What Would Likely Happen if Trump is Elected in 2024?

Although I’m a never-Trumper, I acknowledge that Trump did some good things as president and that his Presidency was greatly more favorable than President Biden’s term. 

Many people voting for Trump are hoping to reprise what was happening in our country pre-pandemic.  However, for the following reasons, a second Trump presidency is hugely unpredictable and less likely to have the favorable consequences of his first term.  (Admittedly, predicting is speculative, particularly with respect to Trump.)

1.        Trump has no principles.  He does what feels good to him and is very volatile.  It is not clear that he would try to do things he did in his first administration.

2.        Who will serve in his cabinet and in the White House if he gets elected?  The adults who were in the room the first time are likely to be replaced by people in whom I’d have a lot less confidence.  Why would any intelligent reasonable person want to report to Trump?  He has no loyalty and is most likely to stab you in the back. 

When have we ever seen a former President run for re-election and have so many former staffers expressing that he is unfit to be President?  Is it not scary that so many of those who were closest to him feel that he is unfit?  Lots of people criticize Nikki Haley and William Barr for supporting him.  It remains clear that they still consider him to be unfit.  They just consider the alternative to be worse.

3.        His Vice President running mate is telling.  In 2016, he picked Mike Pence, a man of great personal integrity and a patriot.  Pence had tremendous experience and was an effective deal-maker in Congress.  This time, Trump picked J. D. Vance, a young, inexperienced individual whose history since graduating from Yale Law School shows little accomplishment other than enriching himself by writing a book and creating a move that expose the dysfunctionality of the family into which he was born.

4.        His tariffs were a bad idea.  Now he is saying he wants across-the-board tariffs, which clearly can’t be a good idea.  How can across-the-board anything be a good idea?  Across-the-board is the lazy person’s way to avoid having to think and evaluate.

5.        He promises to deport all illegal immigrants no matter how long they have been here, how much they have contributed, whether they have a clean record, and the impact on their families and the economy.

6.        He (like the Democrats; please note I am not praising the Democrats!) has promised stupid things to pander for votes: no tax on tips, free IVF, etc.

7.        Being a lame duck may also make Trump less effective, but I think that will be balanced by his use of Executive Orders.  I have spoken against the growing use of Executive Orders for at least 12 years.  These undermine our separation of powers.  Trump is not alone in this regard.  President Biden told us things were illegal, but he’d do them anyway.  But Trump is likely to ratchet them up even further.  There will be more fights between the Executive Branch and the Courts.  (I think the Supreme Court will continue to support separation of powers, but if you inundate the Supreme Court with issues, it can’t address them all.  Trump is likely to leverage that approach.)

8.        The Democrats and media will fight Trump tooth-and-nail, perhaps even harder than before.  Although the Democrats say “When the Republicans go low, we go high.”, the Democrats lied repeatedly about Trump in his first term and will continue to do so. 

9.        Trump would be inheriting a very different world situation in February 2025.  Trump has not demonstrated that he has the skill set to handle such a situation.  He claims to have a lot of skill as a negotiator, but his “skills” are limited to bullying, temper tantrums, threats, name-calling, etc.  He is NOT a skilled negotiator.  See my blog Risks To Which Trump Exposed Us.  These risks remain and will likely get worse in a second Trump presidency.

10.   In 2016, I described his limited attention span.  It has not gotten any better.  He is often incoherent, as he was in his debate with Biden.

11.   I am worried that such an irrational, emotional person could hold the keys to nuclear war.

12.    Trump could easily walk away from revenge, but he continues to suggest retaliation and has consistently been vengeful his entire (at least, adult) life.  Do you want a large part of the next four years to be focused on revenge more so than governing/  The recent Supreme Court decision making it harder to hold him accountable is troubling and will encourage him to misbehave.  He will undoubtedly continue to engage in childish, petty name-calling which is not constructive.

13.   A president needs to understand the consequences of his actions and modify his behavior to accomplish his goals.  Instead, Trump alienates the voters he needs to win by making fun of Harris’s name and ancestry. 

Incredulously, he speaks in an important swing state (Georgia) where the very popular governor is supporting his candidacy and goes into a prolonged rant against that governor.  When Trump previously tried to defeat that governor, the Georgians demonstrated that they overwhelmingly (for very good reasons) favor Kemp over Trump.  Why a competent, sane person do that?

He had a tremendous opportunity when he attended a Black journalists’ conference and Kamala Harris was not present.  The interviewer asked him a challenging question: Why should African-Americans vote for him in the face of the many slights she rattled off?  From my perspective, this was a GREAT opportunity for him.  He could have responded:

Thank you for asking.  I don’t believe in identity politics.  Just because someone is African-American does not mean that he should vote for me.  That alone is one reason why African-Americans should consider me.  Unlike Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I don’t take them for granted.  You mentioned disrespectful comments; yes, I’ve done some of those, but look at my overall approach and policies.  Can you imagine a President of the USA saying “If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black.”  When I was president, the unemployment rate for African-Americans hit a historic low.  African-Americans had record increases in real income.  That does not necessarily mean they should all vote for me; for example, affluent professional African-Americans did not experience such benefits themselves. 

Another issue is that the Biden/Harris campaign has set the world on fire.  Who suffers if we have a major world war?  African-Americans are 50% more likely to be in our military than Caucasians, so a war exposes them to more risk.  In addition, they are half as likely to be officers, which exposes them to more risk.  And if a war brings economic hardship, that falls most on the less affluent members of our society, and they are disproportionately Black. 

These comments raise the question: How are we going to improve Black affluence?  In addition to my economic policies, we need to improve the public education system.  We talk about systemic bias in this country, but the public school system is the most systematically biased institution we have and the Biden/Harris team steadfastly supports the teachers unions who have failed the less-affluent portions of the African-American population.   I also directed record sums of support to historically-black colleges.

Am I the President who allowed our cities to burn?  Would I have ordered the police to stand down and let minority-owned businesses burn to the ground?  Of course not, I’m tough on law which is important to protect minority neighborhoods.  But I coupled that with pushing through the First Step Act which may important changes to our judicial and penal practices.  It was hailed by most everyone as a positive and momentous law.

I could obviously go on for a long time.  How has the Biden/Harris border policy affected African-Americans?  Again, it depends on where they live, their affluence level, etc. but illegal immigrants have taken jobs away from African-Americans, they have put downward pressure on wages at the lower end and they have increased crime in the inner city and in prisons.  He could have also mentioned his tariff policy (although I disagree with it).

Instead, Trump blew up.

Trump supporters might say I just made a great case for electing Trump.  I acknowledge that but, besides that other points made herein, this bullet shows how incompetent Trump is.

14.   A Trump presidency would further destroy the Republican party.  From my perspective, Trump is the RINO (“Republican” in name only).  It is a typical schoolyard tactic to cover your weaknesses by pinning them on someone else.   A resounding defeat of Trump would be good in this regard.