Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 25 books, including The New York Times bestseller “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past” (Basic Books). The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
Former President Donald Trump is setting off many alarms. He made headlines by telling Fox News host Sean Hannity Tuesday night that if reelected, he would only be a dictator on “day one” of his presidency in retribution against his political enemies. There have been numerous reports on his plans to stack the executive branch in his favor through appointing loyalists and expanding his power to hire and fire federal government workers.
While Trump has always deployed this kind of language, and often his goal in doing so is to generate media attention rather than to outline serious policy objectives, there is reason to worry about an extraordinary assertion of presidential power that might very well take place in a second Trump term. There are significant reasons that the second time around would be different. And why Trump, who feels few restraints to begin with, would be even more unbound.
Why will would the second term be more dangerous than the first?
Lame duck freedom
Like all second term presidents, Trump would feel less constrained by having to worry about reelection. The virtue of being a lame duck is that there is much less pressure to avoid actions that might undercut the possibility of winning the support of future voters.
Some presidents try to use this freedom to advance controversial initiatives that would be in the best interest of the nation and the world, as President Ronald Reagan undertook in 1987 when he signed a major arms agreement (the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty) with the Soviet Union. But presidents can also use the lame duck period in dangerous ways, abandoning the guardrails on deploying power. This could certainly be the case with Trump who seems to have retribution rather than policymaking on his mind.
He’s already survived Impeachment (twice)
Trump is also in the unique position of having survived two impeachments while in office. The major mechanism that Congress has to prevent a president from abusing their power is not something likely to concern him. He has seen how partisanship is sufficient to insulate himself from the possibility of being removed by the Senate.
Trump also had a taste of how he could capitalize on being impeached by claiming to supporters that partisan opponents were out to get him and that he was a victim of the establishment. Knowing that, as former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney reminds us in her new book, Republicans saved him before and would do so again, the impeachment power of the legislative branch would not create any fears as he considered how to exercise presidential power.
He would have outflanked the law
If he was in office, that would mean that Trump has also survived, politically, the legal process again. Whether or not he is convicted in any of the four ongoing cases against him remains to be seen (he denies any wrongdoing). But should he be in office come 2025, it will mean that the legal process did not have the ability to change voting behavior and in certain respects made him stronger. Whereas President Richard Nixon needed President Gerald Ford to pardon him, Trump would have so much confidence that he would not even feel the need to worry about that sort of protection either.
His stranglehold on Republican loyalty
Notwithstanding the endless discussion about the Republicans who don’t like Trump, most in the GOP have continued to stand by him. Republicans on Capitol Hill have remained relatively steady in their support of the former president even if there has been some slippage. Those who are not standing with him, such as Cheney, have found themselves on the outside or out of a job.
In the electorate, the polls continue to show that regardless of what happens he remains far and above the most popular figure in the party. Trump knows all of this and will assume that if he gets in trouble the party will back him.
His cabinet would be filled with yes-persons
During his first term, Trump at least brought in figures from the world of Washington as well as the military to serve in his cabinet. Figures such as Secretary of Defense James Mattis and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus at least exposed him to some voices who understood when his ideas were going too far. Mattis served from 2017 until 2019 when Trump refused to listen to his warnings about removing troops from Syria. By 2020 Mattis was calling Trump a genuine threat to the Constitution. Priebus, a former member of Congress and head of the [Republican National Committee] (RNC), served as chief of staff for the first six months of Trump’s term, until he was kicked out.
A second term would be very different. As McKay Coppins wrote in The Atlantic, all indications are that this time around he would only staff his White House with the true loyalists. Figures such as Stephen Miller and Richard Grenell, former close aides in the first Trump administration, would push him toward even further extremes.
Experience
Trump now has experience. As chaotic as his term was, he would now have a much better sense of where it is possible to run roughshod over conventions and processes. He has tested the waters and will now have an easier time knowing what to expect when jumping back in.
Indeed, we have even seen in his approach to the 2024 primaries and convention a much more deliberate approach in thinking about how to set up conditions so to subvert his challengers. As with any second term president, he will be much more adroit at using the levers of power, legitimate and otherwise, to pursue his goals and to solidify his strength.
The real threat of vengeance
Perhaps the biggest factor of all is that Trump is out for revenge. He is angry at the opposition he has continued to face and the prosecutions that have been conducted under the Justice Department.
Trump, who has always been a person seeking to oust those who harm him or disagree with him, will now be able to do so using the long arms of government. For those who don’t believe that this is a serious threat, they should remember the long history of presidents, from President Woodrow Wilson during WWI to President Richard Nixon, who used the government to intimidate, crack down on and even imprison their opponents.
When Trump says things like, “we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Americans should take the threat seriously.
There is little doubt that a second term Trump would be extraordinarily dangerous to the Republic. He would give the Imperial Presidency new meaning, displaying the kind of force that the historian Arthur Schlesinger could never have imagined when he coined the term in 1973 in the shadow of Nixon.
It will be incumbent on Republicans running against Trump in the primaries to make certain that voters understand the risk of staying on the existing path. It will be incumbent on Biden and the Democrats to make very clear to the electorate what the stakes are in the choice that they will make in November 2024.
