OPINION
JAMELLE
BOUIE
Trump Wants Us to Know He Will Stop at Nothing in
2025
Nov. 14,
2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/opinion/trump-stephen-miller-immigration.html
Jamelle
Bouie
By Jamelle
Bouie
Opinion
Columnist
Over the
past few weeks, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump would do
if given a second chance in the White House. And it is neither exaggeration nor
hyperbole to say that it looks an awful lot like a set of plans meant to give
the former president the power and unchecked authority of a strongman.
Trump would
purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible. In their
place, he would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose
fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to
either the rule of law or the Constitution.
With the
help of these unscrupulous allies, Trump plans to turn the Department of
Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals. He
would use the military to crush protests under the Insurrection Act — which he
hoped to do during the summer of 2020 — and turn the power of the federal
government against his perceived enemies.
“If I
happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very
badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be
out of the election,” Trump said in a recent interview on the Spanish-language
network Univision.
As the
former president wrote in a disturbing and authoritarian-minded Veterans Day
message to supporters (itself echoing a speech he delivered that same day to
supporters in New Hampshire): “We pledge to you that we will root out the
Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin
within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and
will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America,
and the American dream.”
Trump has
other plans as well. As several of my Times colleagues reported last week, he
hopes to institute a program of mass detainment and deportation of undocumented
immigrants. His aides have already drawn up plans for new detention centers at
the U.S.-Mexico border, where anyone suspected of illegal entry would be held
until authorities have settled the person’s immigration status.
Given the
former president’s rhetoric attacking political enemies and other supposedly
undesirable groups, like the homeless — Trump has said that the government
should “remove” homeless Americans and put them in tents on “large parcels of
inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities” — there’s little doubt
that some citizens would find themselves in these large and sprawling camps.
Included in
this effort to rid the United States of as many immigrants as possible is a
proposal to target people here legally — like green-card holders or people on
student visas — who harbor supposedly “jihadist sympathies” or espouse views
deemed anti-American. Trump also intends to circumvent the 14th Amendment so
that he can end birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized
immigrants.
In the
past, Trump has gestured at seeking a third term in office after serving a
second four-year term in the White House. “We are going to win four more
years,” Trump said during his 2020 campaign. “And then after that, we’ll go for
another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of
four years.” This, too, would violate the Constitution, but then, in a world in
which Trump gets his way on his authoritarian agenda, the Constitution — and
the rule of law — would already be a dead letter.
It might be
tempting to dismiss the former president’s rhetoric and plans as either jokes
or the ravings of a lunatic who may eventually find himself in jail. But to
borrow an overused phrase, it is important to take the words of both presidents
and presidential candidates seriously as well as literally.
They may
fail — in fact, they often do — but presidents try to keep their campaign
promises and act on their campaign plans. In a rebuke to those who urged us not
to take him literally in 2016, we saw Trump attempt to do what he said he would
do during his first term in office. He said he would “build a wall,” and he
tried to build a wall. He said he would try to keep Muslims out of the country,
and he tried to keep Muslims out of the country. He said he would do as much as
he could to restrict immigration from Mexico, and he did as much as he could,
and then some, to restrict immigration from Mexico.
He even
suggested, in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, that he would
reject an election defeat. Four years later, he lost his bid for re-election.
We know what happened next.
In addition
to Trump’s words, which we should treat as a reliable guide to his actions,
desires and preoccupations, we have his allies, who are as open in their
contempt for democracy as Trump is. Ensconced at institutions like the Heritage
Foundation and the Claremont Institute, Trump’s political and ideological
allies have made no secret of their desire to install a reactionary Caesar at
the head of the American state.
As Damon
Linker noted this month in his essay on these figures for Times Opinion, they
exist to give “Republican elites permission and encouragement to do things that
just a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable.”
Americans
are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of
us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical
materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things
that have been hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is
that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search
hard or seek it out; you just have to listen.
And Donald
Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as
we know it.
Jamelle
Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the
chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in
Charlottesville, Va., and Washington. @jbouie
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