Let’s look at the political scene from Trump’s viewpoint.
Sitting in his luxurious Mar-a-Lago palace receiving the daily obeisant supplicants eager to heed his every word and praise exuberantly his megalomania, Donald J. Trump can hardly believe his good fortune.
Starting in the 2015 presidential race against 16 GOP primary opponents, Trump’s vituperative attacks were unleashed. Never in American history have words from a politician’s mouth ever metastasized into such unchallenged electoral victory and domination. His daily, hourly bullying verbal abuses flooded THE MASS MEDIA, which faithfully transmitted to tens of millions of people like clockwork—lying or false statements and tweets in the tens of thousands.
Looking over his gigantic domain astride the country and soon the world, Trump can recount the pillars of his elected dictatorship.
The Supreme Court in their impeachable June 2024 unconstitutional decision (Trump v. United States) has decreed that the president’s “official conduct” (undefined) is immune from criminal prosecution for whatever they do. This 6-3 decision already fortifies Trump’s previous determination notoriously declared in July 2019 when he exclaimed, “Then, I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” And he did just that, violating with impunity federal criminal statutes (See the December 18, 2019, Congressional Record, H-12197), violating the Constitution, defying over 125 congressional subpoenas, and according to John Bolton, his national security adviser, making “obstruction of justice a daily practice in the White House.”
Who is going to challenge him? He believes correctly that it will not be the Supreme Court or Congress.
Second, Trump has control of Congress with the Republican majority in the House and Senate, however narrow. Congress is thus far showing no sign of resisting his demands for utter submission. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has already signaled this abdication of his constitutional duty for checks and balances. Senate Majority Leader Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) is more circumspect. However mindful he is of the Senate’s constitutional duty of “advice and consent” regarding Trump’s nominees, Thune has to worry about being overthrown and replaced at any time as Senate majority leader by hovering Trump loyalists.
Trump wants the Senate to declare a recess for more than 10 days to get his team of Cabinet and agency nominees appointed without the usual confirmation hearings. This is an extreme demand. As constitutional law specialist, Bruce Fein asserts: “Such contrived recesses serve no legitimate constitutional purpose. That would make such official acts voidable,” i.e., unenforceable.
This illegal escape hatch for Trump is unlikely to materialize for some of his nominees whom the Senate majority will want to reject. Why? Because, for example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for secretary of health and human services will be vigorously opposed by Big Pharma, the Big Food processors, the health insurance giants, and the Big Global Warming Polluters (fossil fuels) industries whom he has long criticized and sued when he was an effective environmental lawyer. He doesn’t have much support from Democratic senators due to his statements about vaccines and their side effects. Guessing, I expect the Senate will turn him down following a conventional nomination hearing.
The military-industrial giants will oppose Tulsi Gabbard as Trump’s director of national intelligence. She is seen as too extreme a critic, too inexperienced, and likely not to “get along by going along” with the entrenched national intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA.
Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, a veteran, with no managerial experience, has made harsh statements about military leadership, women, and Muslims. He evinces wanting to go on a vengeance kick and not on a mission to do what Trump has campaigned for, which is ending “endless wars.” The 47 Democratic senators are likely to be joined by enough Republican senators to block his nomination.
Trump’s choice of Chris Wright, head of a fracking company and a climate-denier, as secretary of energy, will get the full backing of the oil, gas, and coal industries leading to an affirmative vote in the Senate.
None of these problems bother Trump. Just as was the case with former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who was forced by disclosures, regarding his sexual aggressions and other negatives, to take himself out of the running nomination for attorney general, Trump will find plenty of replacements willing to run a Justice Department which lets him do whatever he wants with impunity.
At the end of the day, what matters to Trump is getting what he wants. He is warranted in such confidence. Who is going to challenge him? He believes correctly that it will not be the Supreme Court or Congress. The state legislatures will be on the defensive due to his willingness to cut grants and federal contracts to the states, including critical Medicaid services for millions of needy Americans, along with other traditional social safety net programs.
The labor unions, worrying about a third of their membership being Trumpsters, among other inhibitions (See, Election Day Delirium by Chris Townsend), are not much of a factor, as they have tethered themselves (with few exceptions) to the Democratic Party bureaucracy. The citizen groups will file their lawsuits and wait for the expected court delays that spell “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
As for the mainstream media CEOs, Trump knows they want higher ratings and more readers so he has given them daily fodder for outrageous epithets, falsehoods, braggadocios, and empty promises. In return, media outlets have faithfully published his crazed bloviations. The media has also reported his many corruptions, lies, ignorance of facts, bigotry, sexual escapades, and indictments —to no avail. The MAGA crowd just gets bigger. All the exposés, helped by blunders of prosecutors and partisan Trump judges, have fallen off Teflon Trump like water off a duck’s back.
He has procrastinated releasing his full medical history, contrary to his promises in 2016, 2020, and 2024. He has also resisted releasing his tax returns. He now has not complied with ethical reports during the transition from President Joe Biden’s regime to his regime. Der Fuhrer Trump believes the rules that his presidential peers have followed do not apply to him.
There is a little light at the end of the tunnel. Democratic state attorneys general will sue and block some of Trump’s violative decisions. Some state prosecutors will go after the burgeoning corruption of Trump’s nominees and their corporate collaborators eager to raid the honey pots of Uncle Sam.
The biggest risk to Trump’s domination will be Trump himself and what damage he will be unleashing that workers, consumers, and communities, even those who voted for him, will feel intensely.
But the biggest risk to Trump’s domination will be Trump himself and what damage he will be unleashing that workers, consumers, and communities, even those who voted for him, will feel intensely. The assault on their health, safety, and economic well-being may weaken Trump’s support. Once people start thinking that MAGA is really MABA (Make America Betrayed Again), the polls should start sliding propitiously from the sky-high expectations of the Paradise that Trump promised every campaign day.
At his core, Trump is not all that much different than his worst predecessors. He continued several Bush/Obama wars overseas in his first term, intensifying his backing of war criminal Bibi Netanyahu. He later swallowed his campaign criticism of price-gouging drug companies. And of course, he loves Wall Street, Houston, (the fossil fuel giants), the corporate welfarists, tax escapes of corporate crooks, those who cheat consumers and crush workers’ rights. Remember that is the way he behaved during his former failed business exploits. Nobody stopped him then and he believes the stars of his destiny will not let anyone stop him now.
Trump is at his core a corporatist and a corporate statist, who pushes bloated military budgets, lawlessness, and police powers, all of which are the frameworks of American fascism.
Buckle your seat belts people, and start the civic resurgence. (See my piece, Rise Up: Congress is Yours for the Taking in the new issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen).
