Take Trump Seriously and Literally

In a second term, Donald Trump has promised to jail his political rivals, muzzle the press, gut the public administration, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, use federal agencies to reward corporations friendly to him and punish those considered hostile, eliminate Social Security taxes. (which would result in severe benefit cuts), weaken the independence of the Federal Reserve so that it can cut interest rates at will (which would likely scare investors and cause capital flight), and build a wall of tariffs around the US economy (which could trigger a trade war). and possibly a global recession). The press has diligently reported on these alarming campaign promises, sometimes citing experts explaining their potentially disastrous consequences.

Most of these stories, however, leave room for the idea—through cleaning-in-aisle-eight quotes from Republican supporters of Trump or astute guarantees from the journalists themselves: that what the former president promises during the campaign is not what he will do in office. For example, in a fine column on the potentially catastrophic results of some of Trump’s stated economic plansThe Washington Post Eduardo Porter dismisses the gravity of others:

Many of the proposals expressed by Donald Trump during the election campaign have been dismissed as probably meaningless. The offer to make interest payments ontax deductible auto loansLike promises to exempt tips and Social Security payments from taxes or restore state and local tax deductions, they can be read as an electoral loophole to please Americans with car loans, restaurant workers, to the elderly, whatever.

Porter is right that Trump has expressed more passion for tariffs than FICA taxes. However, by saying that much of his economic agenda can be “set aside” as “empty electoral pandering,” Porter is making a mistake that other journalists and millions of voters are falling victim to, which could have disastrous electoral consequences.

The assumption that presidential candidates routinely make campaign promises they do not intend to keep is widely accepted and erroneous (in the case of victorious nominees in general, and Trump in particular). Jonathan Bernstein, political scientist and Bloomberg columnist, addressed this topic back in 2012 for the Washington monthly:

Political scientists… have been studying this question for some time, and what they have discovered is that high-profile broken promises like George HW Bush’s (“read my lips: no new taxes” promise) are the exception. not the rule. That’s what two book-length studies from the 1980s found. Michael Krukones, in Promises and performance: Presidential campaigns as policy predictors. (1984), established that about 75 percent of the promises made by presidents, from Woodrow Wilson to Jimmy Carter, were kept. In Presidents and promises: from campaign commitment to presidential performance (1985), Jeff Fishel analyzed the campaigns from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan. What he found was that presidents invariably try to keep their promises; The main reason some promises are not kept is congressional opposition, not presidential changes of opinion… More recent, smaller-scale newspapers have confirmed the main point: Presidents’ agendas are clearly telegraphed in their campaigns. .

The academic findings that Bernstein summarized in 2012 are now a bit dated, and it’s fair to wonder if the pattern continued, especially during the administration of Donald Trump, a habitual liar. The answer is yes: Trump, like previous presidents, governed primarily according to his campaign agenda. You can see that in the “Trump-O-meter” published by PolitiFact, which linked more than a hundred of his 2016 promises to his actions as president. It is also clear from the Washington monthly “Presidential Achievement Index,” published this summer, which tracks 149 major accomplishments of the Trump and Joe Biden administrations across 21 policy areas.

He Political fact andMonthlyThe data shows that Trump failed to implement as much of his agenda as Obama or Biden. but our inform revealed that this was mainly due to Trump’s incompetence, inexperience and personnel with enough common sense to stop his most lunatic political directives. Two of those three conditions will not exist in a second Trump term. And a second term could also bring with it a Republican-controlled Senate and a House of Representatives still in GOP hands, both more indebted to Trump than during his first term.

Therefore, there is no reason to assume that a second Trump term will not try to fulfill all or almost all of the radical, dangerous and fascist promises he is making now. And you are likely to be more successful than before in getting your way.

Trump only wins when Americans don’t believe he’s serious or, as the old saying goes, take him seriously but not literally.

Michael Podhorzer, the political analyst, has observedthat Kamala Harris’s strongest and softest supporters equally believe Trump’s agenda is dangerous. Where they differ is that stronger supporters “are much more likely to believe Trump will follow through with his agenda,” while softer supporters think it’s mostly just talk. Soft partisans, Podhorzer says in an email, are also more likely to sit out the election because they don’t believe Trump will act on what he’s saying, or at least not in a way that will affect them.

The press has inadvertently fueled this dangerous psychological denial among the American public by failing to report what history and facts show: what a presidential candidate, including Trump, promises on the campaign trail.iswhat they will try to do in office. Getting this truth to voters is something journalists can do, even at this time of night, that could make a real difference.