Who will challenge Donald Trump as President when he breaks the law?
27 April 2024
If Donald Trump becomes President and breaks the law, who will challenge him?
Even today, with little actual political power, Donald Trump appears to be above the law:
At no point during his long career as a celebrity real estate mogul and businessman has Trump faced any meaningful consequences for his fraudulent, even criminal, behavior. He has operated for decades with a shield of impunity crafted from his shamelessness, his celebrity and his craven willingness to intimidate critics with litigation or even just the threat of litigation.
What is striking is the extent to which this shield of impunity has only been strengthened by the political and legal institutions of the United States. Jamelle Bouie, New York Times
The number of people willing to challenge Donald Trump for any reason will decrease substantially if he is elected President because:
Few people will challenge a dictator. Trump has claimed he would be a dictator on day one of office. Yet dictators rarely give up their power so we can reasonably assume his dictatorship will continue indefinitely.
Trump has repeatedly threatened anyone who challenges him and he has a history of pursuing vendettas indefinitely with no concern for the costs involved.
Trump believes that as President he would have the authority to assassinate a political rival, as his lawyer told the U.S. Supreme Court this past week:
Justice Sonia Sotomayor pushed Trump’s attorney on whether the former president should be protected from prosecution for acts of “personal gain” as opposed to official acts, raising the hypothetical of an ordered assassination of a political rival.
“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military … to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” Sotomayor asked.
“That could well be an official act,” Trump’s attorney, D. John Sauer, said.
Thus, Trump believes that he could target for death or have his followers (Steven Bannon, the Proud Boys or others) target for death anyone who does anything he doesn’t like or who refuses to follow his orders.
Even if the Supreme Court decides that some Presidential acts are, in fact, not immune from prosecution, the U.S. Department of Justice will not prosecute Trump and it is unlikely that anyone at the State level would risk their life to prosecute Trump when almost everyone else is trying to placate him. In addition, few judges will dare to find Trump or his followers guilty of any crime or civil breach for fear of incurring Trump’s wrath and being imprisoned or killed.
With Trump as dictator, many of our rights will disappear and our lives will markedly change:
Public officials and candidates for public office will fall in lockstep with Trump’s words and actions for fear of imprisonment or death if they are in his disfavor. Since Trump has few fixed opinions, this will force politicians to continually praise Trump, as many are doing already.
Trump will abolish freedom of the press and shut down or greatly limit the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and any media that challenges him in any way. The only media available will resemble Fox and other right wing media.
Those of us in health care or other professions will no longer have the freedom to act according to our rational beliefs, upon threat of imprisonment or death:
We will be unable to publish scientific findings that disagree with Trump’s thinking or contradict his statements in any way. If Trump says that we should fight COVID-19 by injecting bleach, nobody will contradict him.
Protests against Trump or his policies will greatly diminish because of threats of arrest, imprisonment and death. This may be illegal under today’s laws, but who will challenge Trump? What judge will stand up to a President who orders the killing of those who refuse his orders? Another scenario is that there will be massive nationwide protests that will quick dominate American life and lead to a civil war.
Trump, acting like a mob boss, will demand your loyalty, as he does now, no matter who you are. Those who are important and wealthy will have special demands placed on them, and he will punish those who fail, as Vladimir Putin has done. If the important and wealthy appear too successful, Trump may feel threatened and eliminate them as potential rivals. Who will stop him?
On the other hand, Trump will “make America great again”, at least in his eyes, and nobody will be free to disagree:
Inflation will disappear because Trump will replace the civil service with his followers and none will dare to present economic figures that disagree with him.
We will have “tremendous economic growth, greater than any other country or at any other period in history” because Trump will demand that “his” civil servants produce statistics that confirm this.
COVID-19 and other epidemics will disappear because Trump will demand that medical professionals within and outside the government back up his statements, analogous to his forcing people to agree that he won the 2020 election, but with more severe penalties for not complying.
There will be no concern about “too many immigrants” because Trump, with the assistance of the Army and National Guard, will deport, imprison or kill tens of millions of Arab Americans, Mexican-Americans, African-Americans and other people he dislikes. They will have no actual legal rights if nobody has the courage to represent them and judges are unwilling to follow the Constitution.
If you are not concerned about the perils of electing Trump as President, I suggest that you need to start paying attention. It’s time for all of us to think about what more we can do to stop the United States from becoming a dictatorship under Trump.
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