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Paul Krugman
Why Trump’s Supporters Should Also Be Wary if He Returns to Power
Opinion Columnist
I don’t know who will win the presidential election. Nobody does. But there’s obviously a substantial chance that Donald Trump will return to power. I’m worried for our country and I’m concerned about what my own life would be like under a second Trump term. And you should be, too.
Trump’s first term, in which our democracy remained fairly intact, is a bad model for what will happen if he gets a second. The guardrails that constrained him last time are gone. If he regains power, this could very easily be America’s last more or less free and fair election for a long time.
Then what? Some have suggested that we may be heading for a “soft autocracy” like that in Viktor Orban’s Hungary, in which the ruling party has a lock on power maintained by rigging elections, controlling the courts and muzzling the media rather than through violent repression.
We should be so lucky.
There are plenty of reasons to think that Trump and his most ardent supporters are itching to deploy violence against their opponents: Nearly four years ago, a violent mob descended on the United States Capitol and tried to overturn the results of the last presidential election. More recently, Trump, who has called his political adversaries “vermin,” suggested using our military against “the enemy from within.” Last week he criticized the hawkish views of Liz Cheney — who has endorsed Kamala Harris — then fantasized, “let’s put her with a rifle standing there” and see how she would feel “when the guns are trained on her face.” On Sunday at a rally, he declared that someone trying to get him “would have to shoot through the fake news and I don’t mind that so much.”
It’s also important to realize that Trump wouldn’t need to use the military against American citizens to create a climate of fear and repression. All he would have to do is tacitly grant permission, to the many extremists who are among his supporters, to go vigilante.
Still, you may imagine that even if America becomes MAGAfied, you won’t personally be at risk. If that’s what you believe, you might want to think again.
In the end, it won’t matter if you aren’t undocumented or Puerto Rican or a vocal Democrat.
Do you work for a news organization? Unless your outlet has been an all-out cheerleader for him and his agenda, Trump considers you an “enemy of the people.” And the cheerleading had better have been loud; Trump has even accused Fox News of being “weak and soft on the Democrats.”
Do you work at a government statistical agency? Bogus claims that numbers MAGA doesn’t like are fraudulent are now standard Republican practice. If, as surveys of economists suggest, Trump’s policies prove highly inflationary, I would not be at all surprised if there’s a purge at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with professional civil servants forced out and replaced with loyalists who will produce more favorable numbers.
Are you a librarian? We don’t need to speculate here: Once universally beloved members of their communities, many librarians have already faced harassment and threats from right-wingers who want to ban books they don’t like. Expect it to get much worse if Trump takes power.
Are you a doctor? Now that Trump says he’ll give Robert Kennedy Jr. a key role in health policy — “I’m going to let him go wild on health,” he said — at some point you may be putting yourself at risk if, say, you administer vaccines or even give patients advice based on the best medical science.
Are you a businessperson who tries to stay out of politics? Even if I’m wrong in guessing that Trump would be worse than Orban, consider that much of Hungary’s economy has been taken over by crony capitalists with ties to the ruling party.
Are you a billionaire? You may think that your wealth will protect you. Actually, however, it makes you a target, and an easy one, given the breadth of your business interests. Some of the ultrawealthy seem to be realizing this; my sense is that at least some have gone straight from greed (Trump will cut my taxes) to fear (better not criticize him, or he may retaliate).
Finally, are you a longtime Trump supporter? Radical movements that take power often end up eating their own. Sometimes that’s because they weren’t radical enough — they were like John Kelly, who was one of Trump’s secretaries of Homeland Security and one of his White House chiefs of staff but now describes Trump as “an authoritarian” who “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist.” Sometimes, however, erstwhile supporters end up punished simply because they were on the wrong side of an internal power struggle.
In sum, America may be about to become a very grim place. And those imagining that their lives would simply go on as before, untouched in any major way by the potential fear and chaos, are making a big mistake.
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Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography. @PaulKrugman
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