“It would be the Delta variant of democracy. It would be a thousand times more virulent and harder to control,” says David Axelrod.
“It would be a disaster for America. … He’s going to use the power of government to persecute and prosecute his enemies and to cement his power or at least the power of his allies and cronies,” Allan Lichtman opines.
“Whether it is the Ukraine conflict, China or future transatlantic relations, [his} economic nationalism and foreign policy restraint are certainly challenges for Europe, but could also prove to be opportunities,” write Mathew Burrows and Julian Mueller-Kaler.
Those are the views about Donald Trump becoming U.S. president again of an influential Democratic political consultant who worked for Barack Obama, a historian in Washington, DC, and writers at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank focusing on global affairs.
The latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll found Trump has a slight edge over President Joe Biden in a hypothetical rematch, leading him 44 percent to 42 percent. Quinnipiac University’s latest poll, released Nov. 15, echoed those findings, with Trump favored by 48 percent of those polled compared to 46 percent who want Biden to be reelected.
What would a second Trump administration look like?
Trump and his supporters have been offering bold hints and preparing position papers.
In a speech in March, Trump said he would “demolish the deep state … expel the warmongers from our government … drive out the globalists” if he returns to the White House.
“We will beat the Democrats, we will rout the fake news media, we will stand up to the RINOs [Republicans in Name Only}, and we will defeat Joe Biden and every single Democrat,” Trump said.
“Trump-aligned outside groups have been crafting executive orders, studying the Constitution in anticipation of legal challenges and looking for workarounds to give Trump the power to invoke some of these policies on day one should he regain power,” CNN reported on its website on Nov. 16.
There is no denying Trump has plans regarding immigration, the politicization of the federal workforce, and the use of law enforcement that raise passionate concerns among civil libertarians as well as average workers in the United States who were not born in America.
His unprecedented legal predicament is in the glaring background to any talk about what Trump might do in any second term.
Trump faces criminal charges in four cases, ranging from those regarding his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election to ones for keeping classified documents and impeding efforts to retrieve them and hush money payments to an adult actress.