Trump did a lot of terrible things in his first term but was also constrained by his own administration in a way that gave a lot of people the expectation that he was going to be similarly constrained from his worst impulses this time
unfortunately he came in prepared to obliterate the guardrails
fundamental part of 2024 is that people didn't believe that trump was going to do the things he was explicitly saying he was going to do
what can people do about that?
I don't know who thought that. He is literally doing everything that he said he would do this time except for release the list of names
I don't blame Trump. He told everyone explicitly what he was going to do and he is doing it. I blame the people who voted for him running on a Nazi platform laid out in a well documented manifesto because they couldn't stand America not being a whites-only country. This is all on them. All of it.
GOP also had minimal spine compared to truly zero this time. Zero.
During the campaign if you predicted (accurately) what he’s doing now his angry supporters would sneer “he didn’t do that last time - you have tds!”
I think the supreme court decision on presidential immunity is also playing a big part in how much he thinks he can get away with. I knew as soon as that decision came down that all the guardrails would be gone if he won
probably unpopular opinion: I think it's far less important that Trump face justice for his crimes against the country than folks like Noem and Homan do
What a fucked up country.
He and congressional Rs were saved - by Democrats - from their early stupidity in early 2020 with Cares Act
I feel like I anticipated a lot of what’s happening but I always thought the upper ranks of the military would start pushing back once he starts rounding up journalists and opposition politicians. I did not anticipate him creating a new, entirely loyal civil army for that purpose.
There are no grownups in the room. The best of the lot is Rubio, which tells you how much trouble we are in.
When he said he would be a dictator on day one, I believed him.
He spent the first term finding the guardrails.
Then spent the Biden years finding people specifically to dismantle every one of those guardrails he found.
Turns out his first term was quietly so out of control he found most if not all of them.
I was trying to tell anyone who would listen—leftists saying it’d be no different this time—that it would be. He had Supreme Court immunity, knew to hire only toadies, has a more supine GOP (to confirm the toadies), & had preparations in Project 2025. I didn’t foresee the institutional capitulation.
The Supreme Court, giving him immunity, emboldened him further.
Narcissistic sociopath does all the shitty things he said he was going to do. People who didn't believe him for some reason:
“ok but he wont -actually- stop research into vaccines and medicines, dont be hysterical”
He found the perfect partner in the Heritage Foundation
a big factor is he wasn’t prepared to win the first time! he didn’t have a plan, he didn’t have staffing, he was reliant on institutional republicans for a lot of it
this time he had four years to purge the party of anyone who would stand in his way and staff up entirely from fascist sycophants
There were quite a few neocon institutionalists in his first term. Unfortunately this is one case where they learned from their missteps
He very explicitly went out of his way to avoid hiring guardrails this time! Have people really not been paying attention??
