Der Führer Trump’s Radical Second-Term Agenda; Promises To Wield Executive Power In Unprecedented Ways; An Imperial Presidency Reflecting American Fascism

On April 30, Time Magazine published an exhaustive and very alarming report where former President Donald Trump outlined his second term agenda should he win. What emerges from review of Trump’s second term agenda is an imperial presidency, some would say an American version of fascism, “where the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.”  Trump was very specific what he will do if he again elected President:

• Trump would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans.
• Trump would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland to carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, 
• Trump would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. 
• Trump said he might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. 
• Trump said he would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit to combat crime, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen. 
• Trump is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. 
• Trump would enter a second term bringing with loyalists who have drawn up detailed plans in service of his agenda, which would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable. 
• Trump would not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election and even went to far as to suggest the possibility of political violence around the election if he is not elected.

 COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

One remarkable paragraph in the TIME article captured succinctly what is at stake in the 2025  election:

“Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise.  To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring “the end of our democracy,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”

Excerpted from Pete Dinelli’s Blog of May 8, 2024.