It’s all downhill from here: Projecting select outcomes of Trump 2
We should establish at the outset that I’m already operating at a deficit. I made the same Pollyanna assumption that a sufficient number of voters – evidenced by 2020’s turnout for a coot – were motivated by the reasoned want to overcome fascism. I was wrong. One bright side there is that my streak of voting for losing candidates remains unbroken. A second bright side is what 2024 illustrates about the mythical “undecided voter”. Neither of those points are this though. This is a set of estimates ballparking the likely impact of Trump 2 across a set of subjects: Federal staffing, election integrity, taxation, immigration, foreign policy, and Joe Dirt’s lifestyle.
Some threads will have common themes, of varying institutional resistance followed by the variables of the midterms. These projections are informed by the outcomes of Trump 1, combined with threats made by Trump and his Project 2025 affiliates during the campaign for Trump 2. There is always however the possibility of all this doom and gloom being outshone by a nuclear inferno, so I’m trying to see the bright side wherever possible. Because the next few paragraphs are going to be pretty depressing.
Federal Staffing
Trump has promised reclassifying federal jobs into categories that can be more directly controlled by the Executive pen. As an institutional imposition of political ideology, this policy move is one of Trump’s more pernicious and dangerous propositions. It is also one where he may find broad latitude for action.
Broadening the range and power of political appointees creates exactly the “deep state” the Right has been throwing stones at since before Trump 1. The spread of ideological fealty will create that many more challenges for any successor seeking to make substantive change. If enabled successfully, Trump’s ability over time to enact dangerous policy could easily snowball.
That such moves would be revolutionary, will likely help to slow their imposition. Federal employees who were hired under specific terms, third parties impacted by affected departments, any number of variables will contribute to early legal challenges. The novel nature of the strategy may also help to grease the wheels. This Court has been willing enough to err on the side of not biting the hand, that some deference to Trump will be baked into any ruling. And Trump will likely rely on their being little precedent. Rhetorically he looks like a disruptor or a game-changer, and legally there are few pre-existing boundaries to constrain him.
Election Integrity
I didn’t arrange these sections into any particular order. There are levels on which the reclassifying of federal employees is the most dangerous element of Trump’s proposed agenda so that may have been first on my mind while writing, but that doesn’t mean election integrity is second in urgency or severity. It’s just what I thought of next.
But wow, it could be really bad.
With the Voting Rights Act already gutted, states have all the latitude they need to gerrymander their minorities or enemies on the flimsiest of pretexts. Look for those tactics to expand, with increasing controls on who can vote, and who those votes can count for. Conservative legislatures with conservative statehouses will have carte blanche to protect their majorities. Wherever the Court is slow to knock those tactics down, others will pick up the ball and try to move further downfield. The same dynamic played out as red states tripped over one another to devise the most regressive (read: Trump-obeisant) anti-woman legislation after Roe fell.
So the state-level rigging of elections will continue until morale improves or until the 2030 census enables either change or the cementing of margins. The conservative agenda there has been made explicit, to the reduce clout of and spending to the antichrists in blue states. If Trump is successful in implanting a network of cronies and Democrats remain feckless, a massive anti-democracy swing could take place over the next decade, before our very eyes.
Taxation
Much has been made of the impact on consumer prices that tariffs will represent. It’s an almost certain truth that Wall Street’s bedwetting fear of shareholders will ensure costs be passed along, with the appropriate markup added to cover the cost of processing and add value to the task of markup-adding. So yes, things will get more expensive, but the impact of that discontent on policy will be filtered through Republican fealty to Trump. Witness the Party’s rush towards a nationwide ban abortion despite resounding national opposition- Just because they represent voters doesn’t mean they need to listen to them. But however distorted the conservative concept of economy may be, prices will remain clear to voters. Unless those higher prices are balanced with a symbolic win – and a big one – on the tax side, voters will only continue to rebel against the incumbent. So from a political standpoint it’s easy to see tariffs being implement, but it’s also pretty easy to see them not lasting.
From an economic standpoint, the nation has obligations that cannot easily withstand the revenue shocks of playing with your most reliable source of income. The US becomes a less-reliable creditor/client until vested interests are covered, and even brief instability can be ruinous for investments and trades. So some resistance to cutting certain revenues will likely slow the imposition of balancing tax cuts, which would reinforce opposition to the added costs of tariffs. Decreases in consumer spending could more easily cycle into collapse. So from an economic standpoint, the Roberts Court (via Obamacare) has invested broad authority in the Executive to set tax policy. So while Trump may have the latitude to set policy, the markets retain a veto. A tariff-funded recession could quickly undo the transition to external tax revenues.
Such a recession could be political disaster for many Republicans in Congress, which will contribute to political reluctance to upset the apple cart. But an ongoing goal of conservatism is the defunding of impure government, so some political schizophrenia is likely. Both rural conservatives who live and die on outside funding, and big-city weirdos within the margin of error, will offer opposition to the outright destruction of services guaranteed by the revenue cuts desired by their Trump-beholden leadership. However the details play out, the likelihood is that tariffs would just be part of an effort to reset the income level of the State to something less able to overreach into the interests of billionaires.
Immigration.
Donald Trump is a racist, but that may not be the actual problem. He’s also used to being protected by a bubble of money so it’s hard to see him feeling real fear, so it’s hard to see him being motivated by racial fear as anything beyond an opportunity. The greater likelihood is that he gets what an effective tool fearmongering can be, and he doesn’t himself care about the fallout, because money bubble. So the immigration policy of Trump 2 is more likely to be a function of the terrified human chihuahuas that are already populating the incoming administration. And the Court has already signaled its subservience to white supremacy, bowing to Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ early in his first term.
So strict new limits on immigration are possible, as are draconian deportation measures. Similar to the tariffs previously, their longevity will ultimately depend on the cost to the consumer and vulnerability of the district. The threat isn’t only to the farms in blue California, it’s to the meatpacking plants in blood-red Indiana. The higher food prices that helped tank Biden will help tank Trump, and contribute potentially contribute to Republican disarray.
But while that political process plays out, the human cost will be pretty ugly. Families and communities will be ripped apart by a masked police state, and a climate instability that doesn’t care about national borders will push people wherever they need to go to escape disease or calamity.
Foreign Policy
As with immigration, much of Trump 2’s foreign policy will be not only informed by, but written by invested surrogates. Foreign Affairs goes in on the shift from ideology to economy, describing it like the rest of us as corruption. Axios is reporting on diplomatic calls with the Ukranian president being sat in on by Elon Musk. Before Trump can even officially speak for anything, Musk has already bought his way in.
Specifically, it’s likely to expect an end to support for Ukraine, and an encouragement towards capitulation and the surrender of territory.
It’s likely to expect reduced support for Taiwan and an increase in treating their annexation by China as a fait accompli.
It’s likely to expect a fight with the UN and defiance of treaty obligations. We will probably go back to openly antagonizing Muslims, refugees, and Africa.
The Middle East is a more nuanced mass. Out loud, it is official Republican foreign policy to always support the Whiter of two evils. In this particular instance, Trump was elected in part with the support of the Arab underdog. The question becomes how many hours after inauguration does Trump wait to prove his those supporters foolishly optimistic? Because the likely outcome is Trump’s support for whatever King Bibi wants. As the FA piece points out, foreign leaders know that Trump is an empty suit and can be manipulated with praise and investment opportunities. Netanyahu has fawned over Trump’s greatness, and is opening up all kinds of countryside property for Western occupation development.
On the less-tangible level, our allies can be expected to seek a little more independence from American influence. That we could put a Trump in charge not just once but twice, means we are not the consistent backstop we’ve always sold ourselves as. If American support can’t be depended upon, it will be incumbent upon those allies to secure their interests either independently, or in partnerships that exclude us. Moves by the ICC to constrain King Bibi are already being tilted as a pretext to defy the international communities we helped to build.
And that is what Trump’s proxies want. A more isolationist globe with clearly-defined good guys and bad guys. What Trump will bring is only the determination to make other people pay for his stuff. We may be narcissistic thugs on the world stage, but we’ll be CHEAP narcissistic thugs, dammit. I mean, Mexico still won’t be paying anything to build Trump’s wall, but still.
And jokes aside, a transactional foreign policy is not necessarily bad. An ideological approach has certainly not saved the world from itself. Where it becomes problematic is in the breakdown of alliances, and what happens when someone like North Korea or Iran decides to make a move towards greatness in *their* own interests. We’re already seeing North Korea and Russia aligning in concert, and we have little real sense of how that intersects with China’s interests. The world is already moving beyond the expectation of American hegemony.
Joe Dirt
Trump 2 won’t care about minorities any more than Trump 1 did. Blacks and Latinos voted against their own interests with their Republican votes. They won’t care any more about non-Christians now than they did then. Trump can tell us all about the very fine people that were waving Nazi flags outside a Detroit performance of Anne Frank. Muslims and Jews alike voted against their own interests with their Republican votes.
The two groups that got Trump elected were God-fearing White folk, and poverty-fearing White folk. The God-fearing crowd is irrelevant, their faith in their chosen surpasses any mere words of mere men. The poverty-fearing folks are the real swing voters. They need to have jobs that pay the bills, they need for products to be affordable. They have no real retirement plan and they need comfort in the present to distract them from the future they know they can’t control.
Except that Trump 2 isn’t really going to do much for these folks either. Tariffs over time can help to shift production domestically, but it would take years of tariff-driven prices before that happened, and the cost of new production lines would only be passed along to consumers anyway. So there is little chance of price increases being discouraged, and little chance of rejuvenated American industry.
And because we’re still talking about Republicans, little chance of meaningful wage support for the poor.
Meanwhile, industrial healthcare in red states is decreasing the quality and availability of basic medical care for entire counties. Rural schools are losing funding to private schools via vouchers, already in Arizona and being explored in Oklahoma.
Four years from now, the average American will not be better off than they were on Tuesday of last week. Over those four years, Trump’s cronies will be digging in like ticks, facing only the expert strategists of the Democratic Party. The economically disaffected who toppled the Democrats this year will very likely topple goodwill towards Trump by the end of his term (if the dementia doesn’t claim him first).
The question is how much damage Trump and his proxies will be able to do before that happens. As the FA piece concurs, there will be fewer procedural and legal brakes on Trump 2 than there were on Trump 1. Given that President Biden has made no extraordinary moves to responsibly constrain the office, Trump can in many ways just pick up where he left off. External advocacy groups will see some success with legal challenges, but the greatest friction will likely come from within the Party itself.
Recall that Trump 1 had all 3 branches for two years and did exactly nothing with it. No big healthcare or jobs or infrastructure anything. They caused much immediate pain, but little lasting damage. That wasn’t a progressive deep state at work, that was conservatives being unable to agree in how much to bleed from whom. That internal dissent could lessen the risk of fascism informing passed legislation. This however only limits the type of damage inflicted, and the Project 2025 folks have spent the last four years trying to learn from the previous four. We can always be unilaterally withdrawn from treaties. All kinds of ways the world could end.
Within the executive, a point of friction was between the skilled professionals who knew how to do things, and the sycophants. The hiring for Trump 2 looks to do away with that friction up front by simply avoiding the hire of any skilled professionals. There are two silver linings to the reliance on loyalty- for the opposition (read: me, and probably you), loyal people don’t know how to do anything. If they were leaders, they wouldn’t be followers. By removing skill from his leadership, the ability of these reformed agencies to do damage is blunted.
Or perhaps the capacity for damage is multiplied, when it turns out there’s no one left around to fix what they break. Either way, the support that people are used to getting from their government will be less in Trump 2 than they were in Biden’s term.
Is any of this worth the time you spent reading it? Or the time I spent writing it? Well Foreign Affairs is already backing me up on foreign policy shifts and Politico is writing about a Europe thinking independently. NBC is also thinking most opposition to tariffs will come from outside the government due to diminished internal controls. PBS is counting the minutes before Arabs for Trump get that they were played. Which all just means some conjecture winds are blowing in the same direction, not that any outcome is certain.
Donald Trump is not an evil man, he is simply a buffoon who’s willing to say anything and bed anyone he needs to evade prosecution. The folks he’s bedding are by far the greater evil. What is certain is that the next few years will see a concerted effort to defund the nation and enrich the special few. They’re going to win more than they did during Trump 1, they’re going to hurt more people, and the only real brake on those efforts will be whether Democrats can get it together before too many systems get too rigged against them. And the consequences either way are that much greater. An early indicator of the prospective complicity of Congress will be the naming of Trump’s cabinet. If the likes of Matt Gaetz can make it – one way or another – through a Senate confirmation, then the internal brakes on Trump will be few indeed. (Note that’s Gaetz’s recusal today may be more proof of his being a rapey paper tiger than an indicator of the head rapist’s influence.)
Which is all just making me more anxious with every passing paragraph. Because these are just a few items on the menu. There’s also healthcare and education- he’ll have Americans getting too sick to work and too dumb to know why. But they’ll be reciting the Pledge and the 2nd Amendment in homeroom. There’s infrastructure, which will continue to fail as Republicans run every which way from anything that looks like spending.
That said, infrastructure may be the Right’s best chance of hanging on, post-Trump. A job-creating, America-building boondoggle? The money voters would love it, at the paltry cost of a few values their Party gave up on years ago anyway. Better yet, build an aircraft carrier or two. The Durango demo would simply drool.
Even a pragmatic look at the next few years is pretty discouraging, really.
About The Author
davetwsprocket
Dave didn't get the memo until, like, just now. He is capable with arranging words, but only just getting started at getting those words to actually do anything. He is motivated by a disrespect for authority, and towards finally doing what's right. He's good with people, but that's a learned skill- his natural inclination is to be far, far away. He's a Leo.