Now that T company has had to retreat from the federal funding freeze fiasco, I wonder if they will carry out the promised tariff show on Feb 1. These guys are starting to cut into my budget.

At least Trump does react to polls and his supporters, so a lot that Trump has promised to do won't happen. Also the courts will defy his most insane ideas. Is a 30 000 person camp possible? Yes, but it goes well below of housing hundreds of thousands or even millions. The sheer scale needed and the huge effort to organize such mass transit simply isn't possible for Trump as he lacks the determination and ability to that. Trump is a demagogue, not a leader capable of organizing huge amounts of people to work in a coordinated way.

This also means that the most dire fears about Trump aren't realistic.

He hates Government, and he's in an ideal place to disable it. — Wayfarer

As he is the head of the executive branch, I guess that is called self-loathing then.

This also means that the most dire fears about Trump aren't realistic. — ssu

Hope you're right. But he could do a lot less than the most dire, and still be dire. Consider what is within his power, a misjudgement in an international economic or military crisis could be *extremely* dire.

I guess that is called self-loathing then. — ssu

He hates Government for many reasons, but one is definitely because of the prosecutions that were launched against him between his terms. He just sacked a whole bunch of prosecutors from DoJ because of their association with those cases, plus he's just offered redundancies to practically the entire Federal workforce. His loathing of the deep state is well-documented, but it turns out that the deep state turns out to be much of the federal beauracracy. He wants to turn the Government into a subsidiary of Trump Inc, and at the moment, he's not getting a lot of pushback. Congress is completely supine. They're terrified of crossing him.

He hates Government for many reasons, but one is definitely because of the prosecutions that were launched against him between his terms. He just sacked a whole bunch of prosecutors from DoJ because of their association with those cases, plus he's just offered redundancies to practically the entire Federal workforce. His loathing of the deep state is well-documented, but it turns out that the deep state turns out to be much of the federal beauracracy. He wants to turn the Government into a subsidiary of Trump Inc, and at the moment, he's not getting a lot of pushback. Congress is completely supine. They're terrified of crossing him. — Wayfarer

Sounds very fascist to me. Installing fear and sacking people who oppose him. A fascist, slowly restructuring government into an oligarchy. Building holding camps for refugees in order to solve a “problem” before its final solution.

Hopefully there are still people in government who aren’t afraid of him and who can oppose him with the backing of law until such laws don’t exist anymore. It’s still a functioning bureaucracy with laws that can oppose him.

Hope you're right. But he could do a lot less than the most dire, and still be dire. Consider what is within his power, a misjudgement in an international economic or military crisis could be *extremely* dire. — Wayfarer

Of course. And the real issue perhaps is how not only does the "Overton Window" of what is acceptable change, a lot of policies can have a surprising effect. When Trump declares that he wants to increase the territory of the US and doesn't rule out military action either in Panama or against an ally, this can have the effect that it undermines the whole internationally based order system and the UN charter. Might makes right is the outcome, if the international order based structures fall.

This might be the real negative aspect of Trump's populism, not something that directly happens by Trump's actions, but indirectly happens. When it becomes OK to annex territories, you can sure that many countries will follow suit and won't try to apply silk gloves as earlier (like Morocco). Ruanda's actions in DRC seem to be an example of this.