Trump will do anything to keep his promises, “we must take him literally”

Photo: Ryan Collerd Agence France-Presse Donald Trump, near a bulletproof window, at a campaign rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, on November 3

Marco Fortier

Published at 12:04

• United States

Donald Trump has promised to use the military and the National Guard to carry out “the largest deportation of immigrants in history.” The military is also expected to hunt down the nation’s “internal enemies”—Trump’s political opponents—who would be indicted under his orders by the Justice Department. In addition, the president would declare “a brutal hour” when violence would be authorized “against thieves and property crime.”

Trump’s supporters downplay these pledges as nothing more than lip service. They say the populist is showing off for attention.

Instead, experts warn that he should be taken seriously. Yes, Trump has a tendency to ramble. His proposal for a “brutal hour” against criminals is probably one example. But they say the president will do whatever it takes to deliver on his major promises, even those that defy all established rules. They say Trump’s second term heralds an era of uncertainty that could lead to “big surprises.”

“The future is unpredictable. The range of possibilities over the next four years is much broader than the last time [Trump was in office] or with any other president,” says Nicole Hallett, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School.

“You can assume he’ll go as far as he says. You have to take him literally.” It would be a mistake to assume that he is joking,” adds this immigration law specialist.

Revenge on the agenda

Charles-Philippe David, president of the Observatory on the United States of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair in Strategic and Diplomatic Studies at UQAM, also believes that all the ingredients are there for Donald Trump to put the pedal to the metal in the hope of changing the face of the country.

“I don’t think we’ve seen the last of our surprises. Trump claims to have been persecuted by the Democrats, it will be revenge,” says the author of a series of books on American politics, including The Trump Effect and The Eagle in Peril ?.

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A climate of fear already seems to be setting in among those likely to be considered “enemies” of Trump, the professor notes. He notes that special prosecutor Jack Smith, who was charged with prosecuting the former (and future) president in two criminal cases, is now seeking to rectify the situation after Trump’s election. A sitting president cannot be prosecuted.

“If Trump could hang Jack Smith, he would,” says Charles-Philippe David. Coincidence or not, the former president also “jokingly” mentioned during the election campaign a situation in which Republican Liz Cheney, a virulent critic of Trump, was facing nine guns pointed at her. And it seems certain that he will pardon several of the perpetrators of the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Weakened resistance

All this is happening in a context where countervailing powers appear weaker than ever. Any attempt by Trump to instrumentalize the military or the Justice Department would be challenged in court, believes Nicole Hallett. The outcome of such a legal challenge remains uncertain, but conservative judges are in the majority on the Supreme Court.

It is also plausible that Republicans will control both houses of Congress—the vote count in the House of Representatives has yet to be completed in states on the West Coast—, Charles-Philippe David points out. If this is the case, the president will have a clear path to appoint his supporters to strategic positions and obtain budgets for his initiatives.

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Another worrying sign is that Trump’s first term (2017-2021) demonstrated that the safeguards have weakened over his years in the White House, Professor Hallett points out. All the people who stood up to him were fired or resigned in the face of behavior deemed inappropriate — or even illegal — by the president.

This text is part of our Perspectives section.

One example among others: Donald Trump threatened to deploy the army against Black Lives Matter activists who took to the streets of Washington in June 2020, following the death of George Floyd. The president even wanted to order soldiers to shoot protesters in the legs. Defense Secretary Mark Esper publicly contradicted the president: for him, there was no question of asking the military to open fire on American citizens who were exercising their right to protest.

Trump fired his secretary. He vowed to appoint loyalists who would obey him at his beck and call if he were re-elected to a second term, the New York Times recalled in a recent editorial that was highly critical of the Republican candidate. The newspaper also warned Trump supporters who see him as a joker with no real desire to keep his promises: “Believe him.”

For these reasons, Professor Hallett is concerned about Trump’s commitment to using the Justice Department for political purposes. She considers it plausible that Trump is trying to override the independence of civil servants. However, clear rules prevent the executive branch from initiating proceedings against political opponents – even if they are described as “enemies within”.

The president would thus trigger a “huge crisis,” believes the professor. “We saw it at the beginning of his first term: there are people ready to stand up. A very large number of employees would leave if he tried to use the department against his enemies. We can think that they would be replaced by people considered allies. There are already a lot of people who are ready to follow him.”

An army at his service

The former reality TV host is like that: he doesn’t care about established rules. Some even consider that it is one of his assets. His idea of ​​using the army and the National Guard to track down his opponents thus contravenes all conventions.

“There would probably be a lot of resistance within the military,” Hallett says. “The president may be the commander in chief of the Armed Forces, but we have civilian control of the military. The military would probably refuse to comply with such an order, which could be considered illegal. There is a clear rule that the military is not to be used against the American people.”

Donald Trump is reportedly not just using the military to attack his political opponents: he is promising to task the military and the National Guard with “deporting” millions of undocumented immigrants. This order would also defy all due process. The expulsion of migrants is normally the responsibility of agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program, which enforces border laws.

No matter: never short of shock ideas, Donald Trump has promised to send soldiers after millions of illegal immigrants living in the United States. The president would be risking a lot with this unprecedented operation, which would cost tens of billions of dollars and deprive businesses of a vital workforce, in the midst of a labor shortage, argues the American Immigration Council.

Among other things, it would be necessary to build a series of detention centers — and add staff — to supervise undocumented immigrants who would have been arrested before their deportation.

The (re)elected president insists on using the military to carry out his plan, which he knows is unrealistic in the current conditions, underlines Nicole Hallett.

More suffering

“The immigration system is designed to allow for the deportation of a certain number of people. Trump promised mass deportations in his first term, but he ended up deporting fewer people than Obama before him. If the federal government asks for double the number of deportations, it’s not going to be feasible. There are not enough resources,” says the professor.

Democratic institutions withstood Trump’s first term because there were volunteers to stand up to him. This time, the populist will be able to easily recruit loyalists from the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement to march in lockstep. “The safeguards are only as good as the people who are in charge of them,” says Nicole Hallett.

She fears that Trump’s policies will go further than his campaign promises. Texas patrol officers have made no secret of their desire to be able to shoot migrants trying to cross the border. The president has never promised to give them that power, but Nicole Hallett wouldn’t be surprised if members of his entourage were urging him to do so.

“All Trump would have to do is sign a statement saying he won’t pursue them if they shoot. Then we would see more human suffering.”