1). “The U.S. Bourgeois Democracy Farewell Tour: Coming Soon to a Telescreen Near You”, Feb 01, 2024, Paul Street, The Paul Street Report, at < https://paulstreet.substack.
2). “Why Wall Street is Surrendering to Trump”, Jan 26, 2024, Charlie Sykes, The Bulwark, at < https://www.thebulwark.com/p/
3). “How Far Will the Orange Fascist Go: Pretty Damn Far (with No Small Help from the Imperialist and Repressive Dems)”, May 01, 2024, Paul Street, The Paul Street Report, at < https://paulstreet.substack.
4). “F Genocide Joe: Reflections on Lie'n Biden's Televised National Address This Morning”, May 02, 2024, Paul Street, The Paul Street Report, < https://paulstreet.substack.
5). “In the Name of Humanity: We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America: Refuse Fascism Mission Statement”, July, 2021, at < https://refusefascism.org/ >.
6). The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025: How an authoritarian president will dismantle our democracy and what we can do to protect it, Jan 2024, Amanda Carpenter, Erica Newland, Genevieve Nadeau, Aisha Woodward, Deana El-Mallawany, & Justin Florence, United to Protect Democracy, at < https://www.
Introduction by dmorista: Paul Street has been writing essays with scathing criticism of the U.S. political and socioeconomic situation, often discussing the likelihood of an over Fascist takeover. He does not ignore the increasingly miserable socioeconomic conditions for the majority of the population under the rule of our so-called Liberal Bourseois Democracy. We might note here that the U.S. has been rapidly sinking in all measures of well-being and socioeconomic justice; in many measures the U.S. has already fallen out of the approximately 30 developed societies and is moving downward now when compared to many places in “The Global South”. The political response of a major Capitalist Class, to unending decline in their actual power bases, is to blame the most progressive part of their class for every conceivable social ill, whip up as much resentment and violence as possible and use the resulting political movement to impose a harsh police state / theocratic regime.
In Item 1)., “The U.S. Bourgeois Democracy Farewell Tour: ….” Street looked at the ongoing developments of an authoritarian regime in the U.S., as embodied in Donald Trump. He particularly focused on what he called the: “Six Failed Saviors”: 1) Anti- and Non-Trump Republicans, 2) The Legal System, 3) Congress, 4) The Media, 5) The Dismal Weimar Dems, and 6) The Bourgeoisie; and enumerated his reasons why he thinks these socioeconomic andpolitical institutions of the U.S. will not block Trump from taking power. In that essay he cites a short, but well-written Essay from an “Anti- and/or Non-Trump Republican” Charlie Sykes. It is worth a read, and is posted here as Item 2)., “Why Wall Street is Surrendering to Trump”. Street placed his link to the Sykes article in his section on “The Bourgeoisie”, and in a blend of his own and Sykes prose Street's article states: “Sykes rightly mocks the 'resistance fantasy' that 'the nation’s economic elites — the titans of Wall Street, the beautiful people of Davos, the economic masters of the universe— would, in our moment of peril, mount the barricades to defend democracy.' To which Sykes asks, 'Have you met these guys?.' ”(Emphasis added).
In Item 3)., “How Far Will the Orange Fascist Go: ….”, and Item 4)., “F Genocide Joe: Reflections on Lie'n Biden's ….”, Street examines in turn Trump and then Biden. Street sums up his observations on Trump in Item 3) writing that:
“.... If the imperialist warmonger Joe Biden wins the 2024 election, the Republi-fascist Party and the more energetic and violent parts of its Amerikaner base will try to launch a one-sided civil war to take down the mythical 'radical left state.' Blood will flow.
“If Adolph Trump wins, the conciliatory fascism-appeasing/-complicit Vichy Dems will do like Al Gore in 2000-01 and Obama in 2016: meekly submit and try to normalize the dark revanchist outcome brought about by a right-tilted system, telling Americans that 'we’re all on the same team' while angling for survival and position in the new Amerikaner order. The parties are not quite 'the same': one accepts defeat in elections, the other one no longer does that.”
And from Item 4). Street criticizes Biden's somewhat less strident stance:
“If Biden is so concerned about 'the rule of law,' why is the open Hitler-channeling January 6 putschist Donald 'Take Down the Metal Detectors' Trump not behind bars? Why did Joe and his pathetic attorney general Merrick Garland wait so absurdly long to prosecute this open Hitlerian threat to previously normative bourgeois democracy, civility, and rule of law?
“And now Biden, who says that the US would 'have to invent the [occupation and apartheid] state of Israel if didn't already exist [to serve US imperial strategic interests],' is showing that he values backing the murder of Palestinian women and children more than he values keeping Donald 'Poisoning Our Blood' Trump from having a second stint in the world's most dangerous office. His sick support of Israel's war crimes will cost him dearly with much of his party's base next fall.”
Street makes no secret of his affiliation with the RevCom organization (formerly the Revolutionary Communists). RevCom, led by Bob Avakian, took an immediate stance to “Refuse Fascism” and did what they could to mobilize and energize the American People to resist these extremely dangerous developments. The website of the Refuse Fascism part of RevComs efforts is posted here as Item 5)., “In the Name of Humanity: ….”.
One of the more active efforts to resist the development of fascism in the U.S. is found at Item “6)., “The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025: ….”. There is also a much longer complete PDF version available with 94 pages material and 334 footnotes.
We should not deceive ourselves. While Trump and his movement are a minority, they are large and powerful in a variety of ways. Fascist dictatorships are always imposed on a to some degree unwilling population, but one that is insufficiently mobilized and organized to defeat that imposition. The U.S. is a very large and complex society. I fear we might not be up to the task of keeping Trump out of the White House, and that much of the population is apathetic and are not concerned with what is happening. If Trump can be kept out of the Oval Office the fascist movement will not go quietly into the night. We can expect what is called “stochastic terrorism and violence”. That would be horrific, but would fall short of the even more dire consequences of an actual situation where Trump and his movement take control of the state apparatus in the U.S.
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The U.S. Bourgeois Democracy Farewell Tour
Trump waving goodbye and farewell to previously normative US electoral and rule of law “democracy.”
US-Americans, let’s get real: Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors Cuz the Guys with the AR-15s Don’t Want to Hurt Me” Trump is damn near on a glide path back to the White House.
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Fascism, So What?
+ now openly channels Hitler by saying that: Marxists, socialists, and communists are “vermin” who need to be “rooted out of the country;” the greatest threat to the Fatherland “comes from within;” nonwhite immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the country”?
+ has made political “retribution” a cornerstone of his campaign?
+ opens his 2024 campaign rallies open with singing by incarcerated January 6 putschists, who he calls “patriots” and promises to pardon once he returns to power?
+ continues to advance the Big and multiply disproven (more than 60 times in the courts) Hitlerian Lie that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him by “the” – get this – “radical Left,” his absurd term for capitalist-imperialist Democrats?
+ ludicrously claims that Marxists have taken over the American educational system?
+ calls for the extra-judicial execution of suspected shoplifters?
+ pledges to build giant concentration camps for “illegal” migrants and asylum-seekers?
+ says his former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair should have been executed for reassuring China that the US would not start a nuclear war after January 6?
+ threatens to invade Mexico?
+ wants to invoke the Insurrection Act to crush protests on the day he’s inaugurated for a second time?
+ says he wants to be a “dictator for one day” (whatever the F that means) because “I want to build the wall and drill, drill, drill”?
And so what if his first administration was a long rolling fascistic nightmare (see the third chapter of my most recent book This Happened Here for an exhaustive record) predictably culminating in an attempted coup?
Despite all this and more disgusting to mention, the loathsome ogre Trump, reasonably described by Noam Chomsky in January 2020 as “the most dangerous criminal in human history,” is sitting pretty for a second presidency starting on January 20, 2025.
One by one the imagined American checks and balances that supposedly provide great barriers to his return to power are crumbling.
Who or what is going to stop him?
Six Failed Saviors
Anti- and Non-Trump Republicans
Anti- and non-Trump Republicans? Seriously? They have for all intents and purposes been drummed out of the now post-republican Republifascist Party. The Republican establishment has congealed around the Malignant One. As the political analysts Lakshya Jain and Arman Thomas note in a recent New York Times Op-Ed:
“The former president now controls the Republican Party by virtually every conceivable measure. He has a commanding lead in fund-raising and polling. His policies are a beacon to which most conservative lawmakers orient themselves in affairs both foreign and domestic. His endorsement remains the single most coveted asset that any Republican could hope to brandish in a primary race, and he has already received support from an overwhelming majority of prominent elected Republicans….more than 80 percent of Republicans elected to the 118th House cast doubt on the 2020 [presidential election] results during the 2022 midterms, along with 17 of the 20 Republicans who won Senate seats and 13 of 18 Republicans elected to governorships…Trump has not hesitated to punish perceived disloyalty, even after he departed office. When the House impeached him for inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, just 10 Republicans voted in favor. But by the next congressional term, eight of those 10 had left office, either retiring or losing primaries to Trump-endorsed challengers. Tellingly, one of those candidates was Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President…It’s not a coincidence that the two survivors…did not have to go through partisan primaries; they narrowly advanced through top-two systems that allowed independents and Democrats to cross over for them.”
Meanwhile, nearly the entire Republican policy establishment has now signed up with the Amerikaner fascist MAGA crusade. Project 2025, a sweeping plan for the Christian white nationalist/neofascist takeover of the federal government under Trump has been developed by The Heritage Foundation, a longstanding Republican think tank, in partnership with 80 Republican policy groups including Turning Point USA, the Conservative Partnership Institute, the Center for Renewing America, and America First Legal. Former Trump appointees and allies are prominent atop these and other “conservative” groups that have signed up with the campaign for a Trump dictatorship.
Trump’s sweeping victories in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary show that, barring death or a crippling illness or injury, he’s the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, ready to benefit from the right-tilted US Electoral College, which effectively requires Democratic candidates to win the national popular vote by at least 4 percentage points to keep or gain the White House.
The Legal System
What about Trump’s much ballyhooed legal problems? Will prosecutors, judges, and juries save us from a second and much worse Trump administration? Not likely. The January 6 insurrection leader Trump has not been charged with insurrection, the one crime that would constitutionally preclude him from regaining the presidency. Trump’s big money legal team, largely paid for through his massive dark money campaign finance war chest, is (with help from enablers, allies, and bumblers in the “justice system”) successfully delaying key proceedings long enough for him to possibly avoid any verdicts before the 2024 election. It’s not clear that guilty verdicts in any of his cases would cost him the contest with Biden
If Herr Donald is re-elected (currently a 65% probability), he will of course deep-six all federal cases against him and pardon himself along with many other Republi-fascists. He will handily nullify the state-level cases against him.
Current state-level efforts to keep him off presidential ballots on Fourteenth Amendment grounds are unlikely to survive the scrutiny of the monumentally corrupt and illegitimate US Supreme Court that Trump and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell created during the rabid dog’s first sick presidency.
Trump has found the prosecutions and lawsuits against him to be a polling and fundraising windfall. He delights in using them to sell the paranoid-style narrative that he and by extension his followers are being persecuted by a “deep state” that has “weaponized the criminal justice” in pursuit of a “radical left” agenda. (Never mind that his campaign promised to weaponize the Department of Justice and other arms of government against his political enemies.)
If he had been serious about preventing the fascist Trump from returning to power, the spineless US Attorney General Merrick Garland would have appointed a special prosecutor much sooner than November of 2022. He would have made sure that Trump was charged with insurrection.
Congress
Looking for the US Congress to save the day? Good luck with that! The Congress had a chance to prevent the orange Third Reich enthusiast from coming back into power after January 6 but the Senate was unable to convict Trump after his second impeachment in January of 2021. Too many Republican Senators feared political and physical retribution from Trump’s fascist base.
The House is gerrymandered to the right and may increase its slim Trumpist-Republi-fascist majority in 2024-25. The election line-up for the Senate contests favors the return of a Republi-fascist majority in the powerful upper chamber of Congress, itself a right-tilted and absurdly malapportioned monument to Minority Rule
The Media
Think the media is going to save us from a second Trump nightmare? Think again. Sure, MSNBC talking heads will issue the usual liberal and progressive-sounding warnings about authoritarianism and even now fascism (it’s hard to avoid the F-word when Trump is openly channeling Hitler), bringing on the usual elite academic suspects like Ruth ben-Ghiat (NYU) to tell us how Trump is walking in the footsteps of Mussolini and Hitler. Great, but the main media trend is already discernible: normalizing the American fascist creep with the usual both sides-ism and horse race coverage and with nauseatingly vapid commentary from unmitigated morons like the New York Times’ uber-dufus David “the Republicans are the party of the working-class” Brooks. The mainly “liberal” Democratic owners and managers of a dominant mass media that has been normalizing nihilistic violence and sadism and selling these pathologies to children (as the brilliant left cultural theorist and social critic Henry Giroux has been observing for years) on multiple platforms for decades has little business being shocked by the ascendancy of an openly violent right-wing politics in the US.
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Why Wall Street is Surrendering to Trump
We learn from history that we do not learn from history — Friedrich Hegel
One of the fondest bits of resistance fantasy has been the notion that the nation’s economic elites — the titans of Wall Street, the beautiful people of Davos, the economic masters of the universe— would, in our moment of peril, mount the barricades to defend democracy.
To which a reasonable person might have responded: Have you met these guys?
For about five minutes after January 6, it seemed that the business community had, in fact, found or fabricated a moral compass. “There are some members who, by their actions, will have forfeited the support of the US Chamber of Commerce. Period. Full stop,” the chamber’s vice-president, Neil Bradley, declared when the group announced a ban on contributions to representatives who had voted against certifying Joe Biden’s win.
There were full-page ads and ringing declarations. “This is not who we are as a people or a country,” insisted Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan.
Ah, but.
The chamber quietly dropped its ban on election deniers. The cash still flows. And last week in Davos, we found out how far Dimon had evolved on extraneous details like the peaceful transfer of power and attempted insurrections. Dimon now says that Donald Trump was right about lots of things and, like other moguls, is now okay with either Biden or Trump.
“My company,” he said, “will survive and thrive in both.”
The only surprise here is that we are surprised. In a remarkable piece this week, The Financial Times’s Edward Luce reminded readers, “The 1930s ought to have buried the idea that business is a bulwark against autocracy.”
The Financial Times had only nice things to say about Benito Mussolini in a June 1933 supplement entitled “The Renaissance of Italy: Fascism’s gift of order and progress”. Trains were running on time, investment was humming and friction between capital and labour was a thing of the past. “The country has been remodelled, rather than remade, under the vigorous architecture of its illustrious prime minister, Signor Mussolini,” wrote the FT’s special correspondent.
“Today’s America offers a reminder,” he notes.
Why is Wall Street so quickly making its peace with the twice-impeached, disgraced, indicted, authoritarian fraudster? Let’s divide the reasons into three buckets:
Venality, rational self-interest, and fear.
Let’s start with the obvious: Big business knows that Trump poses a threat to democratic norms and is a cancer on the national culture. But he’s good for the bottom-line, and that, after all, is the business of business. In their world, the trashing of constitutional norms is simply collateral damage.
So, as Matt Yglesias notes in his Slow Boring newsletter, it is not shocking that “rich businessmen remember they're Republicans.” Even though they might have preferred a less fascisty option, “they’re now reconciled to riding with Trump, who they see as a non-optimal candidate, but a lock for the nomination and perfectly capable of beating Biden.”
“And beating Joe Biden really is the important part…”
Forget the eyewash about the border or concerns about the tender feelings of the MAGA masses, he writes. “What Jamie Dimon really wants is the return of business-friendly regulations that will make more money for him personally, for his shareholders, and for his friends.”
None of this is particularly mysterious. Writes Luce:
[For] all his faults, Trump would be better for business than Biden. Trump cut the top tax rate and improved their bottom lines. He is promising to do the same again. Trump’s railing against corporatism is just red meat for the base. He would also boost the fossil fuel industry and commercial real estate. The assumption of business leaders that Trump will fulfil these promises is almost certainly right.
They are also unfazed by Trump’s threats of big tariffs and renewed trade wars, because “less globalisation is a price worth paying for lower taxes. It seems that almost anything is.”
Elites tell themselves other stories too: They want a seat at the table. They want to be in the room where it happens. They want access. And they know that if they fail to fall into line now, they risk being cast into outer darkness. Or worse.
So, they are afraid. But perhaps not afraid enough, telling themselves that Trump’s “bark is worse than his bite.” In their boundless self-regard many of them (like their counterparts from the last century) seem to think that they will be able to control him or limit his damage. In his first term, the guardrails held, they tell themselves, so how bad could it be?
But Trump is openly promising a regime of retribution; and this time around he will have far more weapons to wield. As Protect Democracy warned last week, “A second Trump administration will seek to pierce the independence of federal agencies to expand presidential control over their activities.” That includes the DOJ, FCC, FTC, SEC, IRS and all the vast net of regulatory powers that can be aimed at both individuals and corporations who fall out of favor.
As both Trump and Florida’s Ron DeSantis have signaled, there is a ravening appetite on the right for the use of government power to punish ideological dissenters in the private sector. As the Protect Democracy report noted, “Trump made several attempts, with varying degrees of success, to crack down on the media during his first term.”
He ordered a government review of postal rates and urged his postmaster general to double shipping rates on Amazon, as a part of his campaign to pressure Washington Post and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos to provide him with more favorable news coverage.
As a 2016 candidate, Trump threatened to block the merger of AT&T and Time Warner because CNN was “wildly anti-Trump” and, after he became president, the Department of Justice challenged the deal. The New Yorker reported that Trump ordered top aides to “get this lawsuit filed…I’ve mentioned it fifty times. And nothing’s happened. I want to make sure it’s filed. I want that deal blocked!”
But the media is far from the only industry that Trump 2.0 could target. DeSantis famously went to war with Disney; and the Trumpian right seems spoiling for a fight with businesses that might take controversial positions on issues dear to the heart of the new MAGA elite.
Abuses of government power can take different forms, because government officials wield the power of the state in many ways. They employ rhetoric to influence a public debate, deploy administrative and agency power to gatekeep opportunities and launch investigations, and propose and pass laws that codify the rules of the game…
These include:
Rhetorical Threats: In response to a company’s (or company leader’s) disfavored speech or expression, a high-ranking government official may threaten that the government will take action to punish the company or make a statement directly intended to chill business expression. For example, in March 2021, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tweeted that she would work to “break up Big Tech,” in response to critical tweets from Amazon about the senator’s characterization of the company’s tax liability. That same year, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) warned businesses that they would face “serious consequences” for speaking out against a new voting rights law in Georgia and urged corporate America to “stay out of politics.”
Administrative Tools: A government official may propose using the executive branch’s administrative or investigative power in retaliation for viewpoints it opposes….
Legislative Power: A lawmaker may propose legislation or initiate an investigation directly targeting a company as a result of its expressed views. For example, in 2018 the Georgia legislature voted to strip out from a larger bill a proposed tax exemption on jet fuel, originally intended to benefit Delta Airlines, in retaliation for the company’s decision to eliminate a promotional discount for National Rifle Association members following the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
In a second Trump term, this would be mere child’s play. But, by then, there will be little that the business elite can do about it.
How do we know?
We’ve seen this play before.
Haven’t we?
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How Far Will the Orange Fascist Go
As the decrepit warmonger Joe Biden shows that he values US support for Israeli genocide more than he cares about blocking a second term for the wannabe fascist strongman Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump, TIME Magazine’s Eric Cortellessa recently conducted two interviews with the orange-hued Dear Leader of America’s Reich-most major political party.
Cortellessa engaged Trump on his statement earlier this year that he wants to be “a dictator for a day…I ask[ed] him,” Cortellessa writes, “‘Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles?’ Trump [said] ‘no. Quite the opposite. I think a lot of people like it.’”
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Read that again: “I think a lot of people like it.”
The purpose of Cortellessa’s interviews was to hear straight from Trump’s ’s mouth what Trump wants to do in his second administration. Here is Cortellessa’s summary of what he learned:
“What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”
By Cortellessa’s account:
“Trump remains the same guy, with the same goals and grievances. But in person, if anything, he appears more assertive and confident. ‘When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,’ he says. ‘I had to rely on people.’ Now he is in charge. The arranged marriage with the timorous Republican Party stalwarts is over; the old guard is vanquished, and the people who remain are his people. Trump would enter a second term backed by a slew of policy shops staffed by loyalists who have drawn up detailed plans in service of his agenda, which would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable. ‘I don’t think it’s a big mystery what his agenda would be,’ says his close adviser Kellyanne Conway. ‘But I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action.’”
This is all quite chilling but Cortellessa’s language is too mild and he was far too polite and careful not to offend and confront in his discussions with “sir” Trump.
We’ve had an imperial American presidency that mass-murderouslt menaces the world for eight decades. What’s new these days is that Trump, accurately described by Noam Chomsky in January 2020 as “the most dangerous criminal in human history,” represents the fascist takeover of that presidency.
Cortellessa reports Trump’s Orwellian claim that his critics are “fascists” but fails to point out to Trump or TIME’s readers that Trump has recently been openly channeling the ultimate historical fascist Adolph Hitler by saying that nonwhite immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and promising to rid the nation of of socialist, communist, and Marxist “vermin.”
In his discussions with Trump, Cortellessa never brings up that ominous language from the man who, in Cortellessa’s words, “is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns,” and who “leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the [2024 presidential election] outcome.”
Cortellessa never asks Trump about his reference earlier this year to nonwhite immigrants as “not people.” He never asks Trump why the putschist ex-president hosted the teen fascist Kyle Rittenhouse — the white supremacist militia member who murdered two people with an illegally owned AR-15 at an August 2020 Black Lives march in Kenosha, Wisconsin — and the open neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes in Mar a Lago.
Cortellessa never asks Trump about his complaint as president that top US generals didn’t behave like the German military command under Hitler.
Cortellessa never asks Trump about other richly fascistic aspects of Trump’s first presidency: Trump’s pardoning of the pathological racist war criminal Eddie Gallagher; Trump’s repeated positive references to foreign dictators; the praise Trump heaped on the blood-soaked Filipino strongman/hitman Rodrigo Duterte; Trump’s promise of pardons to border patrol agents who shot asylum-seekers; Trump’s defense of white supremacist terrorists in Charlottesville; Trump’s encouragement of racist mass shootings; Trump’s attempted deployment of the military to crush the George Floyd Rebellion; Trump’s reference to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries,” combined with a complaint that the US doesn’t get more immigrants from white Scandinavia; Trump’s pandemo-fascist cultivation of Covid-19 (valued initially by the Trump team as a killer primarily of disproportinatley Black and brown people living in Democratic cities); Trump’s sending of federal gendarmes to terrorize and disappear Black Lives protesters in Portland, Oregon; Trump celebration as just “retribution” of a federal task force’s extrajudicial execution of an anti-fascist (Michael Reinoehl) in September of 2020; Trump’s telling trip to the site of Rittenhouse’s murders on the last night of the 2020 presidential campaign; Trump’s constant sexist shaming of women; Trump’s successful appointment of three Christian fascists to the US Supreme Court; Trump’s rolling attempted subversion of the 2020 election; Trump’s call for the fascist Proud Boys to “Stand By” for him; Trump’s drive- and fly-by thumbs up to two Proud Boy rampages in Washington DC after the 2020 election; the Trump-triggered Capitol Riot of January 6, which Trump wanted to be led by AR-15-wielding fascist militaries…. and the record goes on (this is the short list).
If you want to know “How Far Trump Would Go” (the title of Cortellessa’s TIME write-up) in his second term, you might want to look back at Trump’s first term along the way, no?
Cortellessa fails to query Trump about his recent inflammatory comment that the nation will undergo “a bloodbath” if he isn’t re-elected. He never confronts Trump with the Hitlerian essence of the former president’s constant repetition of the multiply disproven Big Lie that the 2020 election stolen and of Trump’s dark, Nazi-channeling “stabbed in the back” claim that the nation’s real enemies are “internal” — the big bad supposed “radical Left,” a category in which he absurdly includes the capitalist-imperialist Biden Dems. Cortellessa never brings up Trump’s long record of sexual assault.
On top of all this, Cortellessa includes the following Prozac-like paragraph, which seems designed to put the readers back to sleep just in case his findings have woken them up too much about the fascist menace afoot:
“The courts, the Constitution, and a Congress of unknown composition would all have a say in whether Trump’s objectives come to pass. The machinery of Washington has a range of defenses: leaks to a free press, whistle-blower protections, the oversight of inspectors general. The same deficiencies of temperament and judgment that hindered him in the past remain present. If he wins, Trump would be a lame duck—contrary to the suggestions of some supporters, he tells TIME he would not seek to overturn or ignore the Constitution’s prohibition on a third term. Public opinion would also be a powerful check. Amid a popular outcry, Trump was forced to scale back some of his most draconian first-term initiatives, including the policy of separating migrant families. As George Orwell wrote in 1945, the ability of governments to carry out their designs ‘depends on the general temper in the country.’”
Please. Spare me. “Lame duck,” my ass. This motherfucker Donald “Poisoning Our Blood” Trump is the deranged cult leader of a US Republi-fascist movement and has been blowing through one failing bourgeois-democratic rule of law and decency guard rail after another, as I documented in my recent essay “The Bourgeois Democracy Farewell Tour.” He has no intention of stopping at two terms.
Meanwhile we have the revolting spectacle of Trump brazenly and deliberately intimidating witnesses in direct defiance of the judge presiding over his felony campaign finance trial in New York City. This openly disrespectful, noxious, and criminal, jury- and witness-intimidating conduct is a big “F-You” to the rule of law whenever that law might dare to move against him.
Not that Blue America is exactly showing a strong commitment to democracy these days. As an old friend of mine recently wrote in a reflection on the brutal police state crackdown being inflicted on students protesting Israel’s Biden-backed genocide in Gaza: taking place in Democratic-run cities and on mainly Democratic college campuses:
“The iron fist of the state has started its work. And the justification sounds quite familiar: we like protest just fine (you know, free speech), but we don't have to listen to any of it, certainly don't have to negotiate with children, and once we think you've played around enough, and you refuse to go back to class like the obedient young people we are trying to condition, then you get your head cracked and become a felon. How it works in this system. And oh, if none this sounds particularly cogent, there's always the ‘outside agitators’ thing; our properly conditioned students would not do these things.”
Same as it ever was in a nation where the two dominant parties are, as Upton Sinclair once wrote, “two wings of the same bird of prey.”
Two wings but not identical. If the imperialist warmonger Joe Biden wins the 2024 election, the Republi-fascist Party and the more energetic and violent parts of its Amerikaner base will try to launch a one-sided civil war to take down the mythical “radical left state.” Blood will flow.
If Adolph Trump wins, the conciliatory fascism-appeasing/-complicit Vichy Dems will do like Al Gore in 2000-01 and Obama in 2016: meekly submit and try to normalize the dark revanchist outcome brought about by a right-tilted system, telling Americans that “we’re all on the same team” while angling for survival and position in the new Amerikaner order. The parties are not quite “the same”: one accepts defeat in elections, the other one no longer does that.
Revolution anyone? Orange Trumpolini, Genocide Joe, the whole damn system has to go.
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F Genocide Joe
Dear readers - this is a rush job, written in a state of sheer disgust after reading Biden’s nationally televised address on/against campus anti-genocide protests this morning.
Has Lie'n Joe Biden ever done a special nationally televised presidential address on the fascist Christian white nationalist menace stalking the land?
Did he do one to denounce and counter the forced motherhood Dobbs v Jackson decision?!
Did he go on television to talk to the nation about its insane mass shooting and violence epidemics?
How about one on the climate catastrophe (just the biggest issue of our or any time), which has gotten worse under his administration (during which the US has set new records for the burning of fossil fuels)?
How about one on the growing risk of nuclear war, which he has significantly escalated with his relentless provocation of Russia and China? Hello?
Of course not. Nope.
And yet this very morning the sorry-ass arch-imperialist warmonger Genocide Joe Biden did a nationally televised address in which he falsely painted the wonderful wave of American campus protests against US-backed genocide in Gaza as a "violent," "antisemitic," and "chaos"-causing threat to Jewish and other students, to the educational process, and to the "rule of law."
What a lying sack of shit this longtime blood-soaked imperialist is.
*"Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest," Biden said. What a disingenuous asshole! The anti-genocide protesters are doing no such thing. The attacks, violence, and intimidation are coming from Zionist thugs (who went after anti-genocide protesters with bear spray and baseball bats at UCLA last night), campus police, and militarized city, county, and state police.
* "People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked," Biden said. Wow. Talk about Orwellian reality-inversion! The anti-genocide protesters are not attacking or threatening to attack people trying to walk across campuses. The only people assaulting folks on campuses are Zionist thugs and the gendarmes being called in by university and college presidents and trustees. And nothing could be more educational than joining an on-campus teach-in or discussion of Israel's long and ongoing US-sponsored war on the Palestinian people, 40,000 of whom have been murdered with largely US-/Biden-supplied arms over the last seven months.
* "There should be no place on any campus for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students." Good one, Genocide Joe! The anti-genocide protests are NOT antisemitic. They are SO NOT ANTISEMITIC that many of the leading campus activists are Jewish students who say things like "One Holocaust does not justify another."
If Biden is so concerned about "the rule of law," why is the open Hitler-channeling January 6 putschist Donald "Take Down the Metal Detectors" Trump not behind bars? Why did Joe and his pathetic attorney general Merrick Garland wait so absurdly long to prosecute this open Hitlerian threat to previously normative bourgeois democracy, civility, and rule of law?
And now Biden, who says that the US would "have to invent the [occupation and apartheid] state of Israel if didn't already exist [to serve US imperial strategic interests]," is showing that he values backing the murder of Palestinian women and children more than he values keeping Donald "Poisoning Our Blood" Trump from having a second stint in the world's most dangerous office. His sick support of Israel's war crimes will cost him dearly with much of his party's base next fall.
The "rule of law"? Is that what the Judeo-fascist state of Israel upholds when it buries innocent Palestinian children in rubble, murders aid workers, and bombs hospitals in Gaza --- all this and more terrible to contemplate with US funding and arms and the political and diplomatic backing of the Biden White House?
Hello?
"We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent," Genocide Joe said. "The American people are heard." That's yet more bullshit from Lie'n Biden. The USA has a long and ongoing history precisely of "silencing people and squashing dissent" --- a history that is on cold display on numerous US campuses right now.
"The American people are heard?" By policymakers and a ruling class that behaves in direct violation of majority US opinion on one issue after another after another after another (there's a huge empirical literature on this) , including (by the way) the current US-Israel war on Gaza: most Americans want an immediate and permanent cease fire.
Biden ended his address by telling a reporter that the student protests would have no impact on his policy in Israel and Palestine.
The protests are "heard," but their basic human call for a ceasefire are rejected despite the fact that it mirrors majority US and world opinion.
Excuse me if I don't bow down and kiss Biden's ass for saying he's not ready to call out the National Guard to squash opposition to the US-Israeli Crucifixion of Gaza! He is channeling the same neo-McCarthyite false accusations that the Republi-fascists are making against the wonderful and courageous student protesters.
Fuck this guy.
Watch Lie’n Biden’s address here if you can stomach it.
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Refuse Fascism
RefuseFascism Mission Statement
July, 2021
RefuseFascism.org exposes, analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in this country. Seventy-four million people voted for Trump in 2020. The Republi-fascist Party has been purged of dissenting voices. The mass fascist movement has hardened in the wake of their January 6 coup attempt. Fascist initiatives around restricting voting, immigration and abortion rapidly advance in statehouses across the country. The election of Biden has not eliminated the danger, it has only bought some time.
Fascism is not just a gross combination of horrific reactionary policies. It is a qualitative change in how society is governed. Once in power, fascism’s defining feature is the essential elimination of the rule of law and democratic and civil rights. Fascism foments and relies on xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive re-institution of oppressive “traditional values.” Truth is obliterated and fascist mobs and threats of violence are unleashed to build their movement and consolidate power.
The Democratic Party will not stop this nightmare. Trump, fascist Fox News, and the Republi-fascist Party have branded them as enemies and “traitors.” Yet, the Democratic Party will consistently pull to try to work with, conciliate with and collaborate with them. There can be no reconciliation with fascism except on the terms of the fascists. Fascism must be resolutely opposed.
RefuseFascism.org unites with people from diverse perspectives to sound the alarm and prevent the consolidation of this American fascism. Through our website, podcast, social media, and publications we engage, dialogue and debate with a broad array of writers, scholars, legal experts and people from different walks of life to educate people on the roots, nature, trajectory of the real and present danger of fascism. And, through our engagement and networking with people and social movements we are forging understanding and relationships aimed at preventing the consolidation of fascism.
Since the founding of RefuseFascism.org our stand and resolve have not wavered:
2023: The Year In Review
As we close out 2023 and head into 2024 many of us are feeling a sense of deja vu – but with higher stakes. Take a trip through the events of 2023 with an eye to the future with some guests from this past year including: Wendy Via, Coco Das, Jeff Sharlet, Paul Street, Thomas Zimmer, Fred Wellman, Sarah Posner, Brynn Tannehill, David Gilbert, Marvin Dunn, Faisal Al-Juburi, Keyanna Jones, Susan Neiman, Mark Joseph Stern, Dahlia Lithwick, Madiba Dennie, Mark Jacob, Janet Ward
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From “Man Bites Dog” and “Oh My God” to “Dog Bites Man” and “Oh Well” On the Trivialization and Normalization of Fascism and Other Evils
Originally published at the Paul Street Report on Substack, reprinted with permission.
Beware the normalization of ecocide, genocide, imperial war crimes, fascism, and mass death.
Perspective: Trump Indicted for Attempting to Overturn Results of 2020 Election: A Time for Truth, Not Delusion; For Struggle, Not Complacency
From the Refuse Fascism Editorial Board
On August 1, the Department of Justice indicted Trump on four counts of (and related to) conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election. On January 6, 2021 Trump unleashed thousands of his blood-thirsty murderous fascist supporters to violently storm the Capitol attempting to hunt down and hang Mike Pence,…
What are you going to do about the Nazi Problem?
By Coco Das
…Whatever moral and political stand the German people should have taken to defeat the Nazis early, however much determination they should have shown, applies to us tenfold now.- READ MORE
Presentation from Andy Zee at the panel discussion “Why did 74 million people vote for Trump? What is the danger and what do we do about it?”
Trump has cohered diverse reactionary and fascist movements that predated his regime into a force that has now tasted power, is embedded in key institutions especially the courts, and that lives and seethes in its own conspiracy laden universe of victimization that will propel an aggreived revanchism. This is a movement that is not going away. – READ ANDY ZEE’S PRESENTATION
Bob Avakian: THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America: A Better World IS Possible!
Trailer:
Bob Avakian is the revolutionary leader who has – for decades – been warning of the development of a fascist movement in the US.
What is Refuse Fascism?
RefuseFascism.org was initiated on an emergency basis in the wake of the election of Trump and Pence in 2016. Our founding mission called on all who recognized the catastrophic danger of the Trump/Pence regime to unite and organize to drive the regime out of power through sustained, non-violent mass protest. We pledged to the world that we would not stand aside while there was still a chance to stop a regime that imperiled humanity and the earth itself. With our slogan: In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America! And our single unifying demand: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
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The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025
How an authoritarian president will dismantle our democracy and what we can do to protect it
JANUARY 2024
A REPORT BY UNITED TO PROTECT DEMOCRACY
Executive Summary
Putting the authoritarian threat in context
Since June 16, 2015, the day that Donald Trump descended an escalator in Trump Tower and announced his run for the presidency, the American body politic has struggled to figure out how to treat him, his rhetoric, and the threat he poses to our system of government. A similar pattern plays out repeatedly: Trump makes a seemingly outlandish promise that upends conventional understandings of politics. Then, those who help Americans make sense of current events — the media, other politicians, pundits, and influencers — dismiss, distort, or deny the very promise Trump has made. And few then know quite what to make of it all or how to respond — a state of confusion that has enabled Trump to shatter democratic norms in previously inconceivable ways.
We now have more than eight years of experience with this phenomenon and a full presidential term as a track record proving that Trump’s pledges should be taken both seriously and literally. He has, for the most part, sought to do the extreme things that were dismissed as mere rhetoric when first promised, from enacting a “Muslim ban” to refusing to accept the results of an election. And yet, here we are again, with Trump making even more extreme promises to “terminate” the Constitution, seek “retribution” against political opponents, and be a “dictator” (just on day one), only to see people unsure what to make of or how to respond to these threats.
This report aims to alter these dynamics by clearly showing how Trump would follow through on his most extreme anti-democratic pledges for a second term and then offering expert recommendations for how to mitigate that danger.
The bulk of the report looks specifically at three things: Promises, Powers, and Plans.
It collects a set of promises Donald Trump has made, in his own words, for what he would do in a second term. It places them in their proper context, coming amidst a resurgence of similar authoritarians worldwide that Trump has openly admired and modeled himself after.
It examines the powers of the presidency and how they could be used to implement those promises. It explains the legal mechanisms that will be applied to turn Trump’s campaign promises into government policy and programs. And, it assesses the previously available guardrails that could constrain or prevent these abuses of power and the extent to which they will still hold.
It explores the plans Trump and his allies have drafted to circumvent or override the checks in our system that otherwise have or could restrain his most extreme intentions. Based on expert input, it describes how these policies will play out in practice and negatively impact American life upon implementation.
In these ways, this report seeks to add to the growing body of reporting from outlets such as The Atlantic and The New York Times that have begun documenting what a second Trump term would look like. It also builds on prior work by Protect Democracy.
Protect Democracy previously issued The Authoritarian Playbook, which provided a framework for understanding how modern strongmen around the world have consolidated power and subverted modern democracies. This report builds on that earlier one and places Trump’s promises, powers, and plans in that context.
The ultimate assessment is a sobering one: As damaging as Trump’s first term was to American systems of constitutional government, culminating in his efforts to overturn an election and violently halt the counting of electoral votes by Congress, what he has promised in his own words to do if returned to office would be even more destructive to our Republic.
Trump’s campaign promises are extensive, as are the plans of groups working to support those promises in preparation for a second Trump term. This report, therefore, does not seek to cover them all. It also does not cover dangers posed by a second Trump term about which he has not made explicit promises or that fall outside of federal government operations, but that may pose even graver risks, such as the degree to which he uses the threat and reality of violence to achieve political ends. Those and other risks of a second Trump term also require attention, reporting, and analysis but are beyond the scope of this report. This report addresses the following topics on which he has made explicit promises and about which his allies have developed specific plans for federal government action:
Pardons to License Lawbreaking: During Trump’s first term, he discovered that he could leverage the pardon power to induce witnesses against him into silence. In a second term, he has indicated he would further abuse pardons to incite political violence, incentivize lawbreaking for his benefit, and render himself above the law.
Directing Investigations Against Critics and Rivals: Retribution is the dominant theme of Trump’s 2024 campaign, and his allies are making plans to eliminate the Department of Justice’s traditional prosecutorial independence to give Trump greater personal control to direct law enforcement against his perceived opponents and insulate himself from accountability.
Regulatory Retaliation: In addition to steering prosecutorial discretion via the Department of Justice, Trump has vowed to consolidate and wield federal regulatory power to reward political loyalty and punish his critics, particularly those associated with the media. There are numerous reports of this regulatory retaliation happening during Trump’s first term, and plans for a second include ways of removing those obstacles that limited opportunities for more.
Federal Law Enforcement Overreach: Trump’s declaration that immigration is “poisoning the blood of our country” is a grim foreshadowing of how he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime provision dating back to 1798. Once Trump has that power, he has also expressed his will to expand the footprint of federal law enforcement to police cities and shut down lawful protests.
Domestic Deployment of the Military: A central hallmark of American democracy is that the U.S. military not be used against American citizens. But Trump plans to abuse the Insurrection Act to order military force to quash dissent and target vulnerable communities.
The report also considers Trump’s repeated flirtation with staying in office beyond a second term. When viewed in the context of the Authoritarian Playbook and the actions of Trump-like figures around the globe, this threat becomes hard to ignore.
This report is not all doom and gloom, though. Although Trump’s first term battered our constitutional guardrails and the lives of many Americans, our democracy ultimately survived. As the report explains, that was no accident but the result of the courageous actions of a broad array of Americans and public leaders who stood up for our democracy. That work can provide both instruction and inspiration going forward.
Drawing from those lessons, the report ends with ten recommendations to prepare to protect American democracy against unconstitutional and authoritarian actions. As of the release date of this report, we are one year away from the next presidential inauguration. The time to act on these recommendations is now. The recommendations include:
Create pro-democracy coalitions before the crisis arrives.
Take anti-democratic ideas and promises seriously.
Keep a broad pro-democracy movement united against the acute, big-picture autocratic danger.
Support Republicans that stand firm for democratic institutions.
Rally around non-partisan, independent public servants.
Uphold the rule of law and democratic institutions, and always repudiate violence.
Protect the first targets, and arrange now to advocate for the most vulnerable.
Evaluate security at the community, household, and personal level.
Work to protect free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028.
Continue building the democracy of tomorrow.
Introduction
It’s not just rhetoric. Campaign promises are being translated into plans and programs to deploy executive power.
Take Him at His Word
One year from now the next president of the United States will be inaugurated, and that person may very well be former president Donald Trump.
Recently, Trump was asked if he would “abuse power as retribution against anybody” if re-elected president in 2024. The question came from a friendly source, Fox News host Sean Hannity. Hannity appeared to hope that Trump would reject the notion ahead of the Iowa caucus. Yet, that proved to be difficult for Trump.
Distancing himself from his earlier comments would mean denying the central promise of his campaign, which Trump launched by declaring to his voters: “I am your retribution.” Trump chose to mock Hannity’s question. “This guy, he says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator are you?’” Trump replied, referring to Hannity. “I said, ‘No, no, no, no — other than Day 1.’ We’re closing the border. And we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.”
The audience laughed, humored by the way Trump played with the word “dictator,” as if he had never previously displayed any indication of acting like one. CNN’s Manu Raju asked Republicans on Capitol Hill for their reactions to the comment. They, too, dismissed it as a joke, saying things such as:
“It’s entertainment. And, you know, we’ve been around him long enough. It’s entertaining.” — Texas Rep. Michael McCaul
“I think it was a joke.” — South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham
“We all know Trump uses unique expressions when he explains things.” — Kentucky Rep. James Comer
Senator J.D. Vance wrote: “Trump’s superpower is that he’s the most quick witted leader in a generation. Every grown man hyperventilating about this clip needs to find a sense of humor.”
These reactions might be understandable if Trump had not already established a record of employing authoritarian tactics during his first term. Or, if there was no credible reporting by publications such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post documenting the ambitions that Trump and his allies harbor of consolidating power to seek vengeance on their adversaries come 2025. But GOP lawmakers, like many others in elite political circles, have declined to take the threat seriously.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote in December 2023: “We think American institutions are strong enough to contain whatever designs Mr. Trump has to abuse presidential power,” while suggesting that the real “danger” that could come from a second Trump administration is that he would “set up the left for huge gains in 2026 and 2028.”
Others have adopted a fatalistic “both sides” approach to the looming crisis. As one writer at National Review asked: “[I]f our existing checks and balances under the Constitution aren’t strong enough to stop abuses of power by Trump … why would you think that they’re strong enough to stop abuses of power by Joe Biden or anyone else?”
Ex-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, who covered Trump extensively in his former job, said that even though Trump made “life hard for my family,” he was open to voting for him in 2024 because “We survived a Trump administration. Would we survive another one? Yes. Yes…I don’t think there’s any greater risk to America with him than with Biden.”
Democratic-turned-Independent former Senator Joe Lieberman, a prominent booster of efforts by No Labels to recruit a third-party 2024 presidential candidate, has a similar take. “This is such a strong country and our laws are so strong,” he told Intelligencer. “Trump lost 60 cases and he had to accept the final judgment of the courts. Well, he didn’t accept it, but Congress came back from recess and got it done.”
One has to ask, why does the belief, whether genuine or performative, persist that if Trump regains power, somehow, his authoritarianism will be contained? How can his references to dictatorship be construed as humor at this point? Why do so many people still refuse to take Trump at his word?
This failure is particularly striking given not only Trump’s track record but how wrong similarly dismissive statements have proven to be in the past.
After repeated refusals by Trump to assure Americans that he would accept the results of the 2020 election led to concerns he might resist the transfer of power, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat famously wrote a column entitled “There Will be no Trump Coup,” in which he addressed directly the question of “whether [Trump] will leave power like a normal president or attempt some wild resistance.” Douthat assured us it was the former: “Our weak, ranting, infected-by-Covid chief executive is not plotting a coup,” Douthat insisted, three months before Trump dispatched a violent mob to storm the Capitol, leaving five dead, halting the congressional process of counting electoral votes, and threatening the peaceful transfer of power.
And Douthat was not alone. Roughly two months before the 2020 election, Protect Democracy’s Executive Director asked the chief of staff to a senior Republican senator to assess, on a scale of 1 to 10, how concerned he and the senator were about potential disruptions to the regular electoral process. “Zero,” he replied, saying they were “not worried at all.” A recently retired Republican senator offered a similar assessment.
Assessments of how seriously to take Trump’s seemingly outlandish statements during his 2016 campaign were similarly wrong. Trump issued a statement “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” on December 7, 2015. At the time, his Republican primary rival, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush posted on Twitter that, “Donald Trump is unhinged. His ‘policy’ proposals are not serious.”
Tech entrepreneur and major political donor Peter Thiel defended and downplayed the promise. “I think a lot of voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally, so when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment their question is not, ‘Are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China?’ or, you know, ‘How exactly are you going to enforce these tests?’” he said. “What they hear is we’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy.”
But of course, Trump was absolutely serious and signed Executive Order 13769 during the first week of his presidency. Referred to by Trump himself as his promised “Muslim ban,” EO 13769 directed the Department of Homeland Security to, among other things, shut down entry to the United States by travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Overcoming a Failure of Imagination
Time and again, predictions that Trump was not serious have proved disastrously incorrect. And yet pundits and officials, mainly on the political right, continue to make them, having failed to internalize lessons from these past errors.
Why is this? David Frum has suggested in The Atlantic that it stems from an ordinary human failure: “For all its marvelous creativity, the human imagination often fails when turned to the future,” Frum wrote. “When Donald Trump is the subject, imagination falters further. Trump operates so far outside the normal bounds of human behavior — never mind normal political behavior — that it is difficult to accept what he may actually do, even when he declares his intentions openly.”
This report attempts to help overcome that failure of imagination, from which we all suffer to some degree. In this report, Protect Democracy adds to the respectable body of reporting regarding the stakes of the 2024 election by explaining how a second Trump administration will go about consolidating power at the federal policy level in service of an agenda of retribution.
This report examines Trump’s campaign promises, which are no less ominous after campaign officials tried to temper them. It focuses on a set of pledges most central to an authoritarian agenda. For each category, the report explains how these promises are being translated into concrete action plans that will become federal government policy, should he take office. Protect Democracy’s legal and policy experts have carefully evaluated these plans and explain in the following pages how Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork to overcome factors that constrained him, to varying degrees, in his first presidency. We lay out the legal, policy, and bureaucratic mechanics of how these policies will be rolled out through the White House and various federal agencies.
In focusing on Trump’s plans to implement his agenda of retribution through federal policy and programs, this report does not cover all aspects of the authoritarian threat come 2025. For example, it does not cover potential dangers to U.S. national security from Trump’s foreign policy plans. Likewise, it does not address the complete set of extremist domestic policy plans. Nor does it address the dangers posed by Trump’s give-and-take with white supremacist militia groups, the way his autocratic approach has been echoed by like-minded politicians at the state level, or the extent to which his rhetoric incites political violence. Additionally, in describing from a legal and policy perspective how Trump will use federal powers to disassemble our democracy, it does not portray all of the ways these abuses of power will harm the everyday lives of the American people. The report makes clear that the heart of Trump’s agenda is not to address particular policy challenges or advance public policy goals; it is to aggrandize the executive branch’s powers and use them for retribution.
Following the Authoritarian Playbook
Our analysis builds on the foundation of Protect Democracy’s Authoritarian Playbook, which offers expert advice for understanding authoritarian threats as distinct from politics-as-usual. The Authoritarian Playbook outlines the seven tactics used by strongmen to gain and retain power and describes examples, foreign and domestic. As that report describes, modern aspiring autocrats around the globe have developed strategies and alliances to seize and wield power. Trump’s core plans for a second term would employ each of these playbook tactics:
Politicizing independent institutions
Aggrandizing the power of the executive
Spreading disinformation
Quashing dissent
Targeting marginalized communities
Corrupting elections
Stoking violence.
Since rising to power in 2016, Trump and his allies have not only followed the global authoritarian playbook — they’ve also aggressively sought to ingratiate themselves with an international authoritarian network. Parallels between Trump and strongmen abroad show how autocratic promises can become a reality.
Trump’s overt praise of autocrats, calling Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “tough” and “strong,” is a distinct departure from the American tradition. Although he initially talked tough about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump later showered him with flattery: “We fell in love,” he said.
Trump, the authoritarian movement that backs him, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán are forming an especially strident international autocratic alliance. And, Orbán provides a particularly worrying data point about a would-be autocrat returning to power.
Orbán governed Hungary from 1998–2002 through a center-right coalition, then left office and was out of power until 2010. Since returning to power, Orbán has ruled as an autocrat. He wrested control over the independent media, put the country’s universities and cultural institutions under his authority, used demonizing rhetoric to justify his immigration crackdowns, and leveraged his electoral wins to rewrite his country’s constitution to keep himself in power. In a marked departure from Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who shunned Orbán, Trump welcomed him to the Oval Office in 2019 and lavished him with compliments. “I know he’s a tough man but he’s a respected man,” Trump said during their shared remarks to the press. “Probably, like me, a little bit controversial, but that’s OK. That’s OK.”
A Roadmap of What Follows
As the following pages describe, the dangers of Trump returning to power are severe. The report focuses on the following areas where Trump has made campaign promises for how he will govern if in power.
It begins with his pledge to issue pardons for the January 6th insurrectionists and others who ignore the law or commit violence on his behalf — a move that seeks to place him and his allies outside the constraints of the law.
In Section Two, it then turns to how he will pierce the independence of the Department of Justice to direct it to investigate and prosecute perceived critics or opponents.
His weaponization of the powers of government may begin with the criminal justice system, but it won’t end there. A third section examines how he will politicize regulatory agencies using their many administrative tools (licenses, permits, contracts, regulatory waivers) to force loyalty and quash dissent.
The report then turns to more direct uses of government force. Section Four addresses Trump’s plans for using Department of Homeland Security agents as a domestic police force.
Section Five considers his plans to deploy not just federal law enforcement but the U.S. military here in the United States.
Section Six considers Trump’s repeated suggestions that — like other autocrats around the world — he might not leave office when a second term is up.
Each section begins with Trump’s promises and situates them within The Authoritarian Playbook. It then explains in detail the legal and policy mechanisms that Trump will deploy to fulfill his promises. This includes assessing the strengths and vulnerabilities in the guardrails that could constrain the particular abuses of power. Each section then describes how these plans will likely play out in the world when implemented.
The final portions of this report turn from what Trump has planned to how a pro-democracy coalition can work together to enable our democracy to withstand and overcome the threat. To succeed, we must learn from what has worked before, so this includes an analysis of what strategies worked successfully to combat authoritarianism during Trump’s first term, while recognizing that continued Trump-led assaults have left our democratic guardrails battered.
The report concludes with a set of ten recommendations that the pro-democracy coalition should pursue to mitigate the threat of an autocrat in the Oval Office. As grave as the danger is, ultimately, a broad and united majority of the American public, working with our Constitution and laws, can preserve our democracy.
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