The Republican presidential nominee has declared his intention to deploy the military to confront the “enemy from within,” a term he uses to describe his domestic political opposition, including Democratic politicians such as former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Shiff.
Disgraced former President Donald Trump recently said the military could be deployed against his domestic critics, prompting concern that he would become a dictator if he wins in November.
Trump also said he would seek to deport more than 21 million people from the country, possibly including parents of US citizens and Americans who appear to be immigrants.
Most Republicans in Congress and a significant segment of the judiciary have failed to stand up to Trump since the demagogue launched his 2016 white-nationalist campaign, captured the White House, and developed a cult-like following.
The few GOP officials who spoke out about his villany have been ostracized and soundly rejected by the Republican electorate.
Former Representatives Adam Kinsinger and Liz Cheney are among the most prominent people who suffered for their patriotism but they
There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and Donald Trump appears to be on track to capture the White House whether he wins a majority of votes cast in the election or not.
If he fails to win the popular vote, there is still a chance he can be victorious in the Electoral College, as he was after coming in 3 million votes behind Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote on social media over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
Trump, who is the first to be impeached twice and whose term ended with his supporters violently storming the Capitol in a deadly bid to halt the peaceful transition of power on Jan. 6, 2021, faces three unresolved criminal indictments, including several that could lead to long prison terms.
They include his theft of classified documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago, and ongoing state and federal inquiries related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. A New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records earlier this year, making him the first former US president convicted of crimes.
Should he fail to garner sufficient support in the Electoral College, Trump appears poised to discredit the process, interfere with the vote counting, and disrupt the certification through legal or illegal methods. His scheme to name fake electors and the riot he incited on January 6, 2021, were designed to cause delays that would have pushed the decision into the House of Representatives, where Republicans had a built-in partisan advantage.
He did this before and he is plotting to do it again. The greatest shortcoming of President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland is their inexplicable failure to enforce the law and hold Trump accountable for his crimes on a timely basis.
“Like people on a riverboat, we have long known there is a waterfall ahead but assume we will somehow find our way to shore before we go over the edge. But now the actions required to get us to shore are looking harder and harder, if not downright impossible,” said Washington Post contributing editor Robert Kagan, who a year ago warned readers, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable.”
In many ways, Sen. JD Vance, the prospective vice president is even more dangerous than Trump, whose rambling speeches, cognitive decline, and bizarre behavior are reminders that anyone his age might not complete a second term. Electing the oldest president in history should give voters every reason to think that the Republican could die or suffer a mental breakdown, much as the GOP accused President Joe Biden.
Vance owes his wealth and political success to a German immigrant, billionaire Peter Thiel, who famously complained that democracy infringes on his freedom.
“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” Thiel wrote in a 2009 manifesto published by the libertarian Cato Institute. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”
Thiel explored using new forms of currency and “autonomous ocean communities” in international waters, but his most creative means of achieving freedom from government control putting his lackey on track to become President of the United States.
Should Trump return to the White House in January, he would be empowered in a way no prior president has been: with immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions, an unprecedented protection granted by a July Supreme Court ruling that significantly alters the power dynamics in the Oval Office.
“The justices wrote a how-to guide for a president who wants to break the law,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice. “In practical terms, if you are a president who wants to break the law, make sure your co-conspirators are also government employees – then you’re off the hook.”
The immunity ruling, in Trump v United States, is the clearest example yet of the judicial feedback loop that the former president established during his 2017 to 2021 presidency. With the active support of Republicans in the US Senate, then President Trump appointed three new hard-right justices to the country’s top court, creating a 6-3 conservative-to-liberal supermajority.
“If Donald Trump takes the White House and the Republicans control the Senate then it will be the next one, two, three justice appointments, and this will be our entire judiciary,” said US Senator Elizabeth Warren. “There will be no one to stop them, and with a Supreme Court that has basically said Donald Trump can be a king, there will be no checks on him.”
On Sunday, Trump gave a profane and conspiracy-laden speech in which he mused about reporters being shot, relaunched criticisms of voting procedures, complained about his former national security adviser John Bolton, resurrected grievances about being prosecuted for crimes related to his defeat in the 2020 election, suggested that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House and claimed Democrats are “demonic.”
There is plenty of reason to believe that a second Trump term will be devoted to retribution against his critics and political adversaries, mass deportations of immigrants, deployment of the military against domestic targets, bypassing constitutional objections to his most egregious policies, and other actions of dubious legality.
Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, originally enacted in 1792, and the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which would allow the military to round up foreign citizens of countries as part of his plan to deport millions of immigrants and possibly turn that power against his political rivals.
It is not beyond the scope of imagination that Trump would possibly ignore courts that rule against him, so there is no end to the potential damage that his election could cause.
Anyone who thinks that Trump would not attack the legal system, tamper with future vote counting, and be more aggressive, ruthless, and violent if he is re-elected has simply not been paying attention.