The Coming Storm (Part II)
It's Not Just Trump, It's Everyone Around Him
Four years ago, almost to the day, three of my colleagues and I wrote these words in the Washington Post:
“The time for choosing is at hand. Will you choose a republic or an autocracy?
Some of you have chosen. You are already at work on this lawless and amoral project, litigating in the states to suppress the vote. Many of you are planning to replace slates of electors to win another term for Trump. Many of you are planning to snatch an election victory from the people by any means necessary.”
To find an adjective that describes how little has changed within the Republican Party in 48 months would be to exhaust my thesaurus. In those four years, Donald Trump is worse, much worse, than he was when he left office. We’ve seen that 40 of 44 Cabinet secretaries and his own Vice President have refused to endorse his re-election.
The Inner Sanctum
Yet here we are, three weeks from the most consequential election of our time and again find ourselves on the knife’s edge. The people around Trump see and know his descent into irretrievable madness. They recognize it as the next phase of King Lear; soon he’ll be screaming at trees and accuse chestnuts of being lazy.
Those same individuals, whether family, true-believers, strap-hangers, fellow travelers, ne’er do wells, also rans, never gonna bes, and outright kooks, are happy to go along for the ride. For them, it’s about power, money, fame, revenge, perhaps (within their own twisted frontal lobes) redemption.
They’re desperate for him to win, as Trump’s ascendance is the only thing that would allow so many unqualified, unhinged, and amoral individuals to rise to places of prominence, power and responsibility. Like most authoritarian regimes, it will take the worst people because they’re the only ones willing to put aside all reason and sanity for the sake of the Leader.
Without Trump, their lives and careers return to the mean - which for most of them means an existence devoid of much other than being a federal defendant or the local representative of some right-wing think-tank (Corey Lewandowski, we’re looking at you.)
The Desperate
The worst kept secret in Washington, DC, in Republican cloak rooms, and billionaire dinners is that the elected and donor classes are desperate for Trump to lose. JD Vance’s debate performance earlier this month was not simply a case study in sociopathy, it was his first chance to nationally put himself through the car wash and display ‘normalcy’ as compared to Trump, anyway.
Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, all of the shiny middle-aged fascists see Donald Trump as a giant tangerine speed bump to their own ambitions. Until and unless he leaves the scene, they’re stuck having to kowtow to Trump and his followers, most of whom the Hawleys of the world wouldn’t deign to speak with if they could avoid it.
So they go along to get along; hoping that the American people do what they should have done in 2016, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024: Throw Trump and his insanity overboard. Their opportunities to reclaim the party he hijacked have been plentiful, but their fear and over-weaning ambition kept their tongues and better judgement in check.
Inside the Beltway (and the Boardroom)
I worry that too many inside the Beltway, Republicans, Democrats, and bureaucrats alike believe that another four years of Donald Trump won’t be so bad. “We survived it once,” they tell themselves. If you run a lobbying or public affairs shop, regardless of party, you’re willfully blind to what Trump’s return represents. The same goes for elite DC media. You might say the right things on cable news or to your nervous friends, but you’re part of the Gang of 500, don’t these (Trump) people know who you are?
Authoritarians show us that they’re willing to allow a ‘controlled opposition.’ These are the people that ostensibly stand up to Trump and the White House but are informed when they’ve gone too far and advised to clam up for a while. And like their corporate counterparts, they too will do what’s expected of them because the idea of not being in-studio at CNN is too much to bear. “If I’m not on TV how will anyone know of my brilliance??”
The unwillingness of the political bureaucracy to believe that Trump could be the end of the Republic as we know it isn’t a surprise. The world revolves around them, after all. As someone who grew up in Washington politics, worked in Washington politics, and thankfully escaped, I can promise you that most of the DC denizens belief the world would spin off its axis if they didn’t show up for work. (I, too, was guilty of this arrogance in my youth.)
Heading north on the Acela, most of corporate America doesn’t want to believe that Trump will be as bad as everyone is saying. We’re [Insert Fortune 100 Company] don’t these (Trump) people know who we are? What we do? How many jobs we create? No, Mr. C-Suite, Trump’s people don’t know and they care even less. Trump’s henchman are on the lookout for those, like you, who are easily scared into silence and complicity. You’ll fall in line because it’s in your interests to do so.
MAGA isn’t Over on November 5th or 2028
When Donald Trump loses (again) in three weeks, the MAGA movement won’t shrivel up and scuttle away. The people like Leonard Leo and Steve Bannon, who’ve put decades of work and billions of donor dollars into creating an America in their image will not fold up their tents because Trump loses.
Conversely, if Donald Trump wins next month (go to JoinTheUnion.us to make sure this doesn’t happen) we should be under no illusion that he’ll go any more quietly in November of 2028 than he did in November of 2020. If he lives that long, Trump will not want to leave the White House. He’ll make up all sorts of excuses, backed up by those same dirty lawyers and political goons, that since 2020 was stolen from him, he’s due another term.
It sounds fanciful, I know. Our collective lack of imagination keeps coming back to bite us. We should expect the worse from Trump and Company; have they ever given us a reason not to?
News and Notes:
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This is all just scary as hell.
And I thought retirement was going to be great…
Everyone thinks they'll be able to control Trump in a 2nd term.
This arrogance will be their (and our) downfall.
Trump will do exactly what he's promised...and more.
Once he consolidated power (and it will happen rapidly), he'll extort business leaders in the same fashion as Putin.
He'll hobble the free press, begin deportation, target his "enemies", abandon NATO, give illegal orders to the military (which apparently, won't be illegal per SCOTUS), appoint 3 new SCOTUS justices, and allow free reign to Christian Nationalists to force their theology nationwide (Trump's billionaire Jewish donors won't be spared...he won't need their money once he's reinstalled).
This will be a tragedy of epic proportions, but denial of reality has become an art form in 21st century America.