'Legitimately terrifying prospect': What a second Trump term might look like

02 October 2023

Donald Trump is showing no signs of losing his front runner status in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, leading the second-place candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by 52 percent (New York Post) or 51 percent (Morning Consult) in polls released in late September.

Polls are also showing a close race in a hypothetical rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden. In a column published on September 28, Vanity Fair's Bess Levin lays out some reasons why a second Trump term is a "legitimately terrifying prospect."

"Shortly before the 2020 election," Levin explains, "Trump signed an executive order known as Schedule F, allowing his administration to gut employment protections for thousands of career federal employees whose jobs — which range from making sure the air is clean to ensuring food and drugs are safe — are not supposed to be subject to the whims of whomever is in the White House at the time. Stripped of such protections, the move would have given Trump the power to fire whoever he wanted, and replace them with individuals whose chief qualifications were unflagging loyalty."

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Levin adds, "Trump, of course, was not able to stick around to see this plan out, and after Joe Biden was inaugurated, he canceled Trump's executive order. But, with a possible second term on the horizon, Trump and his allies have made it clearer than ever that they would pick up exactly where they left off."

Trump and his MAGA allies, Levin warns, are taking steps to make sure his second administration would include only unquestioning loyalists.

"If he wins this time," Levin explains, "he'll bring a team of loyal aides who have been planning their return to power for months, and who intend to start by purging bureaucrats who stand in their way. In other words, the administration will not only be ready to implement its horrifying plans from the get-go; it will have a cabinet ready and willing to do it."

Trump's plans for a second administration, Levin adds, include mass deportation of immigrants, a 10 percent tariff on all goods entering the United States, federal pardons of insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, undermining green energy programs, and "revenge prosecutions" of those he considers enemies.

"While Trump and his allies frequently claim the government has been 'weaponized,' if he actually followed through on his threats, it would, as the Los Angeles Times put it, 'represent a politicization of the Justice Department unmatched since the Watergate scandal half a century ago,'" Levin warns. "As former Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said earlier this month: 'Trump 2.0 would be the Delta variant of democracy. It would be a thousand times more virulent and harder to control.'"

Read Bess Levin's full Vanity Fair column at this link.

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