Donald Trump Is Not Trying to Hide His Authoritarian Plans for a Second Term

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Given how his last few weeks in office went down the first time, it’s not hard to imagine that a potential second term for Donald Trump would be a full-on horror show. Obviously, that’s because those last few weeks involved a desperate, unprecedented attempt to steal a federal election, culminating in an actual uprising that killed dozens of people. But it’s also not hard to imagine that since Trump and his allies are so full and proud that he should defeat Joe Biden in 2024 and return to the Oval Office on January 20, 2025, the place will run like a true authoritarian from on the first day.

The New York Times reports that Trump and his allies are planning a massive expansion of presidential power over the government machinery that will reshape the structure of the executive branch to concentrate greater authority directly in his hands. That expansion, according to the Times, involves increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by White House, according to people familiar with the matter. (The Federal Communications Commission, for example, which currently operates as an independent agency, would be directly controlled by Trump in a potential second term.) As previously reported in a report that should scare you, the ex-husband also wants to make it easier to fire potentially thousands of career civil servants and replace them with die-hard MAGA loyalists, but in addition, according to the Times, he plans to review intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove the officers he. is reviled as the sick political class that hates our country. And, should voters lose their minds come 2024 and return him to the White House, hell will revive the practice banned under Richard Nixon of impounding funds appropriated by Congress for programs he does not support.

Thinking these alleged plans are just fake news created by the failed New York Times in an attempt to stop Trump from becoming president? Not them! And we know this because some of them, like the impounding business, are literally on Trumps campaign website, and others are discussed, on the record, by his advisers. The president’s plan must fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since FDR’s New Deal, said John McEntee, a former Trump administration employee who has attempted to purge disloyal official in 2020 and is now overseeing strategy for a Trump administration sequel, the Times was told. Our current executive branch, he said, was conceived by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure conservative. It’s not enough to get the staff right. What is needed is a complete overhaul of the system.

Meanwhile, Russell Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget under Trump and now heads a Trump-aligned policy organization, literally told the outlet, What we’re trying to do is identify pockets of freedom and seize these. Commenting on why Team Trump has been so open about all of this, he told the Times, that it was part of a strategy to plant a flag before the election so that it would be viewed as a mandate should Trump return to the White House. He added that he was thrilled to see that almost none of the Trumps are running for the GOP nomination to defend the Justice Department’s longstanding independence after the former president attacked it.

Speaking of the Justice Department, former officials warned last month that they were worried Trump would use the DOJ to destroy his enemies, and since he’s already promised to investigate Biden, it’s not hard to see why. (Trump also reportedly plans to immediately fire anyone who worked on the classified documents and investigation of him on January 6.)

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told the Times that the former has laid out a bold and clear agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done, adding: Voters will know exactly how President Trump will transform the economy, lower inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against the American people once and for all.

Not surprisingly, people who don’t work for Trump aren’t all that thrilled about his (open) plan to rule the country with authority. It will be messy, John Kelly, Trumps second chief of staff the one who recently reportedly said he should be in jail or a nuthouse told the Times. It’s only going to get messy, as he keeps trying to overstep his authority but the cops will go along with it. It will be a non-stop battle in Congress and in the courts. Peter Strauss, a professor emeritus at Columbia Law School, says the whole reason for the current scrutiny of presidential power is because we don’t want autocracy.

Unfortunately, he added, the courts may let Trump get away with it. The sad truth is that the judiciary so far seems inclined to recognize that the president has this kind of authority, he said.

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