“It’s gonna be so much fun. It’ll be nasty… at the beginning in particular… You’re gonna see things that you’re not gonna believe” –Donald Trump, on the first days of his second term
I have gotten into the habit of not eating breakfast. Even so, this morning, I’ll be having a big helping of humble pie. Why? Because I was wrong about the 2024 Presidential Election. In fact, I was loud wrong. To my horror, Donald Trump won the election.
Several days ago, I wrote this:
“I expect Harris will win the traditionally blue states, as well as Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. North Carolina and Georgia are in play for Harris, and although I think she’ll lose Florida and Texas, I believe it will be closer than expected.”
As I write this, Trump has won Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, he won Georgia and North Carolina, and he is leading in Arizona, Nevada and Michigan. To add insult to injury, Florida and Texas were not nearly as close as I expected. In other words, I was wrong about everything.
To be honest, I’m stunned. In my mind, there was no way Trump could win the election because I couldn’t conceive of a world where the United States would elect a candidate who was openly authoritarian. I couldn’t conceive of a world where the United States would elect a man convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, impeached twice, and who spoke in a crude, unhinged way about his political opponents, journalists, people of color, and women. I lacked the imagination it required to accept the very real possibility that the United States would elect a man like Donald Trump for a second time. It just didn’t seem possible.
So, what’s next. If Trump does what he has said he will do, the United States is in for some dark days. Trump’s plan to use tariffs liberally, to slash the national budget, and to round up millions of illegals (which includes those in the country legally) will drive up prices and destroy the economy. His plans to lower taxes even further for corporations and the wealthy will skyrocket the national debt. His plans for a nationwide abortion ban will increase maternal deaths (we’ve already seen this play out in Texas) and will embolden Republicans to go after contraception, same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. And his plans to withdraw from NATO and end support for Ukraine will damage our alliances and empower our enemies, including and especially Russia.
In fact, conservative commentator David Frum had this to say about what the future holds:
“Trump and his vice president–elect, J. D. Vance, will now try to transform the federal government into a loyalty machine that serves the interests of himself and his cronies. This was the essence of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and its architects, all Trump fans, will now endeavor to make it become reality. Trump will surely try again to dismantle America’s civil service, replacing qualified scientists and regulators with partisan operatives. His allies will help him build a Department of Justice that does not serve the Constitution, but instead focuses on harassing and punishing Trump’s enemies. Trump has spoken, in the past, of using the Federal Communications Commission and the Internal Revenue Service to punish media organizations and anyone else who crosses him, and now he will have the chance to try again.
“Perhaps the greater and more insidious danger is not political repression or harassment, but corruption. Autocratic populists around the world—in Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela—have assaulted institutions designed to provide accountability and transparency in order to shift money and influence to their friends and families, and this may happen in America too. This is not just a theoretical threat. As loyalists take over regulatory agencies, filling not only political but also former civil-service jobs, American skies will become more polluted, American food more dangerous. As a result of this massive shift in the country’s bureaucratic culture, Trump-connected companies will prosper, even as America becomes less safe for consumers, for workers, for children, for all of us.”
Understand, none of this is wild speculation. These are things Trump has said. They are things that are part of his platform. They are things included in Project 2025, which he tried to distance himself from, but I suspect will embrace now that the election is over. He’s been very upfront about his plans.
To my Trump supporting friends, it is now time to reap what you have sowed. Your guy won, but I don’t think it has dawned on you yet what that will mean to you and your families. I understand that, despite his considerable baggage, you liked the fact that he went after people you consider your enemies, but I don’t think you understand that eventually, those programs and policies you championed that will hurt your enemies, will also come around to hurt you. The United States and the world are about to undergo a profound, horrible change. And just because you supported Trump, that doesn’t mean you get to avoid the changes that are coming.
As for me, I’m going to take a break from politics for a while. As I wrote a month or so ago, I do not have the capacity to understand anyone that would support Trump. I don’t understand how anyone with Trump’s record of corruption and abuse could appeal to anyone who truly cares about the country and the future. For a while, I’m going to stop trying to understand. Instead, I’m going to concentrate on writing about other things that interest me.
In Trump’s first term, the guardrails held, and Trump wasn’t able to do many of the things he wanted to do, whether that meant killing peaceful protesters or overturning a free and fair election. Now, in a second term, after he has learned how to dismantle the guardrails, and with a compliant Republican Party behind him, I fear what the next four (or more) years will bring. If he just does what he promised, we are in for a world of hurt.
