Flirting with Disaster
No one will be insulated from the ravages of a second Trump term.
IN DECEMBER 2022, DONALD TRUMP said something that, in a healthy political culture, would have spelled his doom. Referring to his lie that the 2020 election was stolen, he wrote, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
All rules, regulations, and articles must be terminated for his sake. That is not the language of populism, that is aspiring despotism. The Constitution itself must be cashiered if it stands in the way of his ego and his power. There it is, in black and white, Trump’s direct assault on the foundation of the republic.
And how many Republicans announced after this that they could no longer in good conscience support Trump? How many went on record promising, as Liz Cheney did a year later, that they would do everything in their power to ensure that he never came near the Oval Office again? I counted one. John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, said the post was “disqualifying” and that all GOP candidates should issue “Shermanesque” statements to that effect. A few other Republicans mildly disagreed, but didn’t go so far as to say that trashing the Constitution was beyond the pale.
As with so many landings along the steep staircase of Republican decline, things would have been different if there had been pushback; if leading Republican office holders and opinion shapers had stood on their hind legs and said, “Hey, I liked Trump fine until now but this is a deal breaker for me.” But there was barely a bleat from the party; it was thoroughly demoralized in all senses of the word.
That was eighteen months ago. Today, the Constitution terminator leads in most of the polls, and bigwigs from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, along with spineless ciphers like Bill Barr and Chris Sununu, are telling themselves and others that a second Trump term might actually be okay.
Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase reassured his audience in Davos (where else?) that Trump did many good things while in office, and that whatever the outcome of the November election, “My company will survive and thrive.”
Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, and hedge fund manager John Paulson hosted a fundraiser for Trump, reports Bloomberg News. Billionaire investor Nelson Peltz endorsed Trump, as did Robert Bigelow, a DeSantis backer who has made his peace with the certain GOP nominee. Ken Griffin, founder of Citadel, hasn’t endorsed Trump yet, but explained that “for investors, overall, a Trump administration is good for our capital markets. It encourages the sense that government is aligned with you and not opposed to you.”
Lenin is supposed to have said that when it came time to hang them, the “capitalists will sell us the rope.” These capitalists are deluding themselves if they imagine that another Trump term in office will be good for them. Yes, Trump is a “businessman,” but more in the style of Tony Soprano than Andrew Carnegie. Everything he is suggesting about a second term would guarantee that inflation soars beyond anything we’ve seen in this century.
Trump is promising an all-out trade war—10 percent tariffs on all products, a 60 percent tariff on goods from China, and a 100 percent duty on imported cars. Think he hasn’t the power? In his first term, he cited “national security” to impose tariffs on Canada (Canada!) and got away with it. The inflationary effect of his new, larger tariffs would be off the charts.
Similarly, Trump has issued broad hints that he will tamper with the independence of the Federal Reserve, which could spell much worse inflation than we’ve yet experienced.
In any case, what these Trump backers seem not to appreciate is that their riches are only possible because the United States is a stable, democratic country. If we cease to be stable—and perceived as such by investors around the world—our national debt, already among the highest in the world, would become a potentially crushing burden. Global investors are happy to underwrite our debt now by purchasing treasury bonds because we’re a safe investment. If we reelect a lying, despot-loving, quadruple-indicted, ignorant cretin, the United States will be a lot less appealing to overseas investors. And when we cease to be a safe haven for foreigners’ nest eggs, we will be in trouble. We will have to raise interest rates to attract capital, which will increase the burden of our existing debt. How would Wall Street like them apples?
Honestly, these economic arguments ought to be third- and fourth-order considerations for any American—including billionaires. Economic stability is important, but the gravest threat is to our liberty. No joke, as President Biden might say.
We are staring down the possibility of putting someone back in power who has demonstrated that he is willing to use informal violence to achieve his anti-democratic ends. He attempted a coup with a mob of enraged zealots. How tragically foolish must you be to give him the power to wield formal, state-sanctioned violence? Think the president hasn’t the power? Read the Insurrection Act.
Those who are soothing themselves that a second Trump presidency wouldn’t be so bad are recalling the first term incorrectly. The reason Trump was unable to order that border crossers be shot in the legs, or that the IRS conduct audits of his foes, or that the United States withdraw from NATO, or that the military shoot rioters after George Floyd’s murder, or that the Justice Department lie about election results, or any of the myriad other crimes, outrages, or stupidities the former president contemplated was that his own hires talked him out of things or slow-walked them until Trump’s goldfish attention turned elsewhere.
In a second term, those officials would be gone. As his former chief of staff John Kelly put it, “The lesson the former president learned from his first term is don’t put guys like me . . . in those jobs. The lesson he learned was to find sycophants.”
Those sycophants are lining up. Applicants to work at the Republican National Committee right now must aver that the 2020 election was stolen. The whole party must be a cult. How much worse will it be if the cult leader is crowned with success by the voters? The Republicans who were brave enough to resist Trump’s illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional demands the first time around will be loath to reprise their acts if perceived “enemies of the state” are being audited by the IRS, harassed by the FBI, indicted by a Trumpified DOJ, or worse.
The foreign policy implications of electing Trump are just as frightening. He disrupted key American alliances in NATO and East Asia in his first term, but would destroy them in a second term. Without the U.S. security guarantee, nations around the globe would rush to acquire their own nuclear stockpiles. Trump would reward Putin’s aggression by abandoning Ukraine, which would whet Putin’s appetite for the Baltics, Xi’s appetite for Taiwan, and God only knows what other aggressors’ plans.
Those are the stakes. It is tragic and shameful that so many fail to see it.