Trump the Sequel
What would a second Trump term look like?
That is in many ways the focus of “Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump,” the new book by Miles Taylor. You likely know Miles as ‘Anonymous,’ the author of the NYTimes Op-Ed warning of the dysfunction and venality of the first Trump administration. Now Miles is back with a sobering insider look at what a Trump sequel would look like.
Miles ran Renew America, which joined with the Forward Party last year. Miles and Renew America sought to return the Republican Party to some degree of normalcy and principle. “We failed miserably,” Miles comments wryly. “MAGA has taken over not just at the federal level, but at the state levels and within the base.”
What would happen under Trump the second time around? “Federal agencies would be weaponized against his political enemies,” Miles warns. “Trump is running on retribution. One official I interviewed said ‘It will be a revenge machine.’ You would see MAGA loyalists from the America First Policy Institute being brought in to run agencies as opposed to experts. Trump learned his lesson last time not to bring in qualified people.”
Miles details some of the ideas that Trump considered in his first term and would return to. “Trump would cut off undocumented immigrant kids from public schools that receive federal funds. That’s something he wanted to do last time. He also wanted to gut the Veterans Administration to save money. He got talked out of that idea as bad for his re-election bid. This time there is no re-election to consider. He sees military veterans as ‘suckers’ because he dodged military service himself.”
How realistic is it that Trump wins? “It’s very realistic,” Miles says. “Oddsmakers have it at 30%, which is a little bit low. But he was at 9% in 2016 when he actually did win. Biden won by only tens of thousands of votes in the swing states and the data shows that the energy among Democrats for Biden is low. He could win one-on-one, and there are other candidates who could change the math.”
I agree with Miles that Trump’s chances are being underestimated in some quarters. I think that Biden and the DNC are making a mistake running an 81-year old incumbent with low approval ratings without a competitive process. I also agree that a Trump return would be disastrous.
Miles has direct knowledge of just what’s at stake. A second Trump term would be the end of many of our institutions’ tenuous hold on credibility or viability. And Trumpism is unlikely to end with Trump – the base of the Republican Party enjoys having control and doesn’t want to give it back. There are two things that need to happen at the same time; we have to strengthen and modernize our system to make it more resistant to authoritarianism and demagoguery. And we have to keep Trump out of the White House. They’re both real challenges and time is of the essence.
For my interview of Miles on the podcast click here. For Miles’s book click here. To help Forward modernize our democracy click here.
