Opinion
Trumpeting a terrible vision: What awaits if Biden loses … or even wins?
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editorDonald Trump’s priorities for a second term are growing clearer. The tunes he sings are familiar, but the lyrics are becoming explicit.
One striking revelation is his hierarchy of the dangers confronting America: “I think the enemy from within, in many cases, is much more dangerous for our country than the outside enemies of China, Russia, and various others that would be called enemies depending on who the president is,” he said in an extended interview published by Time magazine last week.
Illustration by Dionne Gain
So the top tier of danger is domestic, according to the Republican nominee for the presidency. And he used the phrase – “the enemy within” – three times. It wasn’t a fluke.
It’s an expression that resonates in the history of repression, most famously in a 1950 speech by the rabid red-baiter Senator Joseph McCarthy.
But while McCarthy purged communists in America, Trump is talking about pursuing Democrats. And Republicans who won’t support him.
For McCarthy, in other words, the “enemy within” was an ideology that sought to destroy US democracy. For Trump, it’s people who disagree with him – or just dislike him – within the normal framework of democratic politics. Which you could write off as mere campaign rhetoric, except that he is prepared to tolerate unconstitutional and illegal means to strike at fellow Americans.
The opening line of Time’s write-up of the interview by reporter Eric Cortellessa: “Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.”
He’s spoken of the “enemies within” on a few earlier occasions. In November, he even referred to them as “vermin”, the same word that Mussolini and Hitler used to dehumanise their political enemies.
But it’s getting clearer exactly who Trump has in mind, what he’s prepared to do to get them, and how this priority ranks with enemies abroad.
In December, Trump was interviewed by a Fox News acolyte, Sean Hannity: “I love this guy,” said Trump. “He says, ‘You’re not gonna be a dictator, are you?’ I say, ‘No, no, no - other than day one. We’re closing the border. And we’re drilling, drilling, drilling.’ After that, I’m not a dictator, OK?”
Challenged on this, Trump told Time he was just kidding. But the former president added: “I think a lot of people like it.” According to a YouGov poll in February, two-thirds of Republican voters think it’s a good idea.
Donald Trump arrives at a Wisconsin rally on Friday.Credit: Morry Gash/AP
Although he claims to value democracy, he nonetheless continues to insist that he won the last election and that Joe Biden “stole” power. He’d only hire people who agreed with his version, he said.
What of the revelation by his former defence secretary, Mark Esper, that Trump had suggested shooting protesters in the legs during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations?
Trump didn’t deny it. He said he’d prefer to use the National Guard to clear protests from the streets, but left open the possibility of ordering the US military against protesters as well.
Separately, he left open the option of using the military against illegal immigrants inside the US. He said he would expel forcibly millions of illegal immigrants in the biggest deportation in US history.
When it was pointed out to him that the Posse Comitatus law of 1878 forbids the military from being deployed against civilians, he responded: “These aren’t civilians. These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country.”
Ominously, he also left open the prospect of political violence on the streets if he were to lose the November 5 election. And implied that he’d be prepared to tolerate it.
Time’s Cortellessa put this to Trump: “You said, ‘I think we’re going to win and there won’t be violence.’ What if you don’t win, sir?”
“Well, I do think we’re gonna win,” he began, “and if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.” He said nothing to discourage or deter violence in the event that he were to lose.
President Joe Biden on his way to mass at St. Joseph on the Brandywine Catholic Church in Wilmington, Delaware on Saturday.Credit: AP
In similar vein, he said he’d consider granting pardons to the 800 or so people who’ve been convicted of attacking the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
And America’s great-power adversaries? The enemies ranged against America, the revanchist dictatorships which oppose the US and work to limit human liberty everywhere, are relegated to tier two in Trumpworld.
And note that Trump remains open-minded about who they might be. As he said, countries that “would be called enemies depending on who the president is”. There are no national interests or national enemies, only presidential ones, according to Trump.
Enemies abroad are discretionary, fleeting; enemies at home are fundamental, permanent.
And, of course, the corollary of that is that allies are discretionary and fleeting, too. On Europe. “Would Trump continue 80 years of American leadership in defending the West, especially Europe?”
“I want them to pay their bills,” Trump said. “Very simple. NATO is fine. See, the problem I have with NATO is, I don’t think that NATO would come to our defence if we had a problem... It’s a one-way street, even if they paid.”
On South Korea, another US treaty ally, he was asked whether he’d withdraw the US forces based in the country: “Why would we defend somebody? And we’re talking about a very wealthy country.” And “right next door happens to be a man I got along with very well”, Kim Jong-un.
Would Trump help Ukraine? “I wouldn’t give unless Europe starts equalising. They have to come. Europe has to pay.” On Taiwan, he wouldn’t commit. He wasn’t asked about Australia or Japan. He gave a clear-cut assurance to help only one country in the event of attack by a foreign enemy – Israel. And, even in the case of Israel he’s been critical of the country’s Gaza war and said it needed to “get it over with”.
This is the same Trump the world saw in his first term in the White House – autocratic, erratic, self-regarding, isolationist. Only more so.
Peter Hartcher is international editor.