _Kristallnacht_ where the intended targets of fascist violence laughed so hard that they shattered windows throughout Germany, which was a first in the world of comedic resistance. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Hitler managed to round up and kill millions of people just fine, so the claim that “it can’t be done” is historically demonstrated to be wrong. Especially when the people they want to get rid of can be identified at a glance by their skin tone. While that is true, Hitler started with an already deep and violent cultural prejudice among Europeans that the Jews and Romani were basically demons in human form, and also had several years to build of a logistical organization and propaganda machine allowing them to work in plain view of the public which offered virtually no resistance. Even then, it took the Nazis about seven years to get the German _Volk_ the point of accepting that and in the middle of a war to boot. A Trump administration will have to start with an underfunded and understaffed INS and CBP, without any facilities to hold even a small fraction of a million immigrants, and physically processing and transporting them over the border (to where?) is far more difficult than gassing people and incinerating the bodies, notwithstanding that they will find a lot more public resistance. If things get to the point of creating a massive paramilitary wing to round people up and just dump immigrants in the ocean, then that is an entirely different scale of horror but I don’t think that is going to be palatable to even a fascist-compliant American public, at least in the foreseeable future. I have at least some hope that the ineptitude and infighting of the MAGA movement will collapse upon itself before things get to that point, but I’ve been wrong before. > [@Smapti](#): > > I want people to point and laugh at them because it pisses them off, and because laughter is healthier than this “DEMOCRACY HAS FALLEN, A THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS IS UPON US AND THERE’S NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT” mindset that’s been getting preached around here. Literally no one but you has said this. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/107 "2024-11-09T22:21:53Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > According to @Smapti, you just need to “point and laugh at them” and they’ll basically shit their pants and crawl away, a tactic drawn from the _Kristallnacht_ where the intended targets of fascist violence laughed so hard that they shattered windows throughout Germany, which was a first in the world of comedic resistance. So what are you suggesting besides utter despair and mental surrender? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/108 "2024-11-09T22:31:14Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > So what are you suggesting besides utter despair and mental surrender? I suggest not minimizing the evaluation of potential damage that a second Trump Administration can actually do with a compliant Supreme Court majority and a GOP-dominated Congress packed with a rogue’s gallery of MAGA devotees, taking the things that Trump and his functionaries say they will do seriously, and not suggesting that all we need to do is mock them and they’ll eventually go away because if that was the case _Daily Show_ correspondents Jordan Klepper and Desi Lydic would have already had them on the run. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/109 "2024-11-09T22:33:30Z")
Besides that, there’s no REASON to kill people. What is Trump’s goal? Not _fewer_ brown people, but _servile_ brown people. Why kill people when you can take away rights and freedoms merely by shoring up the already-existing institutional racism? After all, you still need people to do the work in order for you to profit from their labour. The people who equate Trump with Hitler miss the differences between there and then vs. here and now, and the people who refuse to compare them miss the stunningly obvious and terrifying historical parallels. The truth lies in between. For that reason, I don’t think the danger to people’s lives and limbs is as stark as others do. But anyone in the middle or working class is going to find themselves working harder, and paying more to access any services such as health care or insurance. There will be less money to recover from disasters and maintain / repair / replace infrastucture. Basically, everything will just get slightly better for the wealthy and well-connected, and slightly shittier for the rest of us, until we’re a very large third world country. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/110 "2024-11-09T22:35:19Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > all we need to do is mock them You forgot putting on a nifty Antifa Covid mask. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/111 "2024-11-09T22:36:09Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Besides that, there’s no REASON to kill people. He’s surrounded by white nationalists who want to kill most of humanity for their skin tone; _that’s_ the reason why. And he personally talks about how evil and subhuman non-white people are. This has strong “Hitler wouldn’t _really_ kill all those people” energy. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/112 "2024-11-09T22:41:05Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > The people who equate Trump with Hitler miss the differences between there and then vs. here and now, and the people who refuse to compare them miss the stunningly obvious and terrifying historical parallels. The truth lies in between. I think very few of us – let alone most Democrats, nationally – are speaking in extremes. I’d liken it to school shooters. “All the signs were there” is a common refrain. It’s simple to backtrack from the horrifying event _to_ “all the signs.” What’s infinitely harder is to project out from the earliest signs, since – even with “_all_ the signs” present – a vanishingly small fraction ever become school shooters. Trump exhibits no end of hard characteristics equivalent to fascism. And there’s this: > Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist. –Vanity Fair, 7/2015 We don’t automatically have a school shooter on our hands, but we’d be absolute idiots to ignore “the signs” that we already _do_ have. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/113 "2024-11-09T22:41:16Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > not suggesting that all we need to do is mock them and they’ll eventually go away Nowhere did I say that was ths ONLY thing we should do. We need to protest, speak out, call attention to what’s happening, spread the news, organize, give where we can, donate our time, urge our sane politicians to challenge the admin wherever they can. We can’t do any of that if we start from a mindset of “Trump can do whatever he wants and Congress will do whatever he says and every court will rule in his favor all of the time and there will never be another election ever again and he’s going to have us all killed for criticizing him and in six months it’ll be legal to hunt liberals for sport and there’s nothing we can do about it” like certain people have been saying. Calling attention to the limitations of Trump’s power is one way to show how he can be opposed. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/114 "2024-11-09T22:45:59Z")
It’s been about four days. People grieve in different ways. What I see is grieving, _not_ capitulation. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/115 "2024-11-09T22:49:49Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Nowhere did I say that was ths ONLY thing we should do. We need to protest, speak out, call attention to what’s happening, spread the news, organize, give where we can, donate our time, urge our sane politicians to challenge the admin wherever they can. I don’t know if you’ve been out of town for a while but all of that has been happening in the last several months, the net effect of which is Trump was elected President (with Peter Thiel pet hamster JD Vance as his VP), and Republicans taking over the Senate and (most very likely) the House. So, you’ve advocating more of the same and assuming that it’ll all just be like the last four years Trump was in office (before he had 34 felony convictions hanging over his head), when the rhetoric and evidence suggests something far more rebarbative. > [@Smapti](#): > > We can’t do any of that if we start from a mindset of “Trump can do whatever he wants and Congress will do whatever he says and every court will rule in his favor all of the time and there will never be another election ever again and he’s going to have us all killed for criticizing him and in six months it’ll be legal to hunt liberals for sport and there’s nothing we can do about it” like certain people have been saying. Again, you are putting words in other peoples mouths (virtually) that they did not issue. Please stop this. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/116 "2024-11-09T22:52:53Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Literally no one but you has said this > [@I pit America](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-america/1009759/200): > > Only this time there will be no fix. This was it, the last election. With both houses of Congress, the courts, and Project 2025 in full effect, they no longer have any obligation to comply with the law or the Constitution. The monster can simply declare himself Emperor Donald I and there is nothing, NOTHING, we can do about it. If they declare that there will no longer be any elections, who can stop them? How can they be stopped? > > It’s over. Done. They told us what they were going to do, explicitly. They might put some thin veneer of legitimacy on it, but in the end there will be a “national emergency” to justify the passing of emergency legislation (they might even have the stones to call it the Enabling Act), and just like that we’re in 1934 and even his cult will be surprised how easy it was. > [@Please disabuse me of the fear that a Trump hereditary monarchy is being planned](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-disabuse-me-of-the-fear-that-a-trump-hereditary-monarchy-is-being-planned/1009921/102): > > I expect I’ll be dead, one way or another, along with most people here. And the board shut down. (Though perhaps we have different standards for such things. I know that some posters have indicated that they don’t agree with me that certain posts have a “give up” mindset. That may be the difference here.) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/117 "2024-11-09T23:00:50Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > This has strong “Hitler wouldn’t _really_ kill all those people” energy. I hope you’re not accusing me of being a Holocaust denier. Hitler really did kill all those people. Trump has (so far, by my count) enabled the deaths of at least 100,000, mostly in terms of his management of Covid compared to comparable nations in the same period. So I’m certainly not denying he will result in the deaths of lots of people: he already has. I just don’t think his specific goal is murder or the elimination of groups. I don’t know what will happen, though, and I’m prepared to be wrong. I just hope I’m not. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/118 "2024-11-09T23:04:54Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > I hope you’re not accusing me of being a Holocaust denier. No, just overly optimistic. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/119 "2024-11-09T23:10:25Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > I don’t know if you’ve been out of town for a while but all of that has been happening in the last several months, the net effect of which is Trump was elected President (with Peter Thiel pet hamster JD Vance as his VP), and Republicans taking over the Senate and (most very likely) the House. So, you’ve advocating more of the same and assuming that it’ll all just be like the last four years Trump was in office (before he had 34 felony convictions hanging over his head), when the rhetoric and evidence suggests something far more rebarbative. So your alternative proposal is what, exactly? Do nothing and just crawl into bed and wait for the death squads? I’ve already written to my governor-elect about how I hope he intends to oppose Trump to the best of his ability. What are you doing besides fearmongering? > [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Again, you are putting words in other peoples mouths (virtually) that they did not issue. Stranger, meet Der\_Trihs. Der\_Trihs, Stranger. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2024, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876/120 "2024-11-09T23:13:30Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > So your alternative proposal is what, exactly? Do nothing and just crawl into bed and wait for the death squads? Flee the country, if you can. Which is difficult or impossible for most people, unfortunately. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-rational-look-at-what-trump-will-wont-can-cant-do-in-his-next-term/1009876.md?page=7)