Trumpocalypse? Maybe not

Many seem to expect that Trump's second term will bring about the Apocalypse.  There's no doubt that it's going to be very bad for the country, as his first term was.  But it's possible, even likely, that not much will fundamentally change.

To begin with, as I noted in the last link round-up, Trump is already backing down on most of his nutzoid campaign promises.  He's either beginning to realize, or knew all along, that most of these things are either not doable or would take a lot of effort and fighting.  He said them to get elected, but that's now done and can't be reversed.  He's got no real incentive to spend his time fighting for them.

The one major thing he hasn't backed down on, and which (given his character) he likely is really determined to do, is going after "enemies".  That's not going to be so easy.  From the link above:

The President-elect also stuck with his threat that he would lock up his "enemies," like Liz Cheney.  This is not likely to go smoothly.  If he just ordered the DoJ to arrest Cheney and lock her up, she could certainly get a court to do its habeas corpus thingie and release her.  In America, even Trump's America, the president can't just lock people up because he doesn't like them.  He could ask the AG, probably Pam Bondi, to investigate Cheney, but to lock her up, Bondi would first have to convince a grand jury that the former representative committed a crime.  Finding a grand jury in very heavily Democratic D.C. to do that would be a challenge, especially given the tiny little technicality that Cheney hasn't committed any crimes.  Then there would have to be a trial.  Good luck with that, too.  Trump could make Cheney spend a lot of money on her defense, but since Democrats sorta, kinda like her now, she could probably start a GoFundMe campaign to pay her legal bills.  When asked if he would prosecute Jack Smith, Trump said he would leave that to Bondi.  She would never do that.  She may be Trumpy, but if she did, she could never get a conviction and then Smith would have formal recognition that he did not commit a crime and she and Trump would have enough egg on their faces to provide the entire cabinet with omelets for breakfast for a week.

Also, anything that involves spending money requires Congress to pass something.  The Republican House majority is even narrower than last term, and there are already signs of the same kind of infighting that produced recurring deadlocks then, so that the speaker usually needed to get some Democrats on board to work around the flaming nutballs and get critical legislation through.  There will also be the problem of billionaire ignoramuses who were never elected to anything meddling in the process and creating further complications.  That's bad when it holds up essential spending legislation, as in this case, but it suggests a lot of the nutty stuff will also get obstructed by squabbles over exactly how nutty to be.  Even if Trump tries to dictate an outcome, all it will take is a few Republicans to not go along, and they'll be back to needing Democratic votes and thus Democratic input.

And almost all of Trump's really radical ideas would hurt this or that corporate interest -- high tariffs would hurt manufacturers who depend on imported materials, mass deportation of illegal aliens would hurt agribusiness and construction, etc -- and Republican politicians tend to listen to such interests.  Maybe Trump himself won't, but Republicans in Congress will.

His intent to bugger up the executive branch presents a bigger threat, because much of that wouldn't require Congress to be involved.  But even there, an institution the size of the federal government has an enormous inertia to it.  His major cabinet picks seem to be mostly a bunch of grifters, sex offenders, and crackpots.  Whatever damage they try to do will be resisted by experienced people far more intelligent and capable than they are.  Yes, they'll do some harm, but probably not nearly as much as he's been threatening.

One thing Trump will likely make a high priority is trying to abolish birthright citizenship for the "anchor babies" of illegal aliens, simply because it's something a lot of his base really wants.  But even if he uses ruthless tactics, this is likely to get bogged down in the courts for years, with nothing much actually getting done before the end of his term.  He and the wingnut media ecosystem will talk and talk about his efforts, and his base may even believe that he's making serious progress, but nothing will really change.

This would repeat the trajectory of his signature campaign promise of 2016, the wall.  All through his first term there was a lot of talk of how he was working on it, construction was happening, etc, but in reality very little wall actually got built -- certainly not enough to have any impact on illegal border crossings.

Aid to Ukraine has been a serious concern.  However, since the election Trump has said that he won't abandon Ukraine, and that it will get less aid, not zero aid.  A lot of Republicans in Congress are strongly anti-Russia and pro-Ukraine -- and Congress controls the money.  It doesn't seem likely that Trump will want to invest a lot of energy and political capital in fighting them over this issue.  He has even been acting less subservient to Putin than he used to, though with that relationship one never knows exactly what's going on.

Remember, too, that in reality Trump will have only two years to do most of his worst, not four.  The president's party almost always loses seats in Congress in the midterms, and with the House majority so narrow, it's almost inevitable that the Democrats will win the majority in 2026.

And finally, Trump is an elderly, lazy, obese, not-very-bright con man whose recent social-media posts and public appearances show evidence of sporadic episodes of dementia -- hardly the profile of the Antichrist or even of a new Mussolini.  During his first term he spent a ridiculous amount of time golfing, watching TV, tweeting insults, and exploiting the presidency in petty ways to line his own pockets.  His second term is likely to be more of the same -- even more so.  There will again be a tsunami of wasted and grifted money, and yes, again, a lot of people will get hurt.  But also like the first time, it won't be the Apocalypse, just a lot of common garden nastiness and blundering and a huge pile of shit for the next president to clean up.

[Please, no comments along the lines of "when Trump is president all the rules will magically vanish and he will have infinite dictatorial power and be able to do anything he wants".  I'm trying to stay reality-based here.]

Update (early Friday morning):  After Trump and Musk sabotaged the bipartisan House budget deal on Wednesday, the Trump-approved replacement deal also failed yesterday, with thirty-eight Republicans voting no.  This shows that (a) plenty of House Republicans won't just fall into line whenever Trump issues a diktat, even with the threat of billionaire-funded primary challenges on the table; and (b) they're going to be just as chaotic next term as last term.  Several Republicans are already saying that they won't vote for Johnson as speaker again, foreshadowing another embarrassing round of endless repeat voting trying to fill the position.