The intensifying Trump threat

One thing I believe doesn’t get enough notice is that Donald Trump is a vastly bigger threat to liberal democracy today than he was eight or even four years ago.

The 2016 Trump campaign was a publicity stunt that, in the fashion of The Producers, spun out of control. Trump was probably as surprised as anyone when this particular scam of his actually succeeded so wildly, and he was completely unprepared to play with his new toy, the government of the United States.

By 2020 he was beginning to fully appreciate the possibilities for essentially unlimited grifting and narcissistic self-indulgence that this whole President thing offered, so he went to great lengths to fix the election, and, when those attempts failed, to overthrow the government via an autogolpe.

That was all really really bad, but in the four years since then things have gotten a good deal worse. Trump now desperately wants the presidency both to finance his endless series of grifts, many of which appear to be tottering to the point where this “billionaire” might actually end up broke, and to keep his pasty fascist ass out of prison.

Relatedly, fascism in America has gotten a whole lot better organized and self-conscious about seizing power than it was eight years ago, when it was still a nascent strain in American right wing politics in general and the Republican party in particular, as opposed to today, when it has completely taken over both.

Way too many Very Serious People still consider the previous sentence wild hyperbole, as opposed to what it actually is, which is an almost banal statement of fact. Trump was a crypto-fascist in 2016; in 2024 he’s a Crypto Fascist ™, and he’s surrounded himself with an army of enablers and minions, represented best by the cadres behind Project 2025.

Heather Cox Richardson put together a nice summary yesterday of the latest bill of particulars regarding why Trump is a clear and present danger to democracy, decency, and recognizable American republic, which I would urge you to read.

Journalist Karly Kingsley points out that at the time, central lab testing to diagnose Covid-19 infections took a long time, causing infections to spread. Machines like Abbott’s were hard to get. Trump chose to send them to Putin—not to charge him for them, or to negotiate for the release of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, two Americans being held by Russia at the time and later released under the Biden administration, but to give them to him—rather than keeping them for Americans.

It’s hard to overstate just what an astonishing story this is. In 2016, Republicans stood firm against Putin and backed the arming of Ukraine to stand against Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. But that summer, at Trump’s urging, the party changed its platform to weaken its support of Ukraine. In 2020, it appears, Trump chose to give lifesaving equipment to Putin rather than use it for Americans. And in 2024, Trump’s willingness to undermine the United States to cozy up to an adversary his own party stood against less than a decade ago does not appear to be a deal breaker for Republicans.

As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) put it: “What has this country come to if the revelation that Trump secretly sent COVID testing machines to Putin while thousands of Americans were dying, in part because of a shortage of testing machines here, doesn’t disqualify him to be President?” He continued: “Donald Trump helped keep Putin alive during the pandemic and let Americans die. This revelation is damning. It’s disqualifying. He cannot be President of the United States.” 

I’ve been astonished by some comments at LGM from people who say they don’t care that Trump secretly gave Vladimir Putin a Covid testing machine in the early days of the pandemic. I mean I don’t even know what to say about such an attitude, other than to note that Vladimir Putin is an enemy of the United States, and Donald Trump was supposed to be trying to save American lives, rather than that of his favorite dictator friend.

And of course as always with Trump, this scandal that would have destroyed any other presidential candidate wasn’t even necessarily the biggest Trump scandal of this year month week:

As Beth Reinhard of the Washington Post recounted yesterday, a report from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed that the Trump White House prevented a real investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. More than 4,500 calls and electronic messages about Kavanaugh sent to the FBI tip line went directly to the White House, where they were never investigated, and the FBI was told not to pursue corroborating evidence of the accusations by Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez although lawyers for the women presented the names of dozens of people who could testify to the truth of their allegations.  

A number of senators said the lack of corroborating evidence convinced them to vote in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. As Steve Benen of MSNBC recalled, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said at the time that it appeared to be “a very thorough investigation,” while the late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said that the 2018 FBI report “looks to be a product of an incomplete investigation that was limited perhaps by the White House.”

And then there’s this:

Ken Bensinger reported in the New York Times today that Trump’s team has refused to participate in preparations for a transition to a potential Trump presidency. Normally, the nonpartisan transition process, dictated by the Presidential Transition Act, has candidates setting up teams as much as six months before the election to begin vetting and hiring political appointees and working with the administration in office to make sure the agencies continue to run smoothly. 

With the election less than a month away, Trump has neither signed the required agreements nor signed the transition’s ethics plan that would require him to disclose private donors to the transition and limit them to contributions of no more than $5,000. Without that agreement, there are no limits to the money the Trump transition can take. Trump has also refused to sign an agreement with the White House requiring that anyone receiving classified information have a security clearance. Currently, his aides cannot review federal records.

Trump ignored the traditional transition period in 2016, cutting off communications with President Barack Obama’s team. He refused to allow incoming president Joe Biden access to federal agencies in 2020, hampering Biden’s ability to get his administration in place in a timely fashion. Now it’s possible that Trump sees no need for a normal transition because Project 2025, on which he appears to be relying, has been working on one for many months. 

It calls for him to fire most federal employees, reinstating the policy he started at the end of his term. To fill their positions, the Heritage Foundation has been vetting loyalists now for months, preparing a list of job candidates to put in place a new, right-wing agenda. 

Again, these three stories are all from the past 72 hours!

There’s more too; read HCR’s post.

It’s just increasingly difficult to wrap one’s mind around what Trump is and what he represents.