January 20 2025 may see the return to power of a US president who, when informed that a lynch mob was howling for the blood of his vice-president, replied “who cares?”
How scared should we be of a second Donald Trump presidency? Is American democracy really on the line? What fearful things, when the sturm und drang of this country’s hideously protracted election season finally ebbs, will Trump, if he wins, actually be able to achieve? What will be his real priorities?
The man suffers so profoundly from attention deficit disorder and has such little regard for truth or keeping his word that it is difficult to predict. Beneath the face paint, and notwithstanding the efforts of his understudy, JD Vance, to “sanewash” him, he is old and not all there.
If exacting revenge on his enemies is job one, as he often seems to suggest, there is little in law to stop him turning the justice department into a terrible swift sword. He is free to pack it with his henchmen and set them on to turning the lives of his targets upside down with frivolous prosecutions. There may be few convictions, but that is not the point. Having FBI heavies march into your office to seize files and phones is persecution enough and lawyers are ruinously expensive.
Trump has disavowed Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for his second term. He gets prickly when others presume to tell him what to do without first offering some form of financial inducement. But when it comes to staffing his regime — aka purging the “deep state” — he is unlikely to turn his nose up at the list of 10,000 vetted loyalists Heritage has prepared for him.
He will renew an executive order he issued in his first term (and his successor immediately rescinded) vastly increasing the number of civil service slots reserved for politically appointed cadres. Whether this will contribute to effective governance is open to question. The SA experience with deployment scarcely engenders confidence.
Assuming the Republicans take back the Senate, and it is widely assumed they will, Trump will be free to make some eye-poppingly awful choices for cabinet, sub-cabinet, diplomatic and other senior posts, as well as federal judgeships, that require Senate confirmation. Such nominations are no longer subject to filibuster and need only a simple majority to be approved. It may be some consolation that this would still set the bar too high for the vaccine-denying Robert Kennedy Jr to become secretary of health & human services.
The pool of actual grown-ups ready to serve at the highest levels of a second Trump administration was drained somewhat by the experience of adults in the first and by the events of January 6 2021. Many have endorsed Kamala Harris, so dire are their expectations for Trump Part 2.
There are, however, a few serious people who have signalled a readiness to kiss the ring a second time. They include Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and Steve Mnuchin, secretary of state, UN ambassador and treasury secretary, respectively, the first time round. Last week they signed a letter endorsing Trump as a force for peace in parlous times. Robert Barr, Trump’s second attorney-general, joined them in spite of having agreed that his former boss might justly be indicted for January 6.
They have to know what they would be letting themselves in for if they agreed to serve again. Either they do not believe Trump is a threat to democracy and the rule of law and dismiss Liz Cheney and her father, former vice-president Dick Cheney, as raving Cassandras. Or they figure democracy and the rule of law are going to need all the establishment help they can get with Trump back in power. Or they don’t actually believe Trump can win but don’t want to sully themselves by coming out for Harris.
Should the mountebank be restored, look for two years of chaos and cruelty concealing but fertilising the growth of a pragmatic consensus in reaction to the craziness of the Trump era. Sensible politicians on both sides of the aisle are not far apart on core issues such as controlling the borders, reshoring supply chains to revive the country’s manufacturing base, increasing the housing supply (impossible without immigrant labour), maintaining a strong defence and adapting to a changing climate. After both chambers of Congress turn Democrat in the 2026 midterms, Trump will be the lamest of lame ducks.
Elon Musk, the savant idiot pumping millions into Trump’s re-election, X-ed on Friday: “When I bring up Trump in Los Angeles they react like they got shot with a dart containing rabies and crystal meth.” Maybe that’s the sort of inoculation America needs to be cured of Maga.
• Barber is a freelance journalist based in Washington.
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