Trump victory would pack White House with extremists who fought for him: columnist

In spite of the four indictments bearing down on him, former President Donald Trump is most likely going to be the GOP nominee in 2024 and polls suggest he has a very good chance at becoming president again. And The Washington Post's Charles Lane warned Wednesday that, if we see a repeat of the 2020 contest, the United States "could be facing a crisis of presidential legitimacy — regardless of who wins or how cleanly."

And, if Trump did win, "He would owe his political survival to religious fundamentalists and right-wing nationalists, who would staff key positions in his government," the columnist wrote.

As Lane points out, the political drama shows no signs of de-escalation, and both sides are laying a foundation to claim the results of 2024 will be illegitimate.

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Democrats are looking at the 14th Amendment as a means to bar Trump from seeking the presidency, but such a path would likely "enrage his supporters, with unpredictable consequences."

Lane points to the re-election of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an example of what can happen when a right-wing figure stages a political comeback. "The secular and liberal half of Israeli society staged mass protests of what it saw as threateningly radical policy changes by a government that did not deserve to rule. Something similar could await Trump," he wrote.

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"This is an assessment of political reality, not moral equivalency. The entire U.S. body politic would be much healthier and resilient if Trump had simply accepted defeat in 2020 rather than shred long-standing democratic norms, possibly beyond repair," Lane writes.

Read the full article over at The Washington Post.