Milwaukee:
Five days after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, Donald Trump will accept his presidential nomination Thursday in front of an adoring crowd of supporters, the final act in his transformation of the Republican Party into the party of Trump.
His brush with death has fueled growing quasi-religious fervor among the party faithful, elevating him from political leader to a man they believe is protected by God.
“Trump, Trump, Trump,” the crowd at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee roared as he appeared each evening this week, with his right ear bandaged, to hear speaker after speaker sing reverently about him and point to God’s hand in his survival from a will. – be a killer bullet.
Republicans are behind him this week. With most dissent suppressed and his grip on the party never tightened, Trump will be in a much stronger position than during his 2017-2021 term to push his agenda if he wins the Nov. 5 election.
Unhindered by the internal divisions that at times hampered him during his first term, Trump would be freer to pursue tough policies, including mass deportations as part of the crackdown on illegal migration, aggressive trade policies and firing government officials deemed inadequate are considered loyal.
Even if Trump retakes the White House, Republicans take control of both houses of Congress, and conservatives continue to maintain a supermajority on the Supreme Court, there would still be institutional checks on a second Trump term.
He could be kept in check by Congress, the courts and a public that elects a new Congress every two years and a president every four, constitutional experts say.
Nevertheless, many Trump supporters want to see a powerful president.
“You need a strong leader at the top,” said Bill Dowd, a 79-year-old lumber company owner who was a guest of the Colorado delegation in Milwaukee.
“I’m a very, very big fan of Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan also pulled things together,” Dowd said.
Dowd acknowledged that some of his Republican friends feared Trump would try to abuse his power. He said that while he did not share that fear, he believed dissent should not be suppressed in any party.
For Trump’s critics and political opponents, this is a dark and disturbing moment: they see the modern Republican Party as a personality cult, a base from which Trump could implement extreme policies and create America’s first truly imperial presidency, shaping the future of his democratic presidency would be threatened. standards.
“Donald Trump has called for the ‘termination’ of the Constitution, promised to be a ‘dictator on day one,’ and now the Supreme Court justices say he can rule without any checks on his power,” he said. Ammar Moussa, campaigner. spokesperson for incumbent President Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic rival.
“Trump is a liar, but we believe him when he says he will rule as a dictator,” Moussa said.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Democratic claims that Trump threatens American democracy and could become an autocrat if re-elected are “fear mongering” and a “blatant attempt to deceive the American people.”
An unlimited Trump
In Milwaukee, nearly all 30 delegates, guests and elected Republicans interviewed by Reuters for this story acknowledged that their party had become Trump’s party, but rejected any suggestion that it had become cult-like.
“I believe President Trump is a transformative figure, a man of destiny whom God providentially saved from death on Saturday,” said Louisiana Rep. Ed Tarpley. ‘He has been given a special mission in our country. God’s providential hand has elevated Donald Trump to another status.”
Those interviewed said they wanted a President Trump who was not restricted by bureaucracy or Congress from carrying out his agenda. They favored broader use of executive actions: decisions made by a president that do not require congressional approval.
They want nothing to get in the way of his plans to deport millions of people in the country illegally and reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy. During his first term, Trump often complained about “deep state” bureaucrats who he said tried to thwart him.
“The president must be allowed to implement his policies free from a bureaucracy that opposes them and unelected officials who disagree with them,” Tarpley said.
However, there are constitutional limits to what Trump can do through the power of his office, and any policy could still face lawsuits.
“I think the critics’ fears are overblown in the sense that they are more concerned about the substance of his likely policies than about the possibility that these policies will be adopted through unilateral executive action,” said Stewart Baker, former general advisor to the US government. The US National Security Agency said this.
If Trump goes too far, his opponents say, they may still be able to count on federal courts to check him.
“We are aware of the fact that we have a very conservative Supreme Court. But what we have found is that even Trump-appointed judges have ruled against his policy and declared it illegal,” said Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center. .
Half of Republican respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll this week said they agreed with the statement that “the country is in crisis and needs a strong president who should be able to govern without too much interference from the courts and Congress.”
That was significantly higher than the 35% of Democrats and 33% of independents who agreed with this sentiment.
Only one congressman interviewed by Reuters, a senior Republican from a southern state, said he was concerned about a second Trump administration. He said he feared Trump would become an autocrat, fill government agencies with yes-men and take revenge on his political enemies.
Referring to Trump’s promise to his supporters that he will be their “retribution,” the Republican, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “That effort will be terrible.”
Trump was widely criticized for saying during the campaign that if he won, he would be a “dictator” — even if only for a day, a comment he later said was a joke.
Democrats have rebuked him for promising to pardon his supporters jailed for the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol sparked by his refusal to accept his 2020 election loss.
Trump, who was convicted of making hush money payments to a former porn star and is facing charges in connection with his efforts to overturn Biden’s victory, has threatened to use the Justice Department to pursue opponents, including Biden. Trump has denied guilt in the charges.
Former Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson said he was concerned about the lack of restrictions on Trump in a second term.
“The Department of Justice is probably the perfect example of that. It is clear that a President Trump would be deeply involved in directing the activities of the Department of Justice,” Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas, told Reuters.
Making ‘Nixon Blush’
The implications of a second Trump term are deeply troubling for America and the world, says presidential historian Timothy Naftali, a former director of Richard Nixon’s presidential library who resigned in disgrace in 1974 after the Watergate scandal.
Naftali said a recent Supreme Court decision granting a president sweeping immunity for most actions while in office, coupled with a pliant Republican Party, means there are limited restrictions on Trump if he acts maliciously and exploits the office for his own personal power and political retribution. .
“He can take down the Justice Department and embark on a revenge campaign that would make Nixon blush,” Naftali said.
To be fair, Trump will not be the first president to test the limits of executive power. Leaders, including former Democratic presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama, take an expansive view of their authority.
Even with the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling on presidential immunity, Trump would ostensibly still be bound by the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution, which reserves key functions for Congress and the judiciary.
Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, and Trump’s daughter-in-law acknowledged this week that governance by executive action — which can be overturned by a court or a successor — was less than ideal. That’s why it was critical for Republicans to hold the House of Representatives and take the Senate from Democrats in November, she said, “so that we don’t have to rely on executive action and we actually have a lasting being able to see change.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
