In one of Trump’s latest rants, he said that if he is not given absolute immunity from prosecution, he will indict Joe Biden if he wins in November. Never mind the fact that presidents can’t indict anyone. However, it is pretty much a given that if Trump gets elected, he will surround himself with people who he deems loyal and who will do his bidding. This would include installing someone to be the U.S. Attorney General who would likely be nothing more than a Trump toady. Can you imagine Jim Jordan as U.S. Attorney General?) He will certainly do the same for the FBI. As you recall, he fired James Comey who was the head of the FBI when he wouldn’t do Trump’s bidding!
The short-term consequences of that will be to encourage these individuals to use all the levers of the DOJ to clear Trump’s legal woes. They will then be encouraged to go after Trump’s enemies of which there is an exceptionally long list. However, there is likely a third consequence that no one is really talking about but would most surely happen and which will have devastating consequences for the country and America’s reputation on the world stage.
Trump will not only use the DOJ to prosecute his enemies, but he will use the DOJ to protect his friends and those he deems worthy by how much their potential misdeeds result in power and profit for Trump and his family. It is easy to imagine a scenario where wealthy Trump loyalists engage in questionable business practices, some of which they know to be illegal, if they are convinced the Trump administration DOJ will not prosecute them. We could end up looking exactly like Russia where there are a bunch of oligarchs who got very wealthy because they were allowed to operate with a free hand if they supported Putin.
All one has to do is look at the amount of money wealthy people are pumping into political campaigns to try to influence elections that will result in the roll back of government regulations and IRS oversight and it is not much of a stretch to see how we could end up as a nation of robber barons or oligarchs under a Trump administration. Corruption like kickbacks for government contracts and bribes will become the norm. If anyone has any doubt about this, just look at the way Trump has run his own businesses.
The United States already ranks 27th out of 180 countries on the Corruption Perception Index published by Transparency International. I would suggest that under a Trump administration, the US would plunge farther down this list. Some people might take the attitude that the government is already corrupt so what difference would this make? For one thing, investors might view the US as a riskier place to do business which would adversely affect the credit rating of the US. That would result in higher borrowing costs and potentially drive-up interest rates for all Americans. That might be a minor problem but lots of small things usually end up causing a catastrophe at some point.
The real irony is that all the blue-collar people who are so fervently supporting Trump will be the people who will be most adversely affected by the rise of the robber baron class that will surely emerge under a Trump administration. The wealthy will get wealthier, benefits for most ‘normal’ people will be cut, unions will have a really tough time and most of Trump’s supporters are highly likely to ultimately get screwed. I wonder how all the anti-abortion and anti-gay rights people will feel about their pact with the devil when they find themselves in an economic mess of their own making.
I believe a second Trump administration will be a classic example of ‘The Law of Unintended Consequences,’ and will result in more havoc than anyone can imagine. Interestingly, “the word ‘havoc’ was actually a military order in the Middle Ages, given by a commander to his soldiers, usually after the had achieved victory in battle: it was the signal for soldiers to go into a village and plunder and pillage (aka loot or take part in “the seizure of spoil”) and cause even more devastation.”1
I believe there will be a whole bunch of people who at some point will say, “I never thought that could happen!” Of course, by then it will be too late. Once Trump and his cadre of robber barons gain wealth, they will gain more power and it will become even more difficult to oust them.
In Act 1, Scene iii of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar, written in 1599, Marc Antony uses a phrase that I can easily envision as the last line in a Trump inaugural speech – “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!” which will signal his followers to plunder the nation and use all available resources to exact retribution against his enemies.
