Who he is

(https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/11/opinion/editorials/donald-trump-2024-unfit.html).
“He lies blatantly and maliciously, embraces racists, abuses women and has a
schoolyard bully’s instinct to target society’s most vulnerable. He has delighted in
coarsening and polarizing the town square with ever more divisive and incendiary
language. Mr. Trump is a man who craves validation and vindication, so much that
he would prefer a hostile leader’s lies to his own intelligence agencies’ truths and
would shake down a vulnerable ally for short-term political advantage. His
handling of everything from routine affairs to major crises was undermined by his
blundering combination of impulsiveness, insecurity and unstudied certainty.
This record shows what can happen to a country led by such a person: America’s
image, credibility and cohesion were relentlessly undermined by Mr. Trump during
his term.
“None of his wrongful actions are so obviously discrediting as his determined and
systematic attempts to undermine the integrity of elections — the most basic
element of any democracy — an effort that culminated in an insurrection at the
Capitol to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power.
“On Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Trump incited a mob to violence with hateful lies, then stood
by for hours as hundreds of his supporters took his word and stormed the Capitol
with the aim of terrorizing members of Congress into keeping him in office.”
“He praised these insurrectionists and called them patriots; today he gives them a
starring role at campaign rallies, playing a rendition of the national anthem sung by
inmates involved with Jan. 6., and he has promised to consider pardoning the
rioters if re-elected. He continues to wrong the country and its voters by lying
about the 2020 election, branding it stolen, despite the courts, the Justice
Department and Republican state officials disputing him. No man fit for the
presidency would flog such pernicious and destructive lies about democratic norms
and values, but the Trumpian hunger for vindication and retribution has no moral
center.”
Thom Hartmann comments on Trump’s involvement in the insurrection
(https://commondreams.org/opinion/the-politics-of-joy-versus-the-only-thing-republicans-have-left-cruelty). He writes:
“When Donald Trump lost the 2020 election by seven million votes, he sent a
violent mob against the US Capitol. As they tried to murder the vice president and
speaker of the house, covered the walls of the building with feces and defaced
priceless paintings, Trump gleefully watched on live television for over three hours
while refusing to call in the national guard or take any other meaningful action.
“Five civilians and three police officers died as the result of his sending that
murderous mob because all he and his GOP have left is cruelty.”

Ignoring the law
In a report for Citizens for Ethics (CREW), Brie Sparkman and Sara Wiatrak write
that, as of March 2024 [updated June 4], “Donald Trump has been personally
charged with 88 [now 91] criminal offenses in four criminal cases”
(https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/trumps-91-criminal-charges-and-where-they-stand).
They continue: “This total reflects charges related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of
the 2020 election, election interference in Georgia, falsifying business records in
New York, and mishandling classified records after leaving the presidency. Donald
Trump is the first former president in U.S. history to be criminally indicted.”
Responses to the 2020 presidential loss
Here is a summary from Melissa Murray and Adrew Weisman’s book, The Trump
Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents With Commentary.
“Trump’s alleged scheme to reject the results of the 2020 presidential election
involved: pressuring state legislators in battleground states, through threats and
lies, to alter the vote tallies; enlisting slates of fake electors, including through
fraud, in battleground state; filing false lawsuits; breaking into state election
machines; plotting to seize voting machines; lying about Georgia election workers
and pressuring them to lie about election fraud; enlisting the DOJ to say that it was
investigating serious allegations of fraud when it was not and had in fact reported it
had found no material fraud; and pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to violate
his oath of office on January 6 and lying about his supposed assent that he had the
power to reject the counting of the votes, when he told Trump he did not” (p.
xxvii).
---------------
What next from Trump?
If elected in November, Trump, his party, and allies have a plan referred to as
“2025.” The plan, over 900 pages in length, is aimed at destroying American
democracy. It has been developed by people at the right-wing Heritage Foundation
and other Trump adherents. If implemented, it would make Trump an
unaccountable and authoritarian/fascist “leader” and give him the power to turn the
Department of Justice and other executive agencies into compliant extensions of
this power.
The Plan calls for the removal of thousands of experienced civil servants who will
be replaced by Trump loyalists, regardless of their competence. Given the
opportunity, he will further stack the courts with ultra-conservative judges. The
plan includes proposals for the detention or deportation of tens of millions of
undocumented U.S. residents – and anyone Trump and his minions identify as
opponents. They will push for tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, while
privatizing Social Security, Medicare, and other parts of the social safety net.
Trump wants to replace the Affordable Care Act, but hasn’t offered an alternative.
He favors the privatization of the public schools and likes the idea of diverting
funds from them to private and charter schools.
Although Trump argues from one side of his mouth that he will not support a
national ban on abortion access, his record against reproductive rights is well
known and suggest that it is naïve to believe there will not be a ban. He brags to
right-wing evangelicals, an important Trump constituency that America is indeed a
Christian society, ignoring the constitutional separation of religion and the state
and that the majority of Americans do no hold extremist religious views. His
notion of “freedom” (for employers) does not allow much room for occupational
safety laws or unions. Generally, he and his allies want massive deregulation. This
is also true of his energy policy, one that is based on maximum use of fossil fuels,
including coal. Trump and his allies reject the findings of experts that the planet is
growing hotter as the U.S. and other rich countries continue to increase their use of
these fuels. Trump has recently said that he wants to impose high – tariffs on
products from China, having little knowledge about their potentially detrimental
effects on American consumers. It is well known that he is attracted to
authoritarian leaders.
We should not forget that his angry, spiteful, maliciously narcissist person would,
as president, have the power to start a nuclear war.
Twenty-seven psychiatrists and mental health experts came to the following
conclusion, among others, in their book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.
“We are gravely concerns about Trump’s abrupt, capricious 180-degree shifts and
how these displays of instability have the potential to be unconsciously dangerous
to the point of causing catastrophe, and not only for the citizens of the United
States”

Rejecting the results of the 2024 presidential election if he loses
C. J. Polychroniou, a political economist/political scientist who has taught and
worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United
States. points to relevant information
(https://commondreams.org/opinion/implications-2024-election-us). The article
was published on August 24, 2024.
“The 2024 U.S. presidential election is enormously important for many of the
reasons you cited, although we shouldn’t be oblivious of the fact that parochialism
is what drives most American voters. That said, this election is indeed unlike any
other in modern history also because American voters are so polarized that the
threat of civil breakdown is real. In fact, I believe that Trump is already laying the
groundwork for rejecting the election result if he loses. This is why he calls
Democrats’ replacement of Biden a ‘coup’ and even ‘a violent overthrow’ of a
president. And back in March, he said that there will be a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses
the November election.
Ignoring global warming
Andes Oppenheimer, journalist at the Miami Herald, worries whether U.S. voters
will elect a climate skeptic in times of record-breaking heat
(https://miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article289090739.html).
The article was published on June 7, 2024.
“Trump has repeatedly mocked climate change warnings and promotes fossil fuels,
ignoring the scientific consensus that climate change is likely caused by man-made
greenhouse emissions. As crazy as it sounds at a time of record heat waves, Trump
is publicly vowing to reverse the Biden administration’s ambitious laws to combat
global warming. According to the Trump campaign website, a second Trump
administration would unleash a wave of oil drilling and speed up approvals of
fracking permits in public lands. ‘To keep pace with the world economy that
depends on fossil fuels for more than 80% of its energy, President Trump will
DRILL, BABY, DRILL,’ the campaign’s official website says. The Trump
campaign website also says that, ‘from day one,’ the former president would kill
hundreds of laws to combat global warming adopted by the Biden administration,
including rules to reduce car emissions and subsidies for buyers of electric
vehicles. Trump would also again order a U.S. withdrawal from the 2016 Paris
Agreement to control climate change, which calls on countries to substantially
reduce planet-warming emissions. Trump had pulled out of the Paris Agreement at
the start of his term, but Biden later reversed that decision.”
“At an April fundraiser with oil company owners and executives at his Mar-a-Lago
compound, Trump promised to go out of his way to help fossil fuel industries if
they donated $1 billion to his campaign, The Washington Post reported. Trump
specifically vowed to scrap current policies that encourage production of electric
vehicles, wind and solar energy, and other green power sources opposed by the oil
industry, the Post said.”

Hardly a friend of workers
Lawrence Wittner, Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany who has
written extensively on peace movements, foreign policy, and economic inequality,
considers Trump’s record on American workers
(https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-working-class). The title of his article,
published on May 21, 2024, says it all: “Trump Didn't Lift Up the Working Class.
He Stepped on Its Neck.” Here’s some of what he writes.
“Although Donald Trump, as president, proclaimed in his 2020 State of the Union
address that he had produced a “blue-collar boom” in workers’ wages, the reality
was quite different. Using his control of the executive branch of the U.S.
government, Trump repeatedly undermined the wages of American workers by
blocking raises and imposing wage reductions.
“Only the preceding year, Trump derailed vital wage legislation. In July
2019―with the pathetically low federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 per hour for
a decade and some 13 million workers holding two or more jobs to support their
families―the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the Raise
the Wage Act. If enacted, the legislation would have gradually increased the
federal minimum wage to $15 per hour over a six-year period. But, instead of
supporting the legislation or proposing an alternative, the Trump White House
announced that, if the Senate passed the House bill, Trump would veto it.
“Consequently, the measure died in the Republican-controlled Senate. According
to the AFL-CIO, the legislation would have raised the pay of 40 million American
workers.
“That same year, Trump’s Department of Labor succeeded in rolling back planned
wage increases for millions of workers by restricting eligibility for overtime pay.
In 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, the Labor Department had
issued a rule substantially raising the income level below which workers were paid
time and a half for work done beyond 40 hours per week. But the Trump Labor
Department, seizing on a delay in implementation occasioned by a judicial
decision, lowered the level by more than $20,000, thus depriving 8.2 million
American workers of the right to overtime pay secured under Obama.
“In August 2018, Trump canceled a scheduled 2 percent pay raise for millions of
civilian federal employees, leading to criticism even from some Republicans. This
action, plus other administration assaults on the rights of public employees, led to
a massive flight of workers from government service. By the fall of 2019, there
were 45,000 vacancies in the Department of Veterans Affairs alone. To fill these
vacancies, the Trump administration hired large numbers of temp workers at low
wages and with minimal benefits.
“Yet another administration policy that undercut workers’ wages emerged with the
Trump Labor Department’s issuance of a “joint-employer” rule. The Fair Labor
Standards Act of 1938 had been fashioned to ensure that businesses using staffing
companies or subcontractors would be accountable for complying with basic
workplace protections. Even so, the Trump administration’s joint-employer rule
substantially limited liability for wage and hour violations, thereby making it
harder for workers to hold all parties accountable. As a result, U.S. workers lost an
estimated $1 billion annually thanks to subcontracting or wage theft by employers.
“Of course, not all Trump administration attempts at holding down wages
succeeded. In 2017, the Trump Labor Department proposed that employers could
simply pocket workers’ tips, as long as the workers were paid the minimum wage.
Economists estimated that this policy would lead to the loss of $5.8 billion per year
in tips for workers, 80 percent of whom were women. But after the discovery that
Trump’s Secretary of Labor had gone to great lengths to hide his department’s
findings about how harmful the new policy would be, Congress stepped in and
amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to prohibit employers from seizing the tips
of their employees.
“Another Trump administration failure occurred in connection with reducing the
wages of farmworkers, some of the most exploited, lowest-paid workers in the
United States. In mid-2019, the Labor Department proposed a new regulation that
would change the rules of the H-2A visa program, used by agricultural employers
to hire migrant farmworkers for seasonal work―for example, by President
Trump’s wineries. As one of the rules changes would lower wage rates for H-2A
farmworkers and, consequently, for their U.S. counterparts, the United Farm
Workers challenged it in federal court and, ultimately, prevailed.”
Concluding thoughts
Trump is the head of the Republican Party, enjoys support from large swaths of
corporate America, has a hardcore, cult-like following of tens of millions who
seem to welcome the thought of having a king-like president. He benefits from the
conservative Supreme Court. He preaches violence and retribution. His policy
views are essentially anti-democratic and self-serving. If he wins the presidential
election, the US will look more like, say, Hungary, with an authoritarian
government, the absence of civil and political rights, a court system that
legitimates whatever the leader does. Anne Applebaum, a staff writer at the
Atlantic magazine and author, has published a book titled “Autocracy, Inc.: The
Dictators Who Want to Run the World,” that delves into such issues.
The big question is whether Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, the Democratic Party, and
their supporters can win enough votes – and electoral votes - in November to alter
the dire path on which Trump would govern. The platform is strong on progressive
taxes, civil and gender rights, support for workers and unions, strengthening gun
regulation, and protecting consumers. But it is weak or unclear on how to stop and
reverse global warming, seems to reject an arms embargo on US weapons sent to
Israel, and needs to flush out the details on what an “opportunity economy”
includes. So far, under Biden’s presidency, there are also plenty of laudatory
developments, namely, the economy has grown, wages are up, inflation has fallen.
At the same time, sadly, they endorse the bipartisan call for ever higher military
spending.