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Predicting What Trump Will Do Next
How the president could use the virus as a pathway to authoritarianism
As of Tuesday, Covid-19 has already killed over 3,000 people across the country, further bolstering the U.S.’s standing as the hardest-hit nation in the world. Throughout the crisis, Trump’s leadership has done almost nothing to mitigate the effects of the disease; at almost every turn, the president has taken actions that have hindered relief efforts recommended by scientists and left the country ill-prepared to manage the spread of the virus.
Those actions are telling, and taken together can be used to extrapolate a worst-case apocalypse: one in which the Trump administration and the Republican party use the crisis to accelerate their drive toward capitalist authoritarianism. In such a scenario, this crush would come gradually, exploiting an environment of international panic and domestic fear and leaning into the nativist and nationalist rhetoric that Trump has relied upon for the past four years.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to how his administration could continue to erode civil liberties, surveil citizens, and stoke political tensions to push America closer and closer to an authoritarian future.
1. Trump relaxes social distancing regulations and lockdown rules on parts of the country.
Researchers expect the peak of disease cases to occur, especially in major metropolitan areas, somewhere between the middle of April and late May. Yet Trump insists businesses can be reopened and “raring to go” by April 30, a delay from his original target of April 12 but still a date that’s at odds with public health officials’ recommendation. When those guidelines lift, it will prolong the crisis, but may provide a temporary jump for some typical measures of economic activity (like the stock market) that Trump can use as a bludgeon to claim that his plan was a success.
