What an election! The U.S. election system, which was supposed to be riddled with fraud, has apparently cleaned itself up overnight, as the results demonstrate. Or was it that all the undocumented migrants who were supposed to be voting illegally decided to cast their ballots for Trump this time? Whatever the case, we can be thankful that this election is not disputed; Vice President Kamala Harris has already conceded. Unless…she is secretly asking secretaries of state to find her more ballots, or waiting to award herself the presidency during the certification process on January 6, thus exercising a power that—until recently—the Trump team insisted all vice presidents possess, though the traitorous Mike Pence refused to use it. More likely, however, Harris will opt for politics as usual and certify the actual winner of more electoral votes as the next president. What a loser.
Now, as we await the wondrous transformation of this smoldering hellhole called the United States into the paradise that it was during the first Trump term, I have decided to look forward rather than backward. What follows are some predictions for the next Trump term. On some of these things, I would like to be right, and on others I would like to be wrong. Feel free to save this article and taunt me with it a few years down the road.
- Trump will take decisive action on the number one problem that Americans face in their daily lives: having to hear about that town in another state where a transgender high schooler is allowed to play on the sports team of their choice. Trump will take us back to the traditions that made America great, namely shaming and ostracizing people who are different.
- Christians will greet the news that their champion is back in power by staying away from church in ever-greater numbers.
- Trump’s promise to deport all 12 million undocumented people living in the United States is as ironclad as his promise to build a wall spanning the entire southern border and make Mexico pay for it. Trump knows that fulfilling his promise would sink the economy. So he’ll deport several hundred thousand to look tough, and more will leave voluntarily because they are fearful and tired of being scapegoated. Trump will declare victory, then quietly back off when farmers and contractors and hotels and daycare providers complain that they can’t find enough workers. Some people will enjoy the spectacle of vulnerable people’s lives being made miserable, but no one should think this is a real solution to a real problem. It’s theater. In the end, between eight and nine million undocumented people will remain in the country, picking our vegetables, building our houses, cleaning our hotel rooms, taking care of our kids. Their net impact on public budgets and on the economy will remain positive.
- As for the border, Trump and the Republicans will pass a bill very similar to the one he urged Congress to reject a few months ago. Then he’ll declare the border problem fixed. He might add to the whopping total of fifty-two miles of new border fence built during his first term.
- If Trump is the economic genius he claims to be, he will leave the economy alone and take credit for it, starting on day one. The inflation rate is back down to 2.4 percent, unemployment is 4.1 percent (it was 6.4 percent when Trump left office), and the stock market has been hitting all-time highs for months. If Trump does what he’s promised—deportations, tariffs, and tax cuts for everybody, including corporations—most economists think inflation and interest rates will soar. (Unless J. D. Vance intervenes. The Trump campaign regularly suggested that vice presidents have some sort of special power for controlling inflation, which Harris used to nefarious effect.) I predict Trump will enact a few tariffs for show, but he has no intention of fulfilling his campaign promises of massive tariffs on all imported goods (e.g., the Trump Bible). Again, tariffs are theater, not policy.
- The one economic promise Trump and the Republicans will fulfill is more tax cuts, most of which will go to the wealthy and to corporations. As Trump showed in his first term, fiscal responsibility is for suckers. He added an unprecedented $8.4 trillion to the national debt in just four years. He’s perfectly happy borrowing money and sticking future generations with the bill. As Groucho Marx said, what have future generations ever done for us?
- In theory, tax cuts will be balanced by spending cuts. During the campaign, we were told that Elon Musk would lead a task force to cut $2 trillion from the national budget. Musk admits that this will cause “temporary hardship.” I am not sure Americans have a high tolerance for hardship and sacrifice: we just elected a fascist because the price of bacon is too high. (The Germans had a slightly better excuse: a loaf of bread that cost 3 marks in early 1922 cost 80 billion marks by the end of 1923). I predict the Trump administration will cut a few worthless programs—you know, boondoggles like Head Start, school lunches for poor kids, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—and then declare “mission accomplished.”
- Trump will fulfill his promises to gut federal support for renewable energy and support fossil fuels instead. Gas prices will drop even lower than they recently have. That extra thirty cents per gallon will come in handy as we pack our cars and flee the latest hurricanes, floods, tornados, and wildfires.
- The people have demanded change, and that apparently includes climate change. Trump will deliver as he did in his first term, when he withdrew the United States from climate treaties and appointed a coal-industry lobbyist as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
- The widely popular and successful “Obamacare” will be eliminated. It will be replaced by something familiarly known as “Trumpcare,” which will be virtually the same as “Obamacare,” but with a better name.
- RFK Jr. will not be in charge of Health and Human Services. Trump played him to get a few extra votes, but Trump must know he’s a crackpot. Trump will give RFK Jr. an office in HHS and an important-sounding title, then ignore him. Some much smarter and more dangerous ideologue will be put in charge of HHS.
- Abortion, no abortion, IVF, whatever. Trump doesn’t care one way or another. Now that he’s bagged the Evangelical vote, he has no intention of signing a national abortion or IVF ban, because it would be unpopular. He doesn’t have any convictions on the matter.
- Speaking of convictions, Trump’s remaining criminal cases will be quickly closed, obviously, and those convicted of ransacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6 will be pardoned and rebranded as heroes and martyrs. In the meantime, Trump will make good on his promise to politicize the Department of Justice and punish his enemies.
- The antitrust actions of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission will essentially be shut down. It will be a great time to be an oligarch.
- The Department of Labor and National Labor Relations Board will be headed by people who are anti-labor. During a campaign interview, Trump and Musk chuckled about firing striking workers. This is Trump as working-class hero.
- Trump will end the war in Ukraine by abandoning it to Putin. He will cut funding and support for Ukraine and encourage Ukrainians to cede a large chunk of their country—if not the whole thing—to Russia. He will then claim he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
- Trump will also give Netanyahu permission to do whatever he wants to the Palestinians. The feeble protests of the Biden administration—“Maybe don’t use the weapons we are sending you so indiscriminately?”—will be a thing of the past. The Trump administration will come up with a “peace plan” that gives the Israeli government everything it wants, then berate the Palestinians for refusing to sign on.
- Now that Trump doesn’t have to worry about reelection, it will be no more Mr. Nice Guy. No more of the carefully reasoned explanations of policy we all remember from his first term. No more of his famously charitable disagreements with the opposition. And, this time, no more candid admissions of failure. I expect a bumper crop of lies, grievances, insults, narcissism, and scapegoating.
One is obliged to hope for wise and prudent governance from the next administration, but that’s not why people voted for Trump. People who feel shafted by the system want him to blow it up. Alas, the chaos he produces will mostly benefit those at the top of the food chain. People love the theater of his campaign, the story he tells of a once-great people, imperiled by enemies from within, able to be rescued only by one man who doesn’t play by the rules. Many people will continue to be entertained and feel empowered by this shtick. But by the end of Trump’s term the country will be more divided and deeper in debt, and the benefits of all that borrowed money will go mostly to people like Trump. Bread and circuses, but the bread will go primarily to those who already have plenty. The circuses will be for everyone else. See you at the circus.
William T. Cavanaugh is Professor of Catholic Studies and Director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University.
Reproduced with permission from Commonweal Magazine.
