Incisively Savaging Trump

CHARLIE SAVAGE is a writer/reporter/journalist who works for the New York Times and has Harvard and Yale credentials. His area of speciality is national security, with a related interest in the American presidency,and the expansion of its powers in the twentieth century. He has written two books on this topic, "Takeover", and "Power Wars", about he expansion and attempted expansion of the powers of the chief executive during the presidencies of Geroge Bush number two and Barrack Obama. (This expansion may be said to have begun during the Johnson administration, when LBJ greatly expanded America's involvment in the Viet Nam War without explicit congressinal approval, and the Nixon administraion, infamously dubbed "the imperial presidency"), ran amok in its determination to skirt the law as a means of disabling Nixon's "enemies", perceived or real. Most recently Savage and two co-authors con-researchers have been devoting their energies to speulation, about what a second Trump administration would look like, whether it would be more extreme in its ruthless pursuit of power than the first, and the forms this power grab would likely take. This speculative endeavor becomes increasingly relevant as Trump maintains a huge lead among all other Republican candidates for the 2024 G.O.P. nomination, and, in some, polls, a slim lead over President Biden in a hypothetical election. Savage concludes that if indeed Trump again becomes president, he would almost certainly embark immediately on an unrelenting quest to greatly expand his own presidential powers, without regard to the impact upon future presidents and presidential policies. Unfetterd by the constraints imposed upon him during his first administration, aware that his second term would be his last, unconstrained by any evident moral values or concern for his lasting impact on the country or the office of the president, Trump, says, Savage, would pull out all the stops. The most obvious indicator of this, so says Savage, are comments Trump himself has made quite recently. With the past week Trump, handed a softball question by Sean Hannity, who was giving Trump an oportunity to deny any desire to assume near dictiatorial powers, instaed used the opportunity to assert that he would only act like a dictator on his first day in office. During his first term Trump surrounded himself with cabinet members and advisors who, despite their questionable competance, tended to place loyalty to the country above personal loyalty to Trump. On many occasions they strongly advised Trump to refrain from taking actions which would have indeed been dictatorial in nature, and succeeded in persuading him to so refrain. During the "Black Lives Matter" protest movment of the summer of 2020, for insance, Trump wanted to use the "Insurrection Act" to declare marshal law and illegally disperse the preaceful demonstrations and protest marches with military force. (Donald J. Trump, defender of the nation against violent insurrections; but only imaginary ones).There are many other examples. He has already indicated that he wouldn't make the same "mistake" again. Next time, he would surround himself with sycophantic loyalists of the first order, people would would do nothing but meekly accede to and tacitly agree with any and all of Trump's nefarious, bizarre, power grabbing schemes. Trump, a frim believer in something he calls "the deep state",which in fact does not exist, has indicated that hew would completely empty the federal bureauracy of competant career workers, and replace them with MAGA loyalists. He woudl appointe a MAGA special prosecutor to go afer the entire Biden family, despite a compete lack of evidence of any wrong doing by president Biden, as retribution for what he falsely perceives as the weapizing of the Justice Department against him. Indeeed, Trump would, he has implied end the traditional independence of the United States Department of Justice, and place he Attorney General directly under the control of himself. One can scarcely imagine the measures a lame duck Trump would take to not only eliminate his lame duck status and remain in power indefinitely, i.e. for life, but also, to silence his critics and opposition. Its happened before. As MAGA folk might say as they scream and wave their Confederate and NAZI banners; all hail Trump.