'Nothing is off the table': Trump plans for 'bureaucratic bullying' of enemies if he wins

12 September 2024

In a "This American Life" report aired on some National Public Radio (NPR) stations in June, some prominent Donald Trump critics — including former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham and The Lincoln Project's Fred Wellman — revealed that they have been looking at possible countries to move to if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election and returns to the White House in January 2025. Grisham and Wellman both said they fear the possibility of retaliation during a second Trump Administration.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his wife Rachel Vindman were also interviewed for that segment. Rachel Vindman, fearing retaliation as well, has been urging her husband to consider relocating to another country if Trump wins the election, but he told "This American Life" that he is determined to stay in the U.S. regardless of the election's outcome.

In an in-depth article published on September 12, The New Republic's Greg Sargent examines the possible shape that retaliation against critics could take in a second Trump administration — and how those critics are "bracing to be victimized."

Trump's critics have been debating whether Trump 2.0 would resemble the full-fledged fascism of Chile under Gen. Augusto Pinochet and Paraguay under the Alberto Stroessner dictatorship or the so-called "illiberal democracy" of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

"One set of oft-floated worst-case scenarios looks something like this: Trump orders his pliant pick for attorney general to prosecute Liz Cheney and other high-profile critics and frog-march them before the cameras," Sargent explains. "Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to dispatch the military into cities to crush mass protests. Trump unshackles deportation forces to drag millions of undocumented immigrants from homes and workplaces. Trump purges our nation's intelligence services, stocks them with loyal foot soldiers, and unleashes them as a domestic spying force to gather information on designated enemies of the MAGA movement."

Sargent continues, "It would be folly to dismiss these possibilities, since Trump has repeatedly threatened to carry out something resembling every one of those things. He has vowed to prosecute his political opponents without cause. He has loudly called for the indictment of members of the congressional committee that investigated his January 6, 2021, insurrection attempt. He has mused aloud that he might send the military into Democratic-run cities."

But Sargent emphasizes that a second Trump administration could also bring a "less garish scenario" with a "lower-profile, slow-burn authoritarianism" that "unfolds much more quietly and largely behind the scenes."

Trump critics, according to Sargent, has been consulting lawyers who "are advising them to gird for low-grade bureaucratic bullying."

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) told Sargent, "We are organizing to win this election, but if, God forbid, an authoritarian MAGA clampdown comes, it may not be tanks in the streets and midnight disappearances. It may be more akin to a corrosive long-term campaign of constant official and vigilante harassment against perceived political adversaries of the president-king."

Washington, D.C. attorney Mark Zaid is sounding the alarm as well.

Zaid told Sargent, "A second Trump administration will not hesitate to exercise every executive branch weapon it can against those it considers enemies, real or otherwise. We expect a very targeted approach designed to drain the financial resources of perceived adversaries, designed to leave them neutralized and isolated."

Zaid, according to Sargent, "has been advising clients who are high-profile critics of Trump" to "prepare for IRS audits directed at their personal finances" or deal with "the threat of revoked passports."

One of Zaid's clients is former Mike Pence aide Olivia Troye, a conservative Republican who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris when she spoke at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Troye told Sargent, "Nothing is off the table for what they could do to me. I'm looking at other countries where I could potentially reside."

Read Greg Sargent's full report for The New Republic at this link.

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