Trump's 'megalomania' trap: neocon expert warns of concentration camps and carnage

Donald Trump's megalomania will either spell "electoral calamity" for Republicans in the 2024 election or the beginning of American carnage the likes of which the world has never seen, an expert on neoconservatives said Friday.

Jacob Heilbrunn, author of "America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators," raised his serious concerns with Salon Friday over the Republicans who have lined up behind a presumptive nominee he warns could dismantle democracy at home and abroad.

"The most disturbing thing remains Trump’s enablers — the incense-burners, the bootlickers, the pursuivants who can ensure that his tyrannical ambitions are realized," Heilbrunn told Salon. "It would be the beginning, not the end, of American carnage."

ALSO READ: A neuroscientist reveals how Trump and Biden's cognitive impairments are different

Heilbrunn detailed a dystopian future — drawing a direct comparison to novelist Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" — that would see European democracies in Europe dismantled under his likely Secretary of State Richard Grenell, concentration camps built on the southern U.S. border and economic turbulence on the scale of the Great Depression.

"The democracies of Western Europe would become sitting ducks," Heilbrunn said. "Trashing the international order would gut the dollar as a reserve currency, rattle the stock market and return us to the instability of the 1930s."

Yet Heilbrunn believes there is a silver lining around the dark cloud looming over the 2024 election year, and that's the "megalomania" trap he believes may snare politicians and pundits rather than the voters Trump needs to claim victory.

While Trump made a strong showing and effectively snagged his party's nomination through a process of elimination — outlasting a wide slate of conservative competitors such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — he faces major challenges ahead that include four criminal court cases, mounting legal fees, multi-million dollar civil court judgments and dwindling campaign coffers.

"I remain convinced," Heilbrunn said, "that Trump’s megalomania — his growing radicalism, his frequent threats, his general odiousness — represents a path to electoral calamity in 2024 for the GOP."