The Donald Trump Score Card

Effects of Trump pledged deportations.


Trump’s mass deportations could split 4 million mixed-status families. How one is getting ready.

 

Consolidation of power via software and hardware changes.

Software changes:


https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/23/trump-autocrat-elections-00191281

excerpt:

— The Folksy Outsider. Pushing against the boundaries of written and unwritten norms is a standard performative element in the populist toolbox, establishing the populist leader as a folksy outsider disrespected by liberal elites.

— Anti-Elitism. We can also expect the culture war to escalate. Orbán passed legislation cracking down on universities in an effort to reduce the influence of liberal ideas.

— Anti-Immigrant. It is also clear that Trump will continue his anti-immigrant tirades and attempt to deport millions of illegal immigrants.

— Economic Nationalism. From climate-change policies to free trade agreements, liberal and centrist economic policies have also become frequent punching bags.

 

Hardware changes:


https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/23/trump-autocrat-elections-00191281

excerpt:

— Strengthen Executive Power. After serving one term as prime minister, Orbán lost office in 2002. He resolved that next time, he is going to be much more aggressive in strengthening his hold on power.

— Discipline the judiciary. Efforts at reining in the Justice Department and exerting more influence over the judiciary will be crucial. With Republicans already controlling the Supreme Court, any new appointments during Trump’s term would cement a conservative majority for decades.

— Change Election Processes. Manipulating electoral rules and district boundaries to benefit the ruling party is a strategy that Orbán imported from the U.S. The state of Georgia is a case in point, where Republicans have increased their power to change electoral results they deem fraudulent.

— Control the media. Orbán consolidated media control through centralized propaganda, market pressure and loyal billionaires.

— Secure Control over Party. A final critical step is securing full control over the party. Just as Orbán replaced mainstream leaders with loyal outsiders, Trump co-opted much of the Tea Party in his takeover of the Republican Party.

 

Other tactics:

Enlist the services of people like Elon Musk who is worth about $250 billion to act has shadowy Deep State agents who effectively buy votes (with daily million-dollar 'sweepstakes' contests and mammoth PACs) and purchase media outlets (like he did Twitter) to shape them in the image of himself and people like Trump.

Anti-intelligence. Disparage the use of intelligence, objective facts, and practical reason in favor of irrationalism, conspiracy-trutherism, emotionalism, and bluster.

 

Trump's star-studded TV selections.


https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/20/politics/donald-trump-cabinet-fox-what-matters/index.html

excerpt:

"Long before Sean Duffy was a congressman from Wisconsin, he was a contestant on MTV’s “The Real World: Boston,” an early part of the reality TV world once also inhabited by Trump.

Duffy met his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, on the set of a spinoff, “Road Rules: All Stars.” Now, she’s a co-host on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” where she worked for years with Hegseth. Duffy is leaving his post-Congress role as a co-host on Fox Business now that he’s been tapped by Trump to serve as Transportation secretary, in charge of the nation’s highway and rail systems, airways and seaports."

 

Dr. Oz will be handling the health insurance of over 160 million Americans.

Trump's justification for selecting Oz is that he is a 'world-class communicator'.

 

Fox News keeps cropping up with Trump's picks.

Not just employment that his picks had at Fox but also a pick who impregnated a Fox employee while he was still married to his second wife who already had children.


Pete Hegseth - Wikipedia

excerpt:

"Hegseth married his first wife, Meredith Schwarz, in 2004; they divorced in 2009. In 2010 he married his second wife, Samantha Deering; they have three children. In August 2017, while still married to Deering, Hegseth had a daughter with Fox executive producer Jennifer Rauchet.[24] He and Deering divorced in August 2017. Hegseth and Rauchet, who has three young children from her first marriage, married in August 2019.[79]"

 

Reporter says Trump looked like a 'conquering Republican Caesar' at UFC fight: 'Like ancient Rome'

excerpt:

"It really looks like ancient Rome here," Caputo said. "This is sort of the conquering Republican Caesar who’s going into The Colosseum and everyone‘s cheering, and he‘s got his political gladiators with him," Caputo said. "That appearance isn‘t just about him enjoying the applause. He‘s sending a message to the Senate. Like, not only, ‘are you entertained?’ But, ‘these are my people, and are you willing to fight? Because here‘s who I have.'"

 

Trump's popular vote lead margin over Harris has dwindled to about 1.5%.

Biden beat Trump in 2020 by about 4.5% in the popular vote.

Trump's popular vote is now less than 50%, so he can't claim a majority.

Trump reportedly is considering launching an investigation of the 2020 election to try to find voter fraud that supposedly stole votes from him or gave fake votes to Biden.

 

Trump celebrated his 2024 election win by bringing Kid Rock, Joe Rogan, RFK, Jr., Elon Musk, Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard, Don Jr., Eric, and House Speaker Mike Johnson to a UFC fight in Madison Square Gardren for ring-side seats.

 

Mideastern people who voted for Trump as a protest against Biden, thinking Trump would somehow be better for them, received the nomination of Hegseth from Trump.


Trump Pentagon pick attacks UN and Nato and urges US to ignore Geneva conventions

excerpt:

He continues: “Who cares what other countries think?”

Hill said Hegseth’s rhetoric blamed “liberal ideas” for military defeat in a way that resembled the narratives far-right movements have historically used to scapegoat their political opponents for military defeats.

Hegseth concludes the discussion by writing: “If we’re going to send our boys to fight – and it should be boys – we need to unleash them to win.” He adds: “They need them to be the most ruthless. The most uncompromising. The most overwhelmingly lethal as they can be.

“We must break the enemy’s will.”

Hegseth, who in 2019 persuaded Trump to pardon US soldiers charged or convicted of war crimes, then writes: “Our troops will make mistakes, and when they do, they should get the overwhelming benefit of the doubt.”

 

Trump's selection for national security advisor, Waltz, warns adversaries that the transition period isn't the time for them to try to take advantage of the U.S.


Waltz:

“For our adversaries out there that think this is a time of opportunity that they can play one administration off the other, they’re wrong and we are — we are hand in glove. We are — we are one team with the United States in this transition.”

 

Hulk Hogan says he might be selected by Trump to run the President's Council On Physical Fitness.


Hulk Hogan suggests Trump may nominate him for position in administration

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/24/us/politics/trump-cabinet-america-first.html

excerpt:

"They promised to focus first on “$500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended,” including grants to international organizations or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

(For perspective, the $535 million in federal funds to the public broadcasting group, which Mr. Trump’s supporters believe pays for liberally biased programming, would be a 0.026 percent down payment on Mr. Musk’s promised $2 trillion in cuts. Even eliminating the entire defense budget of the United States would not get him halfway to the goal.)

It remains to be seen how they will work with the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed head, Russell Vought. He was a major figure in Project 2025, which laid out a plan to rework the American government to enhance presidential power by tearing down and rebuilding executive branch institutions."

 

At the request of Smith, Judge Chutkan has dismissed the federal election subversion case against Trump and has dismissed the appeal by Smith to restart the federal documents case that Judge Cannon dismissed.


Trump election case is tossed after special counsel Jack Smith requests dismissal citing 'categorical' DOJ policy

excerpt:

"The judge overseeing Donald Trump's election interference case dismissed the case Monday, after special counsel Jack Smith asked the judge to toss the case due to a long-standing Justice Department policy that bars the prosecution of a sitting president.

Smith earlier Monday filed a motion to dismiss the case, as well as the appeal of Trump's classified documents case, ahead of Trump's impending inauguration, due to the DOJ's presidential immunity policy and not because the charges lacked merit.

Smith also asked the judge in Trump's classified documents case that his appeal against Trump's two co-defendants in that case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, be allowed to continue."

 

The two dismissals by Chutkan are without prejudice, which means the same federal charges against Trump could be filed against him again at a later date.

Trump's criminal conviction on 34 felony counts in NY is in limbo. The judge in that case ruled to let Trump's team file motions to have the case dismissed entirely. The filings are due on December 2, 2024.

Trump's election subversion case in GA is ongoing.

 

The DOJ attempt to revive the documents case against Trump's cohorts Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira will currently continue.

Because the charges are federal, Trump could pardon Nauta and De Oliveira, which seems likely. They worked for him at Mar-a-Lago.

 

Trump election case is tossed after special counsel Jack Smith requests dismissal citing 'categorical' DOJ policy

excerpt:

"However, it's extremely unlikely that any prosecutor would attempt to bring the same charges in the future, in part because the statute of limitations for the alleged crimes will have expired by the time Trump leaves office in four years."

 

The fate of Trump in his criminal cases hinged heavily on whether or not he was reelected.

The way the U.S. system is set up with the president able to manipulate the DOJ that is within the executive rather than judicial branch and the nearly unbridled pardon powered bestowed upon him by the Constitution, there is very little middle ground in situations like that of Trump, and even less in the future with the aid of the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling in 2024.

Even without Trump's pardon ability in state-level criminal cases like the current ones in NY and GA, the evidence used in such cases is subject to the immunity ruling by the Supreme Court which gave Trump and other presidents a broad stroke of immunity by ruling that evidence stemming from what can be considered official acts and communications by a president can't be used in other cases.