The Ruin That Another Trump Presidency Would Bring

While a number of pundits are panning Trump's "win" in Iowa and saying as a former incumbent, he should have had a stronger showing than a mere 56,000+ votes and it bodes ill for him in November, 2024, it still is clear to many that Trump will be the Republican nominee as Republicans opt for moral bankruptcy as they wallow in racism, grievance and hatred of others.  Another Trump presidency would mean disaster for the so-called free world because Trump has made it clear that he will betray allies and likely try to destroy NATO to the delight of Trump's puppeteer, Vladimir Putin.  Worse yet, come the end of a second Trump term, he would likely refuse to leave office and American democracy would be dead.  Most maddening is the fact that many leading Republicans and his primary opponents know the ruin Trump would cause to the nation, yet out of fear for Trump and/or the ever more ugly MAGA base, they continue to refuse to condemn him or, worse yet, are endorsing him.  There is no statesmanship and no honor the Constitution or even basic morality.  It is only about remaining in office/power at any cost, even if that means destroying democracy.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at this horrible reality.  Here are excerpts:

In 2016, Republicans could profess some uncertainty about the kind of president Donald Trump would be. Maybe the office would change the man? Maybe the party elite could bend Trump to its will?

But in 2024, there’s no uncertainty. Trump’s party is signing up for the ride, knowing exactly what the ride is. Pro-Ukraine senators are working to elect a president who will cut off Ukraine, knowing that he will cut off Ukraine. Pro-NATO senators are working to elect a president who will wreck NATO, knowing that he will wreck NATO.

Many top Republicans have been hoping for a way out of their Trump dilemma. That’s why Nikki Haley has raised tens of millions of dollars and Ron DeSantis has raised hundreds of millions. It’s why, even now, more than half of the Republican senators have not endorsed a primary candidate.

But the exits are blocked. The many criminal and civil legal processes against Trump were too slow to rescue his party from him. The thesis that Trump might be disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment awaits a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Republican contest will be over within weeks.

That heralds potential disaster for American allies, for the United States’ standing in the world, and above all for the invaded democracy of Ukraine. The risk is apparent already from House Republicans, who have blocked Biden’s request for emergency aid to Ukraine, to Israel, and to border enforcement for nearly 100 days, since October 20, 2023. But until now, the Republican Party in the Senate has tried to keep its distance from Trump’s pro-dictator foreign policy. The ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been an especially stalwart friend of Ukraine. Senator James Risch has voted for every assistance package for Ukraine—and criticized the Biden administration for not sending more, faster.

Risch has warned that America’s global stature depends on the outcome of the Ukraine war:

If you think Xi [Jinping] isn’t watching every single thing that goes on as far as our commitment to see this thing through, you’re badly mistaken. He is watching this—and I have reason to believe that for a fact—very, very closely, and watching every utterance that comes out of the United States Congress, out of the administration, and out of the American people as to what kind of a stomach we’ve got to see this thing through.

Thanks in large part to Republicans such as Risch, U.S. aid to Ukraine flowed in 2022 and 2023. The impending Trump renomination signals that pro-democracy Republicans such as Risch are losing the argument inside their party. Last week, Risch endorsed Trump for the GOP presidential nomination . . .

When so-called Team Normal Republicans submitted to Trump’s nomination in 2016, they tended to take refuge in wishful thinking: The system would constrain him; things wouldn’t be so bad.

Eight years later, there can be no illusions. Risch himself called the events of January 6, 2021, “unpatriotic and un-American in the extreme.” He had reason for disgust: His own Senate suite was trashed that day by the attackers. One of them defecated on the floor in a room adjacent to Risch’s office.

None of this is hard to explain. Republicans who get crosswise with Trump lose their career. There aren’t many volunteers to follow Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, or Mitt Romney.

Still, if this is not hard to explain, it’s hard to face: After the Iowa caucus, the Republican Party is all but certain to renominate Trump for the presidency. He will be the GOP’s first three-time nominee since Richard Nixon (in 1960, 1968, and 1972)—and the first ever Republican former presidential incumbent to be renominated after losing reelection.

Even after Trump consolidates the nomination, the choice will not literally be binary. Republican-friendly donors will support third-way choices—the super PAC for anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy received $5 million, more than half its total fundraising through June, from a single GOP mega-donor—not because any can win, but in hope of draining votes from Biden for Trump’s benefit. But the choice will be binary in that only one of two people can plausibly be the next president: Biden or Trump.

What kind of people are Americans, anyway? Trump has made clear, without illusions, that his ballot issue in 2024 is to rehabilitate and ratify his attempt to overturn the election of 2020. He is running to protect himself from the legal consequences of that attempt. But even more fundamentally, he is running to justify himself for attempting it. In 2016, Trump opponents warned that he might refuse to leave office if defeated.

If he should return to the presidency in 2025, we have no reason to expect him to leave in 2029. So maybe the issue on the ballot in 2024 is not a choice at all, but a much more open-ended question. We know who Biden is. We know who Trump is. Who are we?

Sadly, too many Americans are acting like the "Good Germans" who either did nothing to oppose Hitler, or worse yet, supported his rise to power and the ruin - see the image above - it would eventually bring.