A criminologist explains why keeping Trump from the White House is all that matters

The danger and consequences locally and globally of electing Donald Trump for a second time must be stressed every hour of every day between now and Nov. 5.

That’s because this election is first and foremost a matter of national security at home and abroad, and Trump poses a grave threat to both.

This election is not a matter of politics as usual.

Nor is this election about the “crucifixion” of Trump by a “deep state.”

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Or the selling of an overpriced Bible by a lifelong atheist portraying himself as a Christian on Easter Sunday and International Transgender Day of Visibility.

The 2024 election is about Trump posting a video on Truth Social of a picture of President Joe Biden hog-tied on the back of a MAGA pickup truck allegedly on its way to a funeral of a New York police officer killed in the line of duty.

This election had also been about gag orders not going far enough and the failure to implement sanctions to lock Trump up for threatening prosecutors, judges, family members and witnesses — at least until Monday night's ruling in the Manhattan case by Judge Juan Merchan.

The deference to Trump thus far has had absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment or the fact that he is running for president. It has had everything to do with the institutional failure of the U.S. criminal justice system to treat Trump — who faces 88 felony charges across four separate criminal cases — the same as anyone else who threatens the fair administration of the due process of justice.

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A victory this fall by Trump threatens the end of American democracy as we have known it for some 250 years.

At best, a second Trump administration would usher in a new domestic order of illiberal democracy and disinformation. At worst, it would result in the United States’ entry into an anti-democratic axis of autocratic, plutocratic and kleptocratic nations.

Open recognition of these realities must become an everyday part of the 2024 presidential election.

Trump’s desired illiberal democracy or authoritarian regime is being brought to the nation by the thinking and planning of Turning Point USA, the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Conservative Partnership Institute.

This coalition of conservative “stink” tanks led by the Heritage Foundation are all in with Trumpism and they have helped to produce Project 2025. This 920-page report was published in 2022 and “promises revenge, oppression, and autocratic rule,” says Thomas Zimmer writing for Democracy Americana.

The foreword, “Mandate for Leadership,” was written by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. According to Zimmer, “In just 17 pages, it captures and oozes the siege mentality, self-victimization, and grievance-driven lust for revenge that is fueling the Right and animating the plans for a second Trump administration.”

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Their agenda is also in alignment with the conservative decision making of the U.S. Supreme Court that, since 2010, has been empowering corporations, stripping individuals of their rights and chipping away at the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution.

As we have all witnessed, the far-right supermajority Supreme Court is all in with Trumpism. They have been busy running interference for the insurrectionist-in-chief and delaying the trials of the four time criminally indicted presumptive GOP nominee.

The New York Times Magazine published an extensive interview with the Heritage Foundation’s Roberts back in January of this year entitled: Inside the Heritage Foundation’s Plans for "Institutionalizing Trumpism."

Some of the highlights from this interview included that Roberts had nothing but praise for Viktor Orbán’s autocratic regime in Hungary. Echoing Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, he acknowledged that he, too, wants to destroy the administrative state. Roberts also wants to fire 50,000 federal workers.

Roberts echoes McCarthyism, as well, when he asserts that Chinese communists have infiltrated the U.S. government. He also believes that there is a communist plot in the highest echelons of American power, although he has conceded this may only be a socialist plot.

Who said you can’t make this stuff up?

The administration of Trump 1.0 (2017-2021) was uninitiated and disorganized. It was full of chaos and disorder. It experienced resistance from within its own corridors of power. Beyond the Oval Office, it was still subject to institutionalists, to checks and balances, to the rule of law.

As Barton Gellman has reflected in The Atlantic’s special issue, “If Trump Wins,” the former president “tried and failed to cross many lines during his time in the White House. He proposed, for example, that the IRS conduct punitive audits of his political antagonists and that Border Patrol officers shoot migrants in the legs.”

That didn’t happen.

But following Biden’s victory in 2020, Trump and a sizable number of his supporters operationalized several schemes to overturn a legitimate election, including a failed insurrection that violated section three of the 14th Amendment.

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The contending forces of political power combined were barely enough to impede Trump from his desire to remain — at any cost — in the White House as an unelected commander-in-chief.

Many politicians and politicos, as well as former officials from the Trump 1.0 administration, believe that if Trump is re-elected that he will not leave office after a second term. As former Rep. Liz Cheney has been saying, a vote for Trump may very well become “the last election that you ever get to vote in.”

Trump 2.0 (2025-?) would be very different from Trump 1.0 for several reasons:

First, Trumpian lawlessness, corruption and weaponization of state attorney generals has taken over and spread throughout the Republican Party.

Second, the next Trump administration will be experienced and far better organized around Trumpian goals than the last one.

Third, the internal resistance and the threat of governmental institutionalists will have subsided. Rule of law itself will even become a secondary threat to Trump so long as he’s a free man.

Fourth, in the next administration, only political loyalists need apply for work. And loyalty oaths — not to the U.S. Constitution but to dictator Trump — will almost assuredly be implemented throughout the administration and civil service, if not across American society.

The continuing if not escalating assault on American democracy and the rule of law since Jan. 6 by Trump and his captured GOP including their desire to sanction the fourth estate, to deconstruct democratic institutions, and to weaponize law enforcement are all in sync with the rising waves of anti-democratic and authoritarian movements worldwide.

In the contemporary world, Trump’s nationalist “America first” vision of the United States has aligned with other illiberal and authoritarians engaged in populist rule underpinned by xenophobia, scapegoating and political targeting. What all these countries share in common is that they are trending toward fascism, standardization and disinformation.

For example, 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, we have President Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine and promising another Russian Empire.

In Brazil, there was former Army Captain Jair Bolsonaro elected to office in a landslide in 2018. He had surfed an anti-corruption wave promising to put an end to the “old politics” — only to be defeated in 2022 by the progressive and former jailed President Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro, a Trump ally and fellow failed insurrectionist, hung out at Mar-a-Lago after his defeat. After only six months, the Brazilian Electoral Court barred Bolsonaro from running again for political office until 2030.

In Argentina, there is the self-described “narco-capitalist-libertarian” and recently elected President Javier Milei. The 53-year-old economist and TV pundit ran on a ticket promising to reduce the size of government and three decades of triple-digit inflation. With the backing of the International Monetary Fund and the Davos crowd, Milei broke the hegemony of the nation’s two leading political forces — the Perónists, or left-of-center party, and the older conservative party, the Union Civica Radical.

Most recently in the Netherlands, there was the election of the anti-Islamic leader Geert Wilders. As the new prime minister, he is promising to spread the populist message, shake up democratic institutions and break a few rules.

So what do we have to do to save American democracy from its impending demolition?

In the long term, we must change and modify the electoral and constitutional systems of politicking and governing that have brought the United States to this historical quagmire in American democracy. There are no shortages of necessary reforms, recommendations, and programs waiting in the wings to be implemented for ameliorating our dysfunctional “bipartisan” democracy.

I have summarized these in Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy that was published on April 1.

However, without the defeat of Trump in November, there will be no chance or opportunity to correct the existential crisis that consumes us all.

In the short term, therefore, we must do everything in our collective power to make sure that Biden is returned to office for a second term in 2025.

This entails convincing all voters, especially anti-Trump Republicans, independents and short-sighted Democrats, as well, that this election has little to do with partisan politics and policies.

It has everything to do with saving our democratic republic from Trump, Trumpism and the former Grand Old Party that has morphed and metastasized into something unrecognizable and dangerous.

Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice and the author of several books on the crimes of the powerful, including Criminology on Trump (2022) and its 2024 sequel, Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy.