It is a cold day in Washington. A crowd is gathering on the National Mall for the swearing-in of the 47th president of the United States. At noon on 20 January 2025, Donald Trump places his hand on a Bible, takes the oath of office and delivers an inaugural address with a simple theme: retribution.
This is the nightmare scenario for millions of Americans – and one that they are increasingly being forced to take seriously. Opinion polls show Trump running away with the Republican presidential nomination and narrowly leading Democrat Joe Biden in a hypothetical match-up. Political pundits can offer plenty of caveats but almost all agree that the race for the White House next year will be very close.
The fact that there is a more than remote chance of the twice impeached, quadruply indicted former US president returning to the Oval Office is ringing alarm bells. “I think it would be the end of our country as we know it,” Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, said on the ABC talkshow The View this week. “And I don’t say that lightly.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A recent New York Times newspaper article told how his team wants to fill the White House and government agencies with aggressive rightwing lawyers who would not challenge the expansion of presidential power.
Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive grassroots movement Indivisible, said: “In that scenario you see the tools of the executive branch being used for retribution, for dismantling our democratic institutions as he is currently promising to do very publicly, but you also see rightwing Maga members of the House and the Senate controlling the legislature.
Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, warned: “The fact that Donald Trump in polling is beating Joe Biden in five out of the six battleground states is mind-numbingly painful to believe because it says to me that you value the country and its constitution far less than you value your own self-gratification.
“But I’m not going to sit back and say that the guy who tried to overthrow the government, who botched the most consequential pandemic in modern times, resulting in the death of over a million Americans, who plays footsies with our enemies in Russia and China, is going to be the answer to high inflation which, by the way, is half of what it was a year ago.
The 45th president suffered a setback, however, when Democrats achieved sweeping victories in this week’s off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere, powered in part by voters’ demand for abortion rights.
Trump, meanwhile, spent Monday in a New York courtroom for a fraud case that threatens to break up his business empire – a preview of legal trials and tribulations that could still undermine his candidacy next year.
The original article contains 1,742 words, the summary contains 284 words. Saved 84%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!