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Trump Has A Fight On His Hands

His window to sleepwalk America into fascism has closed.

Brian Beutler, Feb 24, 2025

(Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)

If I’d had to sketch out a nightmare scenario for Donald Trump’s second term, before he took office, it would have borne some resemblance to what’s transpired since inauguration day—a complicit Republican Congress, a supine Democratic opposition, an orgy of cronyism and corruption.

But it wouldn’t have included a campaign of tyranny against the civil service, nor several other destabilizing things Trump has actually done.

To me, the real worst-case would have been a Trump who managed to kill democracy with kindness. Not kindness the way well-adjusted people think of kindness (Trump is incapable of genuine kindness) but a boorish mix of affected magnanimity and braggadocio meant to maximize good will in the immediate term.

Trump inherited a strong economy and, as he prepared to take power, consumer sentiment began to climb—not on the basis of any meaningful improvement in underlying conditions, purely on the basis of the widespread misperception that Trump had been, and would again be, an excellent steward of the U.S. economy

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