First regarding #6, I doubt this will stop with the military going into all states to apprehend “illegals”. I find it highly likely the military will be sent across the border with Mexico to set up “a buffer zone” 25-50 miles into Mexican territory to stop migrants before they even reach the border. This was actually a point that was discussed in the first Trump administration but multiple “saner” voices convinced DJT not to do this. Now there are no sane voices. This is just one of Stephen Miller’s dark fantasies so I expect it is very possible.
#19 and #20 are also likely off base. My expectation is that the GOP will increase the number of seats they hold in the House and Senate in 2026. There will be no 3rd impeachment of Trump. In 2028 Vance or some other successor chosen by DJT will be elected President. No need to steal it. Both of these things will be accomplished by continuing to blame the Democrats for any immigration problems, inflation, rampant gangs of trans people, crime infested urban areas, etc. The people who voted MAGA in 2024 will continue to be loyal followers because they confuse bullying with strength and believe a loudmouth strongman is the best thing ever.
Here’s what I think is likely to happen over the next four years;
Most of Trump’s Cabinet picks (Gaetz, Hegseth, RFK likely exceptions) will be approved. None will last all four years.
DeSantis will appoint himself to fill Rubio’s Senate seat.
The Senate will not change the filibuster or allow Trump to make recess appointments.
The military will rebuff Trump’s attempts to use it as a deportation force or against civilians. Red state governors will offer to have the National Guard staff detainment camps instead. Deportations will not significantly increase.
As the term progresses Trump will take increasingly less interest in governing and will largely leave the Cabinet secretaries to run the government on their own. By 2028 he will be completely checked out and will not participate in his successor’s campaign.
A special prosecutor will be assigned to investigate Trump’s enemies. The investigation will produce no convictions. Likewise, any attempts to court-martial flag officers will be unsuccessful.
The Supreme Court will widen “religious liberty” claims as justification to discriminate against LBGT and minorities, but will not overturn Obergefell.
Democrats will capture one or both houses of Congress in 2026. An impeachment may occur but it will not succeed.
The 2028 general election will be Ron DeSantis vs. John Fetterman. Fetterman will likely win. There will be a smooth transition of power.
The party out of power usually gains in an off-cycle election. And the Dems have more engaged voters in 2026, whereas Trump relies more on voters who aren’t usually engaged.
I realize off-cycle elections historically tend to favor the party out of power. Yet 2022 wasn’t the predicted red wave. The GOP will dominate Congress for the near future.
Saying Dems have more engaged voters is something I find…well, very inaccurate given recent events. I’m 62 years old and expect to be around another 20 years or so. I doubt I will ever see another Democrat elected President.
Your list is a could be but is all best-case. We will be tremendously lucky if it goes down like that.
I do not buy that Trump is losing interest in governance. His 90 minute rally speeches, sometimes with little reliance on the teleprompter (Liditz PA, November 3), were not the product of someone fading away. They were instead the product of someone who is determined to punish enemies. His cabinet appointments show that he has learned lessons from his first term concerning the need to find loyalists.
How likely is it that he relieves most of our three and four star generals, something he could almost certainly get away with? Then he is a regular, if a bit beleaguered, caudillo, with substantial control over both federal courts and the military.
Maybe it won’t go down like that. Maybe he’ll make a show of relieving, say, the superintendents of two military academies, and declare victory over wokeism. But his base wants way more, and what reason does he have not to listen?
As for arresting his enemies, who is going to stop his special prosecutors? The grand jury? Can’t the special prosecutors venue shop?
Also, some terrible unpredictable event, domestic or foreign, will probably occur and provide an excuse for power consolidation.
However, I would agree that almost totally free and fair future elections will be beyond Trump’s ability to stop. I like Ruben Gallego’s chances against DeSantis.
That is just about where I come out as well. I’ll discount all of the “Trump will use the military to…” items because even though he will be Commander-In-Chief the military is just not as compliant as he (and the author of the list) believe them to be, nor are they well suited to this kind of domestic policing effort, and if they were put to this task it would essentially tank recruiting which is already not hitting their quotas. The ideas that we’re going to see a ‘Blue Wave’ in 2026 and a Democrat back in office in 2028, well…people were predicting a ‘Blue Wave’ up and down the street in 2018, and instead we got a ripple. As for free and fair elections in 2028, they will still be so in many states but the ‘Hard Red’ states where the GOP controls the statehouse are going to gerrymander, use voter suppression (voter ID, excluding valid citizens from registration, et cetera), and all kinds of other election fuckery, and in a few states might just outright fudge the counts as there will no longer be federal election observers (I expect). It was already an uphill battle for Harris even though she pulled in almost 72 million votes; with every swing state weighed against a future Democratic candidate for president, they’d going to be even more uphill even if Vance or another GOP pretender can’t pull Trump numbers.
It isn’t that Democrats don’t have engaged voters—clearly, they do as Harris pulled near record numbers—but the population is so primed for fascism that a (somehow) charismatic candidate like Trump can inspire people to go to the polls by making a gamut of promises he can’t possibly deliver on, and scapegoating people who have nothing to do with inflation or other problems his voters are actually facing. Democrats have lost the propaganda war because they won’t lower themselves to lying to create fear and doubt (nor would that accord with their collective goals as a party), and it doesn’t seem as if they can reach any more people; at most, they can try to thread the needle of not offending small but crucial demographics but that means somehow pleasing groups who are at odds with each other, which….good luck with that. They literally need an older generation (and not just ‘Boomers’ but a lot of the GenXers as well) to start dying off or losing interest while cultivating enthusiasm in the youngest potential voters, which means prying them away from TikTok or whatever brain-melting media will replace it in the next eight years.
Yes it is. It’s been like this for a while but somehow Trump slipped in and dialed it up to 11. And even when he’s gone, I don’t think it will return to whatever ‘normal’ was before we started giving up our civil rights like virgins on prom night, or valuing political leaders on their celebrity status, or voting for president on how many millions of people he promises to round up and deport (somehow) because it satisfies some indefinable grievance.
Interest is perhaps the wrong word - he’s not going to have the capacity for governance. He’s an old tired man in the grips of dementia and that’s only going to get worse as his term progresses.
“I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.”
There’s a possibility of Vance and the Cabinet attempting a 25th amendment move on Trump but I doubt they’ll get the two-thirds majority in Congress necessary to override his veto on it unless he’s so completely far gone that he doesn’t even realize what’s happening. That’s a possibility.
If Vance does become president I expect he’d be more effective at implementing the Miller/Musk agenda than Trump, but since he has zero charisma I don’t expect him to be able to get Trump’s cult of personality to follow him. Maga will die with Trump and the Republican party will embrace some other variety of right-wing nonsense in 2028.
I don’t doubt Trump would love this, but doing so would require occupation of several urban areas like Tijuana that are right on the border. We’ve all seen how well a military occupation of an urban area goes. And if you don’t occupy them, then you have big holes in the buffer zone.
Actually, I think Trump will try to order the military to do this, and military leaders will try to convince him to use drone strikes, limited ‘special’ ground operations, and maybe a testing ground for autonomous military robots rather than an occupation, because they know what a complete fiasco that would be and how it would result in a more porous border and arming of cartels with ‘lost’ US military weapons and equipment.
Vance doesn’t talk as much like a dictator as Trump. Neither do similar types like Meloni and Orban. Vance’s policy preferences are similar. So the 25th amendment makes no sense except in the unlikely idea that Trump, a man who can make 90 minute impromptu speeches, is about to physically collapse.
I said this about Biden, and of course it’s true of Trump as well. Men of his age are VERY unlikely to make it through four years without serious health issues. Biden has done really well: some (as far as I can diagnose from my armchair) mild cognitive decline, well managed.
Trump is entering his term older than Biden entered his, and (again, IMHO) less healthy at base. He can talk for 90 minutes, sure, but I would not call his verbiage “speeches,” as they are devoid of any structure beyond the conversational.
I don’t see dramatic physical collapse in the next few months, but it’ would also not be actuarially shocking. It’s probably more convenient to manage him à la Wilson or late Reagan than to invoke the 25th, but power is notoriously hard to hold when you’re surrounded by very hungry wannabe dictators.
Just came across this – many of the lunatics Trump is appointing to Cabinet portend very poor relations between the US and Canada, and that’s with re-negotiation of the critical free trade agreement coming up in two years. Also at issue: border security, defense spending, and the general liberalism of Canada’s democracy, which is anathema to said lunatics.
ETA: Although I don’t doubt much of what the story has to day, given the certifiable lunatics that Trump is appointing, one should keep in mind that the National Post is a decidedly conservative paper and never misses a chance to publish anything negative about Trudeau that they can find.
The fact that certifiable lunatics like Vance, Carlson and Smith don’t like Trudeau is a feature more than a bug as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want someone these scumbags like running the country.
I really wonder how this anti-endorsement will affect our next election. We know there are MAGA idiots here who will see it as a positive, and vote for PP, but will there be more “mildly sick of JT, but still wanting to give the Americans the finger” voters?