Donald Trump's Plan for the End of the World (As We Know It)

I Don't Feel Fine. You Shouldn't, Either.

Author’s Note: Dear New York Times, I learned headline writing by watching you, alright? I learned it by watching you!

Last week, Donald Trump attempted to distance himself from The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” their fascistic blueprint for The Orange One’s second (and final?) term in office.

At 900 pages, it’s length is intended to dissuade the casual reader. Only dedicated journalists and researchers have both the patience and savvy to understand how Heritage weaved together the sublime, the surreal, and the mundane with enough Newspeak to confuse and misdirect the average citizen.

Bottom line: The plan is nuts. Plain old-fashioned nuts.

Head Fakes are Old Hat

Trump’s top lieutenants like Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles know this, of course. Their leader’s disavowal was as intentional as it was meaningless. The same goes for leaving a national abortion ban out of the party’s ‘platform.’ Authoritarian movements are willing to make tactical retreats in the name of political expediency, and that’s what Trump has done.

Tactics like this aren’t new for MAGA or its ilk. In the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler, sensing that his rabid anti-Semitism was at the time even a little too much for good Germans, backed off discussing his plan for the Jews in the name of electoral success. Nationalism and hatred of the Versailles Treaty were enough. Once in office, he and his gangsters enshrined their plans for The Final Solution in policy and ghastly practice.

Still basking in the glow of President Joe Biden’s debate debacle two weeks ago, the Trump campaign is attempting to seem just normal enough to bring back the disgusted Republicans (read: Nikki Haley voters) they know, even now, they can’t win without.

The Surreal

In his recent piece for The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (the Doomsday Clock people,) Joe Cirincione writes that Donald Trump’s strategic plan for the United State is ‘Gearing up for Nuclear War’ part of which is: “Prepare to test new nuclear weapons, even though the United States has signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that prohibits such tests and has not tested a full-scale nuclear device since 1992.”

That’s right, Donald Trump and company want to start testing nukes again. What could possibly go wrong, you might think? Why would they do such a thing, you’d be right to ask. Here is my belief, backed up by nearly a decade of anthropological study of Donald Trump: Trump wants to see a mushroom cloud.

Oppenheimer, Trump Ain’t

He wants to stand on a Navy ship or at a safe distance in the Nevada desert and watch two hydrogen atoms fuse. He wants to see what power he controls at his fingertips with a little card in his pocket and a military officer at his side carrying “The Football.”

Despite his statements to the contrary, one of Trump’s top advisors, Robert O’Brien, last month reiterated his belief in the resumption of nuclear testing, and expansion of production of fissile material and weapons themselves.

In response, Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association said on Twitter, “No one wins an arms race.”

Everything Old is New Again

For those of us old enough to remember the Cold War, Trump’s plan is nothing short of insane. In the 1980s, the air raid siren out behind Haycock Elementary School went off at noon every Wednesday. For my parents (and some of you) you might remember duck and cover drills, fallout shelters, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

If you’re old enough to remember the looming threat of nuclear Armageddon, why would anyone in their right mind elect a man who wants to return us to a time of mass nuclear proliferation? Knowing that Russia is led by a desperate butcher and North Korea run by a maniacal man-baby, pushing the hands of the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight makes no sense, politically or strategically.

Kidding aside, Trump isn’t just unhinged, as Nikki Haley claimed, he’s a madman. The idea of Trump with his hand on the nuclear trigger is more frightening now than it was during his first term, and I didn’t think such a thing was possible.

The Authors Become the Implementers

Project 2025’s authors, many of whom are Donald Trump’s closest advisors and will have the most senior positions in another term, want Americans to believe their plan is simply the dismantling of an overbearing ‘administrative state.’

It is nothing more than an authoritarian manual to destroy the parts of government that help and protect people at the expense of the organs of government that can control (and destroy) people. Their deranged plans for resumption of nuclear testing are just the latest example of Trump, and MAGA’s, unfitness for office and any level of responsibility.

Many Americans are unhappy with their choices for president this year. I understand that feeling, and in many ways agree with it. The stakes are not Democrat or Republican, though. They’re life and death. If you ask me to choose between the old man and the mad man, I’ll take old six times and twice on Sunday.

I want to see my kids grow up. Don’t you?

News and Notes:

As you may have seen last week, I’ve left The Lincoln Project. I’m not going far or for long, but other than weekly posts here, I’m taking a break from social media this month. I’ll have much more to share (exciting work happening!) and look forward to your involvement in saving our democracy over the next 100+ days.

Please give a listen to my interview on Al Jazeera’s The Take about Project 2025.

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