It’s Time to Consider the Worst-Case Scenario

Let’s go to the Bad Place together.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Until today I’ve resisted writing about the worst-case scenario for Trump’s second term. Instead, I’ve written (twice) about the best-case scenario.

But the conventional wisdom seems to have settled on the view that, Sure, this is all very bad. But also: It’s ultimately fine.

I view this as a dangerous failure of imagination.

So I’m going to lay out two big ideas for you today. The first is something like the worst-case scenario. It isn’t the literal worst-case scenario. The real worst case is always some version of “nuclear holocaust and everyone dies.” Instead what I’m going to describe is a 90th percentile variant: A set of outcomes that are the worst of the unlikely-but-not-black-swan timeline.

The second idea is that I’m going to try to persuade you that if Trump were actively pursuing such a set of outcomes, it would look very much like what we’re already seeing, right now.

In short, I’m going to ask you to expand your mind and peek over the horizon with me. But be warned: This isn’t going to be any fun.

Buckle up.

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1. Forests and Trees

Last week Freddie deBoer wrote that liberals shouldn’t panic because, sure, Trump would be bad. But he wouldn’t be that bad.

A lot of awful stuff is going to happen. Some immediate pain points include the replacement of Lina Khan at the FTC with a pliable pro-corporate stooge, the dismantling of Joe Biden’s excellent NLRB, and an immediate gutting of federal wildlife and environmental protections. A lot worse will follow, very likely including even more tax cuts, which are the real reason so many upper-crust types held their nose and voted for Trump. (At the end of the day, there’s always enough will in Congress to cut taxes.) The incoherence that’s inherent to Trump’s foreign policy means that an honest-to-go shooting war might be possible. No relief will be coming for the Rust Belt or any other part of the United States hurt by deindustrialization. This all sucks and there’s going to be some dark times ahead.

At the same time, recent doomsaying has a lot of that usual Trump-era liberal chauvinism in it, where the relentless panic seems competitive and performative. . . . Yes, things are bad, but they’ve been bad before, and as destructive as the first Trump term was it wasn’t as terrible as people predicted. We’ve also had a worse presidential administration in clear living memory.

Is this a joke? Because I’m sorry but if you look at Trump’s second term and put “wildlife and environmental protections” in your top hundred concerns then something is deeply wrong with your priorities.

And the assertion that Trump’s first term “wasn’t as terrible as people predicted”?

He fired the federal government’s pandemic response team and then talked about injecting people with bleach while a global pandemic killed a million forking Americans.

Then he assembled an armed mob and directed them to march on the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the duly elected incoming president from taking power.

If anyone had predicted either of those outcomes in 2016, they would have been dismissed as barking mad. The reality of Trump 1.0 turned out to be very much the worst-case scenario.¹

DeBoer is, like many people grappling with Trump 2.0, making a bunch of category errors and failing to imagine what a true worst-case scenario could look like.

And let me tell you: It has nothing to do with tax cuts, the FTC, and the NLRB.