Time for Jennifer Rubin

The Washington Post

April 11, 2024

by Jennifer Rubin 

What caught my eye Many Republicans, including many business leaders, downplay the threat posed from Trump’s potential return to the White House. Although his agenda includes radical protectionism and, as reported by the New York Times Magazine, reducing “the power of the Federal Reserve, limiting its ability to serve as a so-called lender of last resort for banks and other financial institutions facing cash crunches,” many Republicans arrogantly insist things would be fine in a second Trump term. They roll their eyes at the real potential for grotesque cronyism and corruption, use of the Justice Department against Trump’s enemies, demolition of the professional civil service, and international disorder. Industry titans consistently — be it in 1930s Europe or in present-day Hungary or in Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s Chile or in Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil — imagine they can cut deals with autocrats or that persecution of disfavored groups will have no impact on the business environment. The economic and political upheaval an autocrat brings never fails to surprise those who insisted they could control him. Big Business and other segments of the old-style Republican Party (including those who worked to stack the Supreme Court) who are sanguine about a Trump presidency should pay attention to three flashing red lights. First, as The Post reports, Trump talks about how he would “end” Russia’s war in Ukraine “by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territory.” That would signal to Moscow and other aggressive regimes that it is open season on democratic neighbors. If aggressors believe that international borders are not inviolate, China would be emboldened to attack Taiwan and Russia to menace the rest of the former U.S.S.R. Dismantling America’s traditional alliances and receding into Fortress America would plunge the United States and our allies into a period of turmoil, conflict and uncertainty. Second, as the nonpartisan United to Protect Democracy’s “Authoritarian Playbook for 2025” illustrates, MAGA’s “Project 2025” envisions, among other things, a second Trump term that uses “pardons to incite political violence,” incentivizes lawbreaking for Trump’s benefit, engages in “regulatory retaliation” and resorts to law enforcement overreach. Anyone who thinks only they won’t suffer from an irrational and vengeful regime should consider how other countries fared when captured by autocrats. “Every culture is unprepared for an authoritarian assault, and ... even when one takes place, and certain groups are targeted, other groups think ‘they’ll never go after me,’” fascism expert and historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat said in an interview with George Takei. The disastrous economic results in Hungary, Brazil and India under autocrats demonstrate how misplaced this confidence is. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whom Trump welcomed to Mar-a-Lago, “wrested control over the independent media, put the country’s universities and cultural institutions under his authority, used demonizing rhetoric to justify his immigration crackdowns, and leveraged his electoral wins to rewrite his country’s constitution to keep himself in power,” the playbook states. Trump’s plan to destroy the career civil service alone would undermine evenhanded, rational government action. We would revert to a “spoils” system, as alleged by the playbook, in which federal jobs would be doled out to those who pledged personal fealty to Trump. Third, we face the prospect that the U.S. military, obligated to abide by the Constitution, would be transformed into Trump’s private militia. The American Enterprise Institute’s Kori Schake reminded us in 2020 that Trump “considered invoking federal authority to enforce the law and putting the military on the streets to restore order.” Worse: “Riot police forcibly cleared protesters and the president paraded through Lafayette Square, near the White House, with the leaders of the agencies representing coercive force: the attorney general, the defense secretary, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was wearing combat fatigues.” Trump, who pardoned war criminals and contemplated invoking the Insurrection Act, considers the military to be his Praetorian guard, obliged on his whim to disregard rules of war and crack down on domestic dissent. Last time, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper (subsequently fired) and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (whom Trump said deserved to be executed), objected and defended the apolitical military. Next time, instead of such professionals, imagine conspiratorialist Michael Flynn (participant in the Jan. 6 war room) as defense secretary. In sum, ignoring the consequences of a second Trump term amounts to whistling past the graveyard of democracy. It’s time to pay attention to the prospect of a MAGA autocracy.