I’ve been writing for a few days about the runup to the 2020 election. We’re a nation that assumes a certain basic level of decency in our leaders. We expect the worst scoundrels to at least gave lip service to our basic democratic principles. We just don’t have the tools to even describe Donald Trump’s authoritarian wanderlust. But he’s dishonest to his core. These are my predictions about Trump.
By now, it should be obvious to even the most lockstep loyalist that Trump and the Republican Party will lose the next election. Think they’ll cheat? Here are my first predictions for Trump. They’re not exhaustive, but they’re the first cheats that came to my mind.
[This is the third post about Trump and the Election. The last two are Dealing With Trump: Before the Election and Dealing With Trump: Attacking the Election.]The Story So Far
Trump and his Republican Party don’t show even that minimal level of ethics. They’re openly unethical, compounded by an unusual immunity to shame. Maybe they’re taking pills for that. The results are consistent. Point out Republican their lies if you like. Publish every detail in the papers, if you have them. Republicans don’t care, and it doesn’t matter to them. Republican voters will ignore dishonesty from their leaders and reliably re-elect them. Republican politicians have insulated themselves from any expectations of honesty or even minimal competence.
The replacement for morality is loyalty to the team. Honestly, the core Republican voters I’ve talked to expect lockstep immorality. If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying. They repeat each day’s talking point without any sense of history. It’s not really news, it’s a tribal declaration. There only remaining Republican value is “Win that goddamn election!”
Once the GOP found that unquestioning level of dedication, their next step was toward to create a permanent Republican rule. The GOP Senators and Congresspeople who talk are happy at each new turn toward unconstitutional authoritarianism.
This is the background for my predictions for the time between now and the election. Trump and his Republican Party know Trump will lose any fair contest, and he’s dragging the Republican Party with him. They can all read the polls. They can’t survive a fair fight.
And the rest of us can’t sit back and just react to each outrage. Trump washes each news cycle with new outrages. We already know Trump will begin breaking everything he can because chaos serves him. Our suffering benefits our President. The best protection is to think about the possibilities and plan what we’ll do if we don’t want to be swept away
I freely acknowledge that I’m a terrible oracle. Still, I have to start somewhere. Here are a few possibilities that came to my mind. I think these are possibilities we might see before the 2020 election. We shouldn’t be surprised.
Predictions
- Hatch Act Violations: Trump will use federal resources on his political campaign. Using your elected power for personal gain is literally the definition of corruption. It’s a violation of the Hatch Ach for an elected official to use federal property or resources for their election unless you’re the President or the Vice-President. The Hatch Act explicitly excludes those two positions. It’s still corrupt and unseemly, but this is a President who routinely uses federal money and resources to support his perpetual campaign. This prediction is easy. Expect more photo ops on federal property using the institutions of our democracy as props.
- Additional Corruption: Trump routinely funnels millions of federal dollars into his businesses. This kind of routine corruption will probably continue or increase as his time runs out.
- Stop the Election: Remember when Trump ‘suggested’ he might delay the election? Trump will try again, whether he’s hoping to succeed or just sow confusion and distrust. Republicans pretended they pushed Trump back, but that’s never been true.
- Stage an October Surprise: We should expect Trump to announce something dramatic just close enough to the election to boost his chances without giving people enough time to fact-check it. The most likely example is obvious: the Trump administration will announce a new COVID-19 vaccine. That will be nice if it were true, but it won’t be, because that part doesn’t matter to the GOP. Come October, Trump will fish out whatever vaccine candidate looks the prettiest, wave it in the air, and call it a victory. The most I’m hoping for is that the poorly tested pretend-vaccine doesn’t kill more people than it helps.
- Update: Dr. Fauci just announced that it’s doubtful America will have an effective vaccine before the November election. But that’s just reality, so Trump won’t care. I stand behind this prediction.
- Bonus corruption: Trump will funnel billions of dollars into the pocket of whatever company he chooses under a no-bid contract.
- Soliciting Foreign Interference: Trump will accept foreign aid for his reelection. I’m not claiming this is a stretch prediction about Trump. In 2016, Trump asked Russian for help on live damn national TV. He openly rejoiced when Russian President Vladimir Putin came through. In 2019, Trump admitted — on national TV, again — that he’d do the same thing now. I fully expect the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and possibly the North Koreans to fall over each other about whose help was most effective. I’m pulling for diplomatic slap-fights.
- Recycled Corruption: Trump will continue to condition US foreign aid with personal favors, following the same pattern as he did with Ukraine. He is already doing this now, even in Ukraine. Trump has learned a specific lesson from the failed impeachment.
- Combination of Corruption and Hatch Act: Trump will use his federal authority to attack Biden, the Democratic Party, independent institutions, and any Republican he worries might not be sufficiently loyal. Barr is already ‘investigating’ anyone who embarrassed Trump by doing their job. Barr will expand the prosecutions to include Trump’s enemies. That should help intimidation the federal workforce as ell. Prosecuting innocent people follows the long Republican tradition of counter-attacking against everyone who criticizes them.
- Destroy Checks and Balances: The Inspectors General, a group Trump already massacred, will be treated miserably.
- Feckless Politicians: Senate Republicans will use their investigative powers for transparently partisan goals. They’ve done this since long before Trump, and they’ve already threatened more “Hunter Biden hearings” than I care to count.
- Political Nonsense: Because Republicans don’t control the House, Democrats won’t allow the GOP to use their positions to hold political show-trials. In frustration, they’ll accuse Democrats of a corrupt coverup.
- Bonus: The first attacks will be on Fox TV.
- Violating Their Oath of Office: Republicans will not restrain any election illegalities. The Senate already gave Trump his Get Out Of Jail card when they refused to convict him for blatant election fraud. It wasn’t just the failed impeachment. Republicans didn’t even listen to the evidence, the Senate didn’t censure Trump for his well-documented crimes, and our brave Republicans couldn’t even criticize their leader. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) suggested the President had learned a powerful lesson. I agree, but not the way Sen. Collins meant.
- Executive Emergency: The President may declare an emergency of some kind, either as a distraction, to interfere in the election, or (worst case) derail democracy as a whole. Think of his Border Wall Crisis, of the Caravan Crisis, or whatever. Trump can be confident that Republicans will nod along to any fictional ‘emergency,’ no matter how blatantly false.
- Secret Police, Part 1: Be concerned about any new ‘deployment’ of Trump’s secret DHS paramilitary groups. They are only police in very limited contexts, and they are not military at all. The Portland and Seattle obscenities were test runs of his authority to override non-federal police or elected officials when they’re Democrats. The House and Senate Republicans have already given Trump their permission.
- First Step: Washington, D.C. is particularly vulnerable to Trump because it isn’t a state. The President controls the DC National Guard, and Congress can already override local rule.
- Secret Police, Part 2: Trump’s DHS/INS/CPB police already mascarade as military forces by wearing forest camo and hiding their authority. Trump may try to blur that distinction further because it’s a critical step in his march toward autocracy. That’s already dangerous, but be especially frightened if Trump tries to subsume local police or other federal groups into his Secret Police. That would be a Very Bad Thing for the survival of our American Democracy.
- Secret Police, Part 3: Trump may use his federal paramilitary to intimidate or even block voting under the pretense of “protecting election integrity.” Be concerned by any federal interference in the elections, which should be run by the states.
- Invalidate the Election: Trump will declare any election he loses as fraudulent. (That one’s easy.) He will find or imagine election irregularities. (“They drove busloads of people driven across state lines!”) He’ll fume that his amazingly strong election totals – higher than anyone had ever seen before! – were contaminated by those people. He’ll declare the results invalid and storm off.
- Refuse to Admit to Reality: As Trump’s last stand, I expect he’ll deny the 2020 election results. This possibility is an extension of the previous point, but it’s worth a separate bullet. This option is obvious enough that the major media have taken it up, too. And you thought it was hard dealing with Trump now.
So Now What?
These are my predictions about Trump, but I’m not pretending they’re concrete and assured certainties based on mathematically repeatable formulae. I’m just this no-name blogger spitballing the most obvious options I can see.
But even that kind of minimal planning can change how we act if any of these actually happen. Dealing with Republican politics is depressing, but if you think about the most obvious possibilities in front of you, at least you won’t be caught flat-footed. It’s not as if our President makes wily and unexpected moves. We can make reasonable predictions about Trump.
The next step is up to you.
