I was as dismayed as anyone when Donald Trump was elected president, but while I was unhappy at the prospect of the policies I expected him to implement, and the judges he was likely to appoint, the thing that most concerned me was the prospect that the country was likely to face a true crisis at some point during his presidency, and he would completely fail to lead us through it. That fear was realized with the Covid-19 pandemic, and now it’s being realized again in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. Trump’s reflexive antagonism and divisiveness have resulted not only in a failure of leadership, but a veritable pouring of salt in the nation’s wounds.
One of the problems with resisting Trump is the fact that his presidency has been such a non-stop cascade of abuses that each new indignity piles up on the previous ones, tamping them down and squeezing the outrage out of them. It’s hard to remember what we were mortally offended by just last week, let alone three years ago. But Trump’s manifest unfitness to serve may finally be making itself apparent even to some of his former apologists. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, Joe Biden now leads him by 10 percentage points among registered voters in the presidential race.
I’ve never wished for anything as earnestly as I wish for Donald Trump’s defeat in November, but I don’t presume that his defeat would remove the existential threat that he is. Assuming he loses the election, Trump will have nothing else to lose. I shudder to think how much damage he is capable of doing between November 3 and January 20.
The more I think about that, the more concerned I get. There seems to be no question that he will challenge the validity of the election results should he lose — thoughtful observers are speculating that he will actually attempt to stay in the White House beyond January 20, 2021.
But what if that’s the least of our problems? In a frenzy of anger and indignation, what acts of retribution against his myriad perceived enemies could Trump conceive of? When the most powerful man in the free world is an outraged, puerile narcissist, what havoc might he be capable of wreaking?