Video lays out what Trump's first 100 "horrific days" as dictator would look like

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/18/video-lays-out-what-trumps-first-100-horrific-days-as-dictator-would-look-like.html

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The first 100 days have been sponsored, vetted and planned…

“It is not enough to elect conservative leaders who articulate the right policies. We must ensure that the men and women surrounding these leaders also cherish American greatness, hold an unwavering fidelity to our Constitution, and believe in the supremacy of our God-given rights.

“That is why we are standing up the 2025 Presidential Transition Project almost three years out from the next administration. Heritage will help provide not just the intellectual firepower to policymakers, but also do everything we can to ensure the right people hold positions of influence in Washington—and are empowered to root out those who no longer serve the interests of the American people.

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Or, you know, at a minimum three times that, and possibly six times.

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Mehdi is one of the titan journalists of our time - so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that NBC gave him ye olde heave ho. Watching him poke countless holes in Matt Taibbi’s defense of Elon Musk was a sight to behold, not just because we all got to see a sharp mind at work but because most of us respected Matt Taibbi once upon a time and knew that if anyone could hold him accountable for sucking up to power, it was Mehdi.

That stated, my read of Project 2025 literally caused me sleepless nights. While Canada isn’t America, the saying “when America sneezes the world catches cold” suggests that we’d be drawn into that abyss quickly.

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They actually wrote:

empowered to root out those who no longer serve the interests of the American people

Substitute ‘German’ for ‘American’ and you have yourselves something hot off Goebbels’s printing presses in 1933.

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This doesn’t really help with the feeling of “it can’t happen here,” but South Korea, which we believed had a mature democracy until this point is experiencing the dismantling of all norms by our version of Trump with the Judicial Branch and the Department of Justice in full cahoots (since Yoon is actually a former prosecutor) in uprooting all the guardrails and literally gagging journalists and political opponents with frivolous prosecutions if not actually putting them in jail.

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Countries with a significant decline in the index are considered a dictatorship-progressing country, and South Korea has fallen significantly from 18th place in 2019 and 28th place in 2022. On March 9, the Berliner Morgenpost, a leading German daily newspaper, also raised concerns about the undermining of democracy, likening Yoon to the former U.S. president, saying "South Korea’s Donald Trump is putting an ax on democracy.”

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I feel like this still undersells how horrific it would be, and certainly how horrific it could be. Laying it out where one thing happens on each day is misleading, for one. Trump will be trying to do as many things as possible on day one, and trying to cram in as many acts as he could in each subsequent day. Hell, he’ll have a head start before he even gets into office - I’m thinking of how last time he had his list of federal employees he had direct control over, who were all removed the second he was sworn in, even though it strained the functionality of the government because he hadn’t picked replacements. Breaking things is more important to him than having figured out a working alternative to put in place that does what he wants, so he’ll be breaking a lot of things.

Last time he bemoaned the fact that no one was ready with the plans for things he promised to do. Now he’s got the Heritage Foundation and others who have already come up with the plans. They’ll be executing them with all the speed the system can manage to get the orders through, and faster - as his administration will break the system every way it can, it will allow him to start doing things by extra-legal means, because the system isn’t there to stop them. A flood of changes will make it difficult to push back against, as well - the press will be overwhelmed in covering everything that’s happened, and anyone trying to stop him will have 50 fires to put out rather than being able to focus on one.

And he barely scratches all the things that Trump (much less the Heritage Foundation) has publicly planned. The list of people that Trump has promised to put in concentration camps (the homeless, immigrants, etc.) alone is really long. Trump just off-handly throws out some horrors he says he’ll enact all the time - it’s hard to keep track of them all.

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If Trump wins, I hope the other democratic institutions will hold him back somewhat like last time, but yes… judiciary does have his appointed majority, and the legislature could tip easily in his favor.

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more than 1 in 3 are fully supportive.

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When I last visited Seoul a year ago, I saw a few Trump flags among the people participating in a pro-Yoon demo around City Hall.

I worry that it could happen here in Japan as well, where a lot of fringe parties keep snapping up seats in the Diet as the two major mainstream parties continue to lose support.

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It is up to the people of America to get rid of Trump by any means necessary.
The whole world is counting on you.

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As Masha Gessen said, institutions will not save us:

Of course, the United States has much stronger institutions than Germany did in the 1930s, or Russia does today. Both Clinton and Obama in their speeches stressed the importance and strength of these institutions. The problem, however, is that many of these institutions are enshrined in political culture rather than in law, and all of them—including the ones enshrined in law—depend on the good faith of all actors to fulfill their purpose and uphold the Constitution.

The institution of the corporate media in particular continues to fall down on the job, as it has since Il Douche descended on his escalator all those years ago.

Hoping is not enough. It’s up to all of us to make sure this grifter and his fascist allies don’t take power again.

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They will not.

The CDC, which wasn’t in a great place before Trump, was made significantly worse during Trump’s presidency. It still hasn’t recovered to even it’s prior not great capacity. This is just an example of what will happen to every government agency.

At the end of his term, the Schedule F plan would have converted 50,000+ career officials into political appointees. With the direct goal of replacing anyone who wasn’t loyal to whatever conspiracy theory was currently in favor.

Vote, it’s the only solution.

Another Trump presidency will decimate institutions. Both removing legal guardrails and throwing out any norm that allows them to function today.

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In a second Trump (mal)administration there will be no adults in the room. They will all be Bannons, and Millers, and Pruits. From top to bottom it will be filled with sycophants willing to commit crimes to curry favor and get their pet projects approved. There will be nobody trying to slow-walk Trump’s worst ideas off a cliff and hope that he forgets them.

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And we have Poilievre to worry about too.

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Remove Medhi Hasan’s commentary and just present the timeline, and you have an extremely effective ad campaign for Trump that is tailor-made for his base.

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