First and foremost, Donald Trump is a racketeer, specializing in extortion, bribery, and money laundering. He, and his son-in-law Jared, treat every problem as though they were getting rid of an unwanted tenant in one of their buildings. The modus operandi is to make life as miserable as possible for the tenant until they leave and go find somewhere else to live. And Trump prefers to only work with people he can control. That leaves his family and others who engage in shady or criminal behavior that Trump can threaten to expose to keep them in line, which explains why most of his original cabinet was filled with crooks. But he also has no problem working with people of good character as long as they support the same goal as he does. Once that goal is reached, they are quickly disposed of.
Brett Kavanaugh was only selected by Trump because he has made it clear that a sitting President should not be burdened by "civil suits, criminal investigations, or criminal prosecutions". The fact that Kavanaugh is apparently a pretty consistent liar and now an accused attempted rapist only makes him a more appealing and controllable choice in Trump's mind. As Mitch McConnell pointed out, there were plenty of other choices that would fulfill the Republicans' desire for a fifth vote on the Supreme Court to ensure a conservative majority for the next generation or more that would have been far easier to confirm. But none of them provided the protection that Trump demands.
All that Republicans really want as the swing vote on the Court is a reliable hack that will overturn the decisions made in Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, and the New Deal, eviscerating the rights of women, immigrants, minorities, workers, and voters, and guaranteeing the continued tyranny of two minorities, the white male and the capital class.
That means feeding their racist, nationalist, misogynistic, evangelical base by overturning or gutting Roe v. Wade, restoring men's control over women's bodies. It means expanding the Muslim ban and allowing the creation of an American gulag for undocumented immigrants to be held indefinitely and where children can be separated and abused, feeding the profits of the corporate incarceration machine. It means treating those birthed by midwives as second class citizens by denying them passports and even potentially repealing birthright citizenship entirely.
The capital and shareholder class is mainly interested in is the repeal of the Chevron deference which requires the judicial branch to defer to federal agencies in interpreting how that agency should use its regulatory authority in cases where the specific law is ambiguous or is silent. Repealing Chevron would gut the regulatory capabilities of federal agencies, a devastating blow to workers, consumers, and the environment and virtually encode into law the socialization of the externalities of corporate activity such as the devastating effects of climate change.
That fifth vote on the Court will also finally eviscerate the remainder of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), allow further voting restrictions, and refuse to rein in the extreme partisan gerrymandering. Republicans had already figured out how to effectively neuter judicial oversight of elections but the conservative majority on the Court will allow them to further restrict the franchise to an electorate they choose. In just five states, over three million voters have been "disappeared" from the voting rolls. Nearly one thousand polling stations have been closed since the Court struck down key provisions of the VRA. These actions, combined with the structural flaws in our electoral systems such as the Electoral College, will allow a conservative minority made up of the GOP's white nationalist base and the capital class to continue to wield majority power.
That capital class will continue to bilk the country out of trillions through tax cuts tilted toward the top 1%. As the deficits and debt explode, they will once again demand the dismantling of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security in order to "get our fiscal house in order". It is a game they have been playing with different degrees of success since Ronald Reagan.
With the judicial branch effectively neutralized and filled with conservative hacks, the assault on the rule of law will only become more brazen. Trump's order to the DOJ to release the classified portions of Carter Page's FISA warrant as well as the texts of most of the principals in the Russian investigation including Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Lisa Page, and Ohr is an unprecedented abuse of presidential power and blatant obstruction of justice of an ongoing investigation, obviously designed to put Rod Rosenstein in the position of refusing an illegal order or resigning. It is Trump's opening salvo in shutting down the Mueller investigation now that it is clear that Flynn has fully cooperated, Manafort has flipped, and Cohen is talking to Mueller. Republicans in the Senate have already made it clear that replacing Sessions, and, by extension, restricting or ending the Mueller investigation, would be perfectly acceptable after the midterm elections.
Just to show just how far the rot has set in the Republican party, Trump's release of these classified materials and texts is being done in a conspiracy with Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee, which includes a multiply and credibly accused enabler of sexual harassment, Jim Jordan, who will receive a significant number of votes to replace Paul Ryan as Speaker. In addition, Lindsey Graham, that supposed reasonable moderate, recently stated that lying to the FBI is really not that big a deal.
All of this provides some extraordinary challenges for our country and our democracy on the domestic front. But Trump's extortionary tactics are also doing serious damage to America in the arena of foreign policy. Almost from the outset of his term, virtually every action Trump has taken has managed to alienate our allies and often strengthen our enemies. His disastrous phone call with Malcolm Turnbull, withdrawal from TPP, and war of words with North Korea all managed to cede power in Asia to the Chinese. Trump's refusal to affirm his commitment to Article V of NATO as well as declaring it "obsolete" and bad-mouthing the EU have convinced the Europeans that America is no longer a reliable partner. That was only reinforced by his unilateral decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, as well as the decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Finally, Trump's continual threats to withdraw from NAFTA and largely baseless accusations against Canada have antagonized our two nearest neighbors.
Trump's tariff wars are essentially forcing US consumers to pay an additional tax for what is essentially political grandstanding. It is already killing American farmers and will only get worse with the announcement of another new round of tariffs on $200 billion more of Chinese goods. Take a look at the change in farm income around the country over the last year:
This is devastating the farm sector and is unsustainable. Yes, China will get to a point when it can not retaliate dollar for dollar with Trump's tariffs. But which country do you think can endure the pain of this trade war longer, the Chinese with a powerful authoritarian government or Trump's rural base? But do you think Trump will back down?
All of this brings is to the most dangerous development of them all as the world responds to the Trump presidency. This month, Germany, France, Britain, China, and Russia all met with the goal of creating a special payments channel that would be segregated from the US banking system and would not use the US Dollar. As John Judis writes, this is "happening largely in response to Trump’s Hobbesian diplomacy, which sees the U.S. engaged in a zero-sum battle against its longtime allies as well as against competitors like China and also by his fiscal policies that promise huge deficits in years ahead." For the Europeans, this channel would be necessary to avoid the US sanctions on doing business with Iran. For the Russians, it is also a method to avoid US sanctions. And for the Chinese, it is yet another attempt to dislodge the US Dollar as the reserve currency of the world, a position its held for nearly the last century. Earlier, China and Russia agreed that all their commercial transactions would avoid the use of the US Dollar.
The last prior challenge to the Dollar was the creation of the Euro in 1999, but the EU had no intention of actually replacing the US Dollar as the reserve currency. China and the EU are the second and third largest markets in the world and combined they make up a larger market than the US. The possibility that they would be working together to break from the US-dominated monetary system is a threat that must be taken seriously. If this attempt is successful, the impact on the American economy would be catastrophic, as the borrowing costs to finance our structural trade and account deficits would skyrocket.
As Taggart Murphy notes, "Trump is doing everything he can to bring on the end of the days when the US can borrow whatever it wants in whatever amounts it wants...if your assignment were to bring the curtain down on that...you’d start by doing everything that Trump is doing — pick fights with all your allies, blow the government deficit wide open at the peak of an economic recovery, abandon any notion of fiscal responsibility, threaten sanctions on anyone and everyone who seeks to honor the deal Obama struck with Iran (thereby almost begging everyone to figure out some way to bypass the US banking system in order to do business), throw spanners into the works of global trade without any clear indication of what it is precisely you want."
The dollar is so entrenched in the world's monetary system that replacing it will be a tall task. But Trump has given two of the largest markets in the world multiple incentives to do so. And if they succeed, think of where that will leave the US.
On the domestic front, those increased borrowing costs would lead to a deep and painful recession with an already decimated farming sector. The government would be controlled by an increasingly authoritarian minority party, largely run to the advantage for the benefit of the oligarchic capital class, with an ineffective and compliant judiciary.
In foreign policy, our soft power would have already largely evaporated because of the decimation of the State Department and our abandonment of our allies and our principles. Any residual soft power would disintegrate with the replacement of the dollar. That would leave us with our overwhelming military strength as our only real lever of power. In other words, we would become a larger version of what Russia is today.
You may say that this is an overly apocalyptic vision and you might be right. But it is a future that is far more likely today than it was before Donald Trump is elected. And Trump still can inflict much more damage and probably will as he desperately tries to maintain power in the face of the Mueller investigation and possible Democratic investigations if they can win one or both houses of Congress. But even if this dystopian vision never comes to pass, Trump has already inflicted enough damage that it may take a generation for America to recover, if ever.
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