From the moment the announced results of the 2024 election became clear, those who see Trump for who and what he is have had one question amid a number of intense feelings: How bad is it going to get?
There is no point in trying to sugarcoat this: You cannot elect a Donald Trump president (ever, much less TWICE) and reasonably expect to emerge unscathed. It’s hard to say this, but we were really lucky the first time. We suffered “merely” a deliberately but horribly botched response to a pandemic; resulting lousy economy left to others for resuscitation; four years of aid and comfort to America’s most committed and dangerous enemy; unremitting grief to America’s allies; resulting weakening of the NATO alliance; and on and on. Yet we got through it.
Every time I prayed during his first term, I literally thanked God for Trump’s incompetence in his quest to do harm. Trump’s not one to admit mistakes, but it’s hard to imagine he hasn’t been exploring what he could have done differently. His evidently diminishing capacity gives little solace, and perhaps even more concern.
So, how bad it COULD get in round two – finishing the job of dismantling everything that actually has made America great all these years – is clear and a major cause of widespread revulsion. But just how bad is it really going to get? The answer depends largely on the Lines: who has them, where they’re drawn, and who does not have any at all.
The Lines
Imagine yourself reaching the pinnacle of your profession. You studied hard, learning the theory, and you’ve worked hard learning the skills of how it is done in the real world. You’re offered a job in the administration of the President of the United States.
It that president is Donald Trump, you will first learn that your expertise is for naught; not merely ignored but scorned. Your work product will consist of a few simple sentences with the outcome pre-ordained. Then, sooner or later, you will have a special moment of reckoning. You will be instructed to do something that is immoral, unethical, dishonest, illegal, criminal, unconstitutional, or all of the above. How do you respond?
If it’s “not too bad”, do you go along? If the next one’s a little worse, but ”everyone does it”? After a while, do you wonder who you are and what you have become? Is there a line you will not cross? If so, your tenure in the administration is then over. Perhaps you write a book.
A Couple Famous Examples of Lines
For Mike Pence, after four years of abject abasement, the line was his ceremonial duty as Vice President to acknowledge and announce the vote totals determining the outcome of the 2020 election.
How abject was his sycophancy? Let’s just say he’s one of the stars of Mark Leibovich’s 2022 book Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission. One unforgettable passage describes the first assembly of Trump’s full cabinet on June 12, 2017, the main purpose of which appears to have been to go around the room for each to heap praise on His Neediness. After starting with a baseless boast about himself, Trump turned it over to Pence:
“It’s just the greatest privilege of my life to serve as the vice president,” Mike Pence said…Not just any vice president, Pence said, but the one serving “the president who’s keeping his word to the American people and assembling a team that’s bringing real change, real prosperity, real strength back to our nation.”
Pence was the unquestioned maestro of this top-level symphony of sycophancy. No one did complete submission the way Pence did: the hushed voice, the bowed head, and the quivering reverence for “my president”, “this extraordinary man”… The former altar boy could always deliver when called upon, until the bitter end.
Trump looked on, nodding studiously… As for Pence, he was laying it on especially thick…It was always a bit of a puzzle with Pence. Why would this most conspicuously moral of Christian men attach himself so utterly to one of the most depraved creatures ever to inhabit our public life?
Pence didn’t just attach himself to Trump in the standard sense of being a loyal vice president. Pence stood by his man in the most nakedly servile of ways. Old friends from Indiana and colleagues from Congress would try to get him to break character, just a little. They understood that Trump expected his vice president to be a perfect doormat at all times. But they wanted just one glimpse of acknowledgement from Pence that he saw what everyone else saw, that he got the joke. You in there, somewhere, Mike?
“You have to know this is nuts, right?” one former House colleague would ask the VP whenever they spoke. Every Republican in Washington who knew better – which was nearly all of them – was cognizant that the situation with Trump would only become more precarious… But Pence would never betray any daylight between himself and Trump. (Pages 83-85)
But Pence had a line he wouldn’t cross. He also had a car he would not enter. No one hung Mike Pence on January 6, and he tallied the electoral votes.
For Bill Barr, after abetting Trump lies and offering some of his own, as with the contents of the Mueller Report, the line he wouldn’t cross was legally approving the substitution of fake electors or insurrection.
This doesn’t exactly make these guys heroes. Quite the contrary; but for the lines they and so many others wouldn’t cross being so far down the road, we would not be facing what’s coming. (Indeed, why isn’t Barr facing severe attorney discipline?)
But at least they did have a line.
As Compared To…
To get an obvious point out of the way quickly, Donald Trump has no line at all. He delights in crossing any line anyone thinks he should have. The more harm he does, the better he enjoys it.
Trump could not be clearer that he has nothing but contempt for norms, rules, notions of decency, ethics, morals, the law, or the Constitution. There is no rock bottom. It is one reason, sadly, why some people love him so.
Any restraint on how bad it’s going to get will have to come from elsewhere.
So, Whose Lines Matter, Anyway?
The easy answer is nearly everyone’s. More on that later.
The first thought when it comes to protective guardrails for our democracy is the judiciary. Then you read Trump v. the United States. (Yes, there are other recent cases of real concern courtesy of this Supreme Court, but this is the one.) Time and space do not permit a deep dive here. Let’s just say that I’m not sanguine about where the lines are regarding the behavior of Donald Trump for the six justices who formed the majority. By the way, has there ever been a more aptly titled case than “Donald Trump versus the United States”? It neatly sums up where we’ve been for a decade.
Turning our attention to the Legislative Branch, we’ll find out soon enough where the lines are drawn for each member of the House and Senate. Since they have slim majorities in each, the Republicans’ lines not to be crossed will be of paramount importance. No one’s more interested in this than the president-elect, of course.
While Trump thoroughly enjoys folks freaking out over his announced collection of bizarre intended cabinet appointments, he’s also watching carefully to see where the lines are. It’s also a power play. In this group, Rubio is a superstar statesman, but Gaetz as AG was a step too far, even for him. Trump may have known it, and wanted a bone to throw Senate Republicans worried about appearing pathetic in their oversight role. He wants it known, though, that anyone who crosses him faces being labeled a RINO and “primaried”.
Back in the Executive Branch we have JD Vance, who, if nothing else, knows the right people to hate. It’s kind of hard at this point to picture MAGAs wanting to hang him. As to that cabinet, Trump had a few so-called adults in the room to start last time. He won’t make that mistake again. They were the ones who did what they could to thwart or blunt the impact of his worst stuff. They’re also the ones who wrote the books. Not that Trump’s read any of the books, but he knows the gist of what’s in them.
The qualifications at work here seem to be: utter lack of expertise in the field; skill in the dishonesty arts (projection, deflection, etc.); wackiness; and outright hostility toward the agency’s mission. Conviction for a crime and allegations of sexual misconduct are plusses. Above all, the only answer to any assignment is “Yes, sir!”
Summing Up
It won’t be long now before we begin to see how bad it’s going to get. In typical Trump fashion, he’s already disrupting markets and sowing seeds of chaos. In addition to what disasters might occur as a result of faulty policy, it’s difficult not to think about some dangerous possible crossroad events.
What will happen the first time Trump
- orders someone in the military to beat up or open fire on peaceful civilian protesters
- sends aid to Russia rather than Ukraine and joins Vladimir Putin in war crimes like blowing up hospitals and schools
- orders illegal mass firings in an agency and replacement with MAGAs
- directs the Justice Department to round up his enemies
- confronts another pandemic or other unanticipated challenge
- declares martial law?
These and some from a thousand other possible scenarios will test where the lines are. With Trump, unfortunately, almost anything is possible. When and at what point sufficient persons in the right positions say “No; not this!” will determine the extent of the harm to our republic. That harm could also come more gradually from a multitude of lesser cuts.
Never forget, though, that we could have been spared all that is about to happen if Senate Republicans – virtually all of whom “got the joke” – voted to convict and remove Trump on either impeachment, as was their sworn duty in any sane world. Yet, not one of them has paid a price for this reprehensible dereliction of duty.
That’s on the American voting public, as is the election of 2024. We’re often heard to decry the lack of accountability, but we’re the only ones who can demand it. If we’re not having the lies, the cynicism, the nihilism, the stupidity, and the cruelty, they will begin to lose potency. Such vigilance in sticking to lines we won’t cross is our job as citizens; it’s the price of freedom.
Those Allstate commercials featuring Mayhem (played by actor Dean Winters) bring to mind Donald Trump in office as the Mayhem of governance. Well, Allstate has no product to protect us from mayhem like him. Be assured, however, that America’s Mayhem is on spine patrol, hoping to find as few as possible – from the US Senate all the way through the electorate.
We all have a role to play in limiting how bad it’s going to get. How many of his Fellini-movie-cast of weirdos, kooks, and criminals he gets through the Senate for his cabinet will be one harbinger of things to come.
Ken Bossong
© 2024 Kenneth J. Bossong