Down With The Broligarchy

 Alexandra Petri has some of her usual incisive fun by taking on Elon Musk. 

One of the strategic conundrums Democrats are facing is how to find their own populist voice to counteract the right wing version. While I think Trump 2.0 will be awful in lots of ways, it might also not be, in the sense that we are seeing with his threatened tariffs with Mexico. He blustered, Sheinbaum called him out, they spoke, now he's claiming victory, which is effectively the status quo. Democrats will need to do something positive to counter-message this.

I think taking on the Silicon Valley Broligarchs is an excellent place to start. 

You'll need to be clear that you are attacking the libertarian monopolistic venture capitalist class and not the concept of technological advancement. These people have some very weird ideas, and the degree to which Musk becomes the face of Trumpistan, the better. The fact that the one thing we know they will do is cut taxes on the very rich and deregulate every industry that they can is fodder for the message.

Martin Longman has long touted an anti-monopolist message for small town America, where entrepreneurial opportunities are squeezed out by Walmart and Dollar General. If we add the idea that Silicon Valley is out to rot your brains and siphon away your money, we will lose some PAC money, but gain the sort of message that should appeal to average voters. 

The House Divided Against Itself

 With Gaetz gone and Stefanik and Waltz headed to the administration, it looks like the House will be 215-217 for at least a few months. All but one race is called, and the Democrat leads in that to get them to 215. (FWIW, on election day Pelosi said they were going to win the House, and that's the first time she has counted votes wrong.)

Unfortunately, all three come from districts where they won over 60% of the vote so the special elections that tap their successors will almost certainly return a Republican to Washington. Special elections have favored Democrats and there could be the thermostatic effect, which could both make those votes close, but it's VERY unlikely that Dems actually flip those seats. 

What this means in the short run is that any single House Republican has the ability to squash legislation. The only legislation likely to pass this Congress is an extension of Trump's tax cuts. The extent and depth of those cuts are now contingent on whichever House member wants to draw a line for fiscal sanity. Efforts to write cultural war bills are DOA in a House that closely divided with a handful of GOP members from places as diverse as Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Colorado, Iowa, Alaska and Arizona winning by close margins in a favorable environment for Republicans.

The House GOP caucus will be slightly more governable with Matt Gaetz gone, but Lauren Boebert, Marjorir Traitor Green and sundry other whackaloons will still be there from the last House, which had a somewhat larger margins and was still a hot mess.

Once again, the incompetence of the Trumpist legions remains our best defense.

We Are, In Fact, Heading Back

 I have long argued that the Republican Party is no longer a "conservative" party but a reactionary one. It is not concerned with sustaining and defending the status quo, so much as turning back the clock to an imagined bygone era.

It seems, naturally, that Republicans are going to take another swipe at repealing or defunding the Affordable Care Act. I would guess that Collins and Murkowski are, once more, no votes in the Senate, but the faux populists like Hawley are unlikely to join them. John Curtis, the new Senator from Utah, was once a Democrat and the ACA could fit within the communal values of the LDS. Jim Justice, the new Senator from West Virginia, is also a former Democrat and has a state unusually dependent on the ACA. In the House, the margin is likely to be razor thin and three defections could sink the plans to kill it.

However, defunding Medicaid within the ACA is almost certainly on the table. Repealing the regulatory reforms of ACA seems unlikely, both because it can't get around the filibuster and because it helps middle class families like ours with things like keeping our sons on our insurance until they graduate college. Throwing the Poors off Medicaid to pay for tax cuts is exactly the sort of things that get Republicans tumescent. 

There are a host of things like this that are going to happen. Pete Hegseth, if confirmed, will toss transgendered service people out of the armed force. I can even see Dreamers deported, which could be a terrible loss to our country. The regulatory state will be gutted, environmental standards will be rolled back. 

It will be depressing.

Here's the thing, though. We will be going back in time years, maybe decades. If it immiserates people to the degree that I think it will, that will create a backlash. Elections are run at the state level and the House will change hands in 2026, maybe even the Senate if it gets bad enough. It happened last time.

Eventually, we will crawl back out of Trumpistan and can start reviving the reforms that he kills. Progress isn't linear, it can be reversed, but the reverses can be reversed, too.

ADDED: I don't know how far Republicans will go towards further restricting abortion, but the existing regimes in certain states will lead to both deaths and the flight of OB/GYNs from those states, leading to more deaths.

Mexico And Canada

 Trump has blustered that he will impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, as opposed to a 10% tariff on China. This raises questions about what his intentions are that are largely moot. Trying to ascribe strategy to this guy is pointless. It's all "Made For TV" policy.  

It sounds like he's basically using tariff policy to address immigration and drug smuggling. I'm sure Canada is off in the corner looking around saying, "WTF?"  

Here's the tricky part, which of course escaped his wee brain. Two-thirds of the fruits and vegetables that we import come from Mexico. Much of our winter produce comes from there, and he will be imposing his tariffs on January 21st. If you crash the Mexico agriculture sector, you will create more migrants to the US. Right now, few of the cross-border migrants are from Mexico; they mostly come from Central America and the Caribbean via Mexico. So, your plan to cut immigration via tariffs could very well lead to more immigration.

What's more, the Mexican administration is unlikely to help stem migration - as it has been for a few years - if the US has declared economic warfare on it. As for drugs, Mexico has been trying for 20 years to get a handle on drug cartels and the results have been both dismal and lethal.

Of course, the most likely outcome is this:

- Trump levies tariffs on Mexico and Canada.
- Certain companies bribe Trump to exempt their goods from those tariffs.
- Some prices spike.
- People get unhappy.
- Trump declares that no more migrants and fentanyl are coming into the country, despite evidence to the contrary.
- Faux News declares that migration and drug trafficking have ceased. 
- Cult 45 has collective orgasm.

Remember, the authoritarianism is just the cover for the corruption and the incompetence is a byproduct of the corruption.

A Need To Move Forward

 The time since Election Day has been a time for mourning in our household. Lots of cognitive and emotional overload. I for one have been and will continue to counsel taking care of yourself first and foremost. However, we will need to resist Trump's worst impulses and the impulses of the Very Divorced Dads and Television Blonds who make up his Cabinet of Corruption. 

However, I think this summary of Jamelle Bouie is good. We are not Weimar Germany. We are unlikely to be Orban's Hungary. There's a tremendous amount of "stickiness" to institutions, not least among them federalism. Josh Marshall has been noting the discrepancy between when Democrats lose and when Republicans lose. Democrats tend to curl up into a fetal ball while hurling accusations at each other and bemoaning the injustice of the world while Republicans fight back. It's time to fight back.

We've already scuttled Gaetz's nomination, and I think the knives are out for Hegseth and Gabbard. Trump's corruption and incompetence needs to be on the lips of every Democrat in the land. 

It's not about winning the fight in February of 2025. It's about winning the fight in November 2026 and 2028. 

We have had corrupt government before. We have had authoritarianism under Jim Crow. The Republican Party's embrace of authoritarianism is not absolute and most Americans hate Project 2025. 

You can't fight every battle, since in the short run victories will be few and far between. Fight the ones you can, where you can, when you can.  

Yes, But Also...What?

 Yglesias has published his blueprint for Democrats coming off the 2024 loss. He is then elaborating on his points and today he looked at the crime and public disorder issue.

In some ways, this issue really is a perfect distillation of the headwinds facing Democratic politicians. Crime has fallen under the Biden administration after a Covid related spike (more on that in a bit). Democrats did not embrace "defund the police" and they have made a good faith effort to balance public order with civil and legal rights. 

However, the "vibes" around crime and disorder (which I think Yglesias helpfully uncouples a bit) were bad. If you want a party that's "tough on crime" you elect Republicans, even though their standard bearer is a convicted felon. The reason is that Republican crimes take place in the C-Suite and Wall Street, which impose a hidden cost on America, as opposed to having homeless people on the street and drug stores locking up their wares. Democrats err on the side of civil liberties, while Republicans rely on the opacity of financial crimes to shield their "constituents". This is leaving aside the numerous alleged instances of sexual assault committed by Trump and his Cabinet nominees.

The idea of "Back the Blue" where it comes to Blue States improving their daily governance would be part of this solution. When we visited Portland, we certainly saw the homeless issue, but it's just such a normal part of urban life today that it hardly seemed as bad as the people who live three hours east of Portland imagine that it is. 

Homelessness is the central issue of public order that cities struggle with. Yglesias actually never really talks about that, but it strikes me that if you were reduce the number of homeless by 50% the overall sense of public order would increase by leaps and bounds. It is also true that there is a segment of progressive politics that seems to prioritize calling them "people experiencing houselessness" rather than ameliorating both the misery of the homeless and the degradation of public spaces that follows. 

There is no direct policy solution for murder or rape, crimes that are too common yet not regular occurrences in people's lives. Homeless policy - some combination of voluntary and coercive assistance - would have an immediate impact. Not addressing that has proven to be political malpractice.

There is - and I can only shout this so many times - a huge gaping hole in Yglesias' argument: Covid.

The underreported story of 2021-2024 has been how we emerged from the acute crisis of Covid into a fractured, fractious world of politicized public health, denigration of experts, and most importantly an unexplored and underappreciated state of trauma from those years.

March 2020 was intensely scary and disorienting. We were sequestered in our homes, hoping that we left our groceries outside long enough to kill whatever germs threatened to enter our homes. We were denied the segmentation of our lives into "work" and "home" while our children were stripped of their schooling. This isn't an argument about policy, which did the best it could. It's the fact that all the old rules and norms - rules and norms that Trump had already eroded - seemed moot. Throw in the George Floyd movement and a "rules-based" society seemed obsolete.

That moment was a period when some of us were following myriad rules about masking and distancing and struggling to make a normal world in an abnormal time. Meanwhile, people started drag racing on the nearly empty interstates. Police pulled back from the streets in the face of protests to let people see what "defund the police" might look like. For one set of Americans, rules were for suckers. For another, they were tyranny. 

We are about to enter a smorgasbord of corruption under Trump. He is going to sell government functions like his shitty gold sneakers. What's more, I think the idea that Republicans are soft on White Collar Crime is the sort of "brand" that people instinctively understand, in the same way they brand the Democrats as coddling petty crime. 

So, my response to Yglesias' road map on public disorder would be for Democratic cities to directly address homelessness to alleviate the sense of overall disorder. Meanwhile, national Dems need to hammer and hammer and hammer on the coming instances of corruption. The most inexplicable aspect of Trump's appeal is the idea that he's a "fighter" for the working class. Democrats need to destroy that brand by pointing out Trump's Cabinet of Broligarchs and Billionaires. When the coming Crypto Bubble explodes, they can lay the economic catastrophe at the GOP's feet. 

Bush 2.0 and Trump 2.0

 Josh Marshall dissects a Vox piece comparing 2004 to 2024. The Vox piece argues that Democrats need a "reckoning" which Marshall hates and I agree with. Trump has - as predicted - dipped under 50% of the vote. The House will be razor thin again, especially after Trump strips away a few members. Democrats won Senate seats in states that Trump won. 

I think we have to understand that Trump has won narrow victories by running against women. There has been a desire to not have that conversation, because I'm guessing all sorts of "stake holders" don't want to confront the latent sexism in American society. We like to tell ourselves that we are a pure meritocracy, but the idea that women are significantly less likely to become president because of sexist ideas about leadership punctures that self-congratulatory mythos. 

As Marshall notes, the 2004 election was a body blow to Democrats, because of the catastrophe of Iraq, including Abu Ghraib. We assumed that the American people would rebel against an ignoramus who brought disastrous policies to American governance, and we were wrong.

What brought Bush down was his insistence that he had a "mandate" compared to his compromised 2000 election, and he pursued unpopular policies like privatizing Social Security and nationalizing the culture war issue of Terri Schiavo's end of life care. This was compounded by the incompetence of the Katrina response that left Americans dying in the streets of New Orleans.

Does any of this seem like it could repeat itself?

Marshall argues that Democrats need to remember how to be an opposition party. Luckily, Nancy Pelosi is still on the Hill advising Hakeem Jeffries. The peril if that a handful of Democrats go along with some vaguely populist program of Trump's and validate his electoral victory. If the House winds up 215-218, which seems likely, then absences and caucus uniformity could stop unpopular policies like ACA repeal. One of the true and accurate lessons from 2024 is that voters do not care who is literally responsible, they will hold the incumbent president and his party responsible. Gum up the works and the GOP will pay the price.

Again, as long as we have free and fair elections in 2026, Republicans will lose control of the House. Democrats have Senate pick up opportunities in Ohio if Brown runs, Maine, North Carolina and possibly even Alaska. A Blue Wave could sweep through Plains states like Iowa and Kansas if the Trump tariffs decimate the farm economy. That's the focus and the plan is to obstruct.

Yes, that means if we dip into a recession, Democrats cannot bail out people without significant concessions from the GOP. This will require some iron will, but it's the path out of this shit show. 

Back The Blue

 Dan Savage and others are making a strong case that the future of Democratic politics rests in building out our cities. There is some handwringing about the exodus from Blue states to Red ones, as the cost of living in the urban centers does not mesh with the level of public services. Both New York and California are almost comically poorly governed in many ways when it comes to housing, for instance. 

Some of this is the old "Back the Blue" sense of public order, but crime is actually low. What it really means is we have demonstrable proof that "deliverism" for rural America does not lead to votes for Democrats. Instead, build the urban and suburban areas that currently constitute the base of the Democratic Party.

We have, depressingly, started the 2028 election! The assumption - and I think it's a good one - is that the road back to the White House will be trod by a governor. There are a few good candidates out there, including Shapiro, Whitmer and Pritzker.  (Frankly, I want no part of Newsome.)  If AOC is serious about higher office, she should take on the shitshow that is the New York governor's office. 

This could take any number of forms, but resisting the coming deportations could help because undocumented immigrants are often concentrated in things like the building trades. Building housing has to be a priority for New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and so on.

Make the Blue areas bluer and better. That's your best argument against Trumpism.

Got One

 Alleged child sex predator Matt Gaetz will not be Attorney General. Instead, corrupt Trumpist loyalist Pan Bondi will take the job. She has, perhaps, some technical competence and isn't an actual predator. She is awful and unconfirmable in a sane world, given her solicitation and acceptance of bribes to short circuit the case against Trump University.  Bondi is corrupt in the usual sense of the world and the way that we should come to expect from the next four years. 

Hurray!

Still, Gaetz was sunk within a single Scaramucci, and that's slightly encouraging sign. I am beginning to wonder about the feasibility of Pete Hegseth, too, given the multiple - it's always multiple - allegations of sexual violence swirling around this guy. Hell, there might even be a faction of Republicans who choke on Tulsi Gabbard. Some still care about national security.

There is a debilitating habit of ascribing to Trump some sort of next level political genius that he simply does not possess. He's apparently a pretty good salesman, but chaos and dysfunction are his managerial style. Nominating Gaetz was an example of this feral maelstrom. Hegseth, too. In fact, he seems to simply prefer the people he sees on the TeeVee. He's a mushbrained, TV-addicted chaos agent. The Gaetz debacle is a good example of how the incompetence of his minions and himself are the ultimate anchor restraining his plans to end democracy. His whittling his House Majority down to one or two votes is another.

What's more, the handful of Anti-Anti-Trump Republicans who don't like him, but won't break too much with him publicly, now have a scalp. 

Josh Marshall proposes a "scoreboard" of economic indicators to keep track of the economy. It's a good idea to center easily understandable data in real time, rather than waiting for the election season when people's minds might very well have been made up. We saw this with people who thought the economy was shitty in 2023 and never really updated their beliefs as the economy improved. 

I'd add a scoreboard of corruption allegations and Cabinet turnover. Accent the chaos of Trumpistan. The singular problem on the Center Left right now is exhaustion. We thought we were done with this mook and yet... 

So flip the tables. Hammer, hammer, hammer on the corruption and chaos. 

Whither Libertarians

 Trump is signaling that he is going to be exactly who he promised he was going to be, if anyone was paying attention. All the grimness headed our way should surprise exactly no one, but the ill informed or willfully misinformed voters who elected Captain Tariff to bring down retail prices are likely going to be surprised when the leopards eat their face.

Just today, Trump came out against a bill that would protect press freedoms, especially their sources from government retribution. Hunh, the principled guardians of free speech like Melon Husk have no comment on this.

Martin Longman wonders if noted crank Rand Paul could become a thorn in Trump's side. Paul has long been a troublesome priest within the GOP caucus, picking weird fights with leadership. Libertarian principles are largely bad, but they are at least principles. Here's where the math becomes interesting. 

The Pennsylvania Senate race has yet to be called. If, against all odds, Casey can pull out a win, that gives the GOP a two seat majority. Murkowski and Collins are not completely useless, just mostly useless. On extreme measures - like killing ACA - they stepped up. They are delighted to cut taxes and appoint deregulatory judges, but I don't think they are on board with every Trumpist wet dream. 

The immediate impact after January 20th will be the deportations and Trump's plan to use the military to assist in that effort. Even before a single person is detained, using troops in American cities is exactly the sort of things that libertarians lay away at night fearing. (I had a Trump adjacent colleague say that the government warning social media companies to take down false health information during Covid was worse than January 6th.) If this really does happen, will Paul - as Chair of Homeland Security - take a stand?

The House presents a similar dynamic. Right now, the GOP has 219 seats out of the 218 you need for control. Gaetz has already resigned his seat, so they are back to 218. Democrats hold 213 with two California races unbelievably close both are under 400 votes apart, with each party holding the edge on one seat. Let's say they win both of those, which could happen given the outstanding ballots. That makes it 215-218 with a recount in Iowa 1st. If Stefanik goes to the UN and Waltz to National Security, that creates a 216-215 GOP majority. At best right now it's 217-214. 

Is there a single credible consistent libertarian in the House to gum things up for Hair Furor?

The institutional GOP has been a complete lapdog for Trump, but true libertarians might be the sort of odd bedfellow we need to stop the slide into a corrupt authoritarianism.

Taking On Interest Groups

 There's a lot of talk now about how Democrats need to draw some lines around support for sorta fringe positions of aligned interest groups. Josh Marshall and mistermix weigh in a bit.

I think the overall point is the old chestnut "If you're explaining, you're losing." Really obscure positions like transition surgery for prisoners on the tax payers dime is one of those positions. Ideally, we would have aligned interest groups set reasonable expectations for candidates. The 2020 primary was not like that.

There are two caveats I would add:

1) Marshall mentions how same sex marriage could very well have cost Democrats the 2004 election. There's some evidence it cost them Ohio and thus the presidency. However, what happened with same sex marriage is that it became marriage equality. There is a need to step up and protect vulnerable populations. The best way to do that is to frame the argument in universal language. Surgery for trans prisoners ain't that. "Be nice to people and let them alone" is something normie voters can get behind - whether it's creepy abortion politics or Nancy Mace's bill to bully our first trans Representative. 

2) The issue is only a little bit of that one clip of Harris affirming her support for the surgery. Most people are not interested in nuance. This is where her being both a woman, a Black woman and from California all worked against her. She "codes" coastal liberal, which is why she spoke about her Glock and a lethal military. 

As we've discovered, "messaging" is the problem, but it's not because we lacked a magic combination of words. We lacked an avatar of working class angst. The fact that Harris came from a middle class family and Trump the scion of great wealth does not matter.

Obamaism Is Dead

 Barack Obama rose to prominence and the presidency on the back of a vision of a post-partisan, post-racial America with his 2004 Convention speech. That idea is dead, and I think he'd agree. Two things drove this home for me.

Christian Pulisic is probably the most talented soccer player this country has produced. The other night he had two goals before halftime and to celebrate one, he did the "Trump Dance" where it looks like Trump is jerking off two giraffes. When asked about it, he said, "I thought it was funny." The "Trump is funny" concept is simply a place I can't imagine arriving at, yet millions of Americans think he's a gas.

Secondly, it's pretty clear the psychological toll that Trump's Made For TV administration is going to take on people. The farrago of outrage is incessant and debilitating. As my wife noted, Trump has picked a series of sexual predators for his Cabinet, including Attorney General and Defense. 

This is not a partisan difference over even something as profound as the Iraq war. That was, in my opinion, both immoral and a catastrophic error, but it was policy. Trump represents a sort of post-policy, anti-politics of the aggrieved and the ill-informed. The populism of the moment is very likely to get a lot of people killed, because we have built a world on a foundation of expertise and he is working to dismantle that. 

This is a clash over values.

Yes, the "Faculty Lounge Politics" is bad. I'm soaking it and it's just annoying. But that's all it is is annoying. However, while many of the efforts to promote belonging and hearing more voices are poorly thought out and poorly executed, they represent a set of decent values. Trump stands for a rejection of all that. His America is going to be even crueler than the last time, and it will happen because millions of Americans rejected the basic premise that character is destiny. 

Hell, they rejected the idea of policy based voting. They aren't voting for his policies, they are voting because they just didn't like the cost of stuff. Nothing he is planning to do will help that, but if you reject the words of every single economist, that's an easy prejudice to indulge in.

A Cascading Series of Constitutional Crises

 Come January 20th, it appears we are going to have a series of constitutional crises in this country that we haven't seen since the Civil War. Off the top of my head we will have:

- Trump will declare a national emergency on immigration that could allow him to mobilize the military to carry out his orders for mass deportation.
- Trump will mess around with the "Advice and Consent" powers of the Senate with executive branch appointments, including possibly proroguing the Congress (sending them home against their will).
- Trump seems ready to attack the sovereignty of the various states, again when it comes to immigration, including nationalizing the National Guard.
- He has some gestural notions of revoking birthright citizenship, again under the guise of this concept that migration constitutes an invasion.
- He seems almost certain to withhold appropriated funds for a state he doesn't like. The next wildfire in California will not receive FEMA funds or assistance.
- He will try to abrogate America's treaty obligations, including to NATO.

Once again, we are leaning on the very, very weak reed of whatever spine the institutional GOP still retains. There are five uncalled House races, with Democrats leading in two of them, but within a handful of votes in the other three. Gaetz has already resigned, and Slotkin and Waltz should to, which could leave the House with a GOP majority of a single seat. If - as it appears - Bob Casey will lose in Pennsylvania, then you will have Murkowski, Collins and...who knows trying to stick up for the powers of the Senate. McConnell has made some grunting noises towards preserving the Constitutional powers of the Senate, as he will not run for re-election. If he could rally some of the Senate Lifers like Grassley, you could find just enough votes to prevent Attorney General Matt Gaetz or DNI Tulsi Gabbard. 

Still, the guy who said he wanted to be a dictator on Day One sure looks like he's going to be a dictator on Day One. 

Protecting Myself

 As we once more enter the chaotic circus of Trumpistan, I'm taking a much more protective stance towards politics. Surviving the next four years requires public and private safeguards against total collapse.

I'm heterosexual White guy of some means, so I'm not worried about being deported or having my reproductive rights stripped away. When these things happen, I will have to temper my outrage to some degree, or I simply won't survive the coming storm. My friends who are outraged at the shit Matt Gaetz says and does are going to struggle to maintain that anger without burning out. This is about outlasting Trump.

In the private sphere, I'm trying to figure out how to navigate a country where Trump's Treasury Secretary has to bend the knee again and again to policy madness. Should I prepare my retirement portfolio for the inflation of tariffs or the recessionary impact of deportations and the slow down in trade? I'd like to retire - though my profession would allow me to work past 65 - and the timing of Trump 2.0 is really not ideal. 

So, Democrats, when you come begging for my money, just understand why I can't open my wallet except a wee bit. 

Authoritarianism IS Corruption

 I started teaching Nigeria in my Comp Gov course, and the sad history of that country - especially from 1965-1999 is a history of military regimes trying and failing to reintroduce democracy before a new set of generals overthrew everything. Nigeria does have democracy now, but it's not a great one and the reason is oil.

The presence of oil would seem to be a gift to one of the poorer countries in the world, but that oil money rarely makes it out of the government into the pockets of the people. Instead, controlling the government means controlling massive amounts of oil wealth, so democracy is rather fragile and corruption rules the day.

We tend to think of authoritarianism as one thing and corruption as another, because we can have corruption in democracy, too. This misses that the important point of most authoritarian regimes is the corruption. The reason we have elections is to self-correct. The reasons we bind our officials with rules and laws is to permit us to abate the corruption that comes with power.

You obviously see where I'm going with this. 

I feel reasonably confident that if Trump does half of what he says he wants to do, that Democrats will have a strong election in 2026. It will be chaotic, it will be dysfunctional, it will be inflationary, it will be corrupt. As long as American voters are able to freely express their will, they have shown that they don't approve of corruption. Even Trump voters who have voted for the whirlwind don't want to suffer. They don't want their kid hospitalized with measles. They want MS13 deported, not Maria, the nice lady who works the counter at the local bakery. 

Every election that Trump has not been in the ballot since 2016, Democrats have done well. He is going to be corrupt, he is going to be chaotic. His pretenses towards authoritarianism are partly temperamental, but partly about his lifelong project of evading legal accountability for his many crimes.