IDEAS

Trump’s Second Term Will Be Nothing Like His

First
If he’s reelected, the president appears poised to dismiss an array of senior
appointees, replacing them with loyalists.
NOVEMBER 2, 2020

David A. Graham
Staff writer at The Atlantic

MICHAEL REYNOLD / GETTY

When a president is running for a second term, elections tend to look like a contest
between change (a new candidate) and more of the same (the incumbent).

But 2020 doesn’t t the mold. As aberrant as Donald Trump’s rst term in office
has been, a second term might be a more radical departure from the past four years
than even a comparative return to normalcy under Joe Biden would be. In other
words, this is a change election either way—the question is what kind of change.

Some Trump supporters have dismissed the concerns of his critics as so much
Chicken Little-ing: e sky hasn’t fallen yet, has it? is is a foolish response, not
only because so much of the sky has fallen, but also because there are indications of
how fast the rest will fall if Trump is reelected. e president, freed from ever
having to face voters again, would feel no need to moderate any of his many
unpopular stances and impulses.

[ David A. Graham: A paranoid rant says a lot about where Trumpism is headed ]

e easiest place to imagine this is at the level of staffing. e president gave two
big hints yesterday about who might be in a new administration. Most
prominently, he all but promised to re Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-
disease expert, if he wins. During a rally in Florida, Trump complained about
coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, even as COVID-19 case counts reach their
highest point in the U.S. and continue to rise. e crowd began chanting, “Fire
Fauci!” Trump paused to allow the cries to grow, then replied: “Don’t tell anybody,
but let me wait ’til a little bit after the election.”

Trump says off-the-cuff things all the time, especially at rallies, but there are plenty
of reasons to believe this one is true. e president has repeatedly dismissed the
doctor’s advice, and has bridled against any kind of coronavirus policy, even as
Fauci has grown more outspoken. During a call with campaign staff in October,
Trump complained that he wanted to re Fauci, but he was too popular: “Every
time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb. But there’s a bigger bomb if you
re him.” If Trump is reelected, however, he’ll be much less worried about
popularity. e president can’t re Fauci directly—he’s a civil servant—but he could
instruct his appointees to do so. And if they don’t? He’ll re through them, Nixon-
style, until he nds one who will.

If you don’t believe me, look at his plans for other appointees. Also yesterday, the
FBI announced that it was investigating an incident in which ruffians in trucks,
bedecked with Trump ags, tried to run a Biden-Harris bus off the road in Texas.
Trump immediately smacked down the bureau in a tweet.

“In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong,” he wrote. “Instead, the FBI &
Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA,
who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!”

[ Read: Trump’s end-run around Senate con rmation ]

FBI Director Chris Wray has already popped up on lists written by well-sourced
reporters of top-priority rings if Trump is reelected. You may recall that Wray
ended up in that job after Trump red James Comey in May 2017, in one of the
most damaging decisions of his presidency. e job holds a 10-year term, and
although presidents have the power to re FBI directors, they usually have not used
it. But Wray would likely be shown the door because he has proved too impervious
to political pressure for Trump’s taste. (Unlike Comey, Wray didn’t even produce a
splash October surprise on the Democratic candidate.)

Another likely target is Defense Secretary Mark Esper. As at the FBI, the trajectory
of the role during the Trump administration is instructive. e rst Pentagon head
was James Mattis, who was widely respected in Washington, and resigned in late
2018 in a disagreement with the president over Syria policy. He was replaced by
Esper, who was widely viewed as an empty suit—a literal lobbyist for the weapons
giant Raytheon whose major quali cation was a long-standing friendship with the
secretary of state, and dependable Trump sycophant, Mike Pompeo.

But Esper has also proved too independent. e bar isn’t high: He simply distanced
himself from Trump’s ill-advised June clearance of Lafayette Square outside the
White House, and only after the fact. Even so, rumors of Esper’s postelection
demise have circulated ever since.

A fourth name on the deathwatch is that of CIA Director Gina Haspel. Like Wray,
she’s always been a mis t in the Trump administration, as she’s a career official with
few ties to the president.

Who might ll these kinds of top-ranking jobs in a second Trump administration?

A good place to look for clues is the directorship of national intelligence. e rst
holder of that job in the Trump administration was Dan Coats, a former
ambassador and senator from Indiana. When Coats was forced out (you know the
pattern by now: too devoted to doing his job, not devoted enough to the
president), he was replaced on an interim basis by Ric Grenell, a notorious political
bully. After a false start, Trump nally lled the job with John Ratcliffe, who is not
only a partisan hack who misrepresented his résumé, but also unquali ed for the
role, based on the plain language of the statute that created it.

Another useful example is Michael Caputo, who was brie y and chaotically the
chief spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this
year, before taking an inde nite leave of absence to deal with a serious illness.
Caputo is the sort of gure who wouldn’t get a top job in a normal administration,
especially not at HHS in the middle of a pandemic. But if Trump wins, the likely
outcome is a further Caputoization of the government—not just at the level of
mouthpiece, but in lead roles.

[ omas Wright: What a second Trump term would mean for the world ]
e Senate con rmation process is designed to safeguard against a president placing
just this sort of appointee in essential jobs, but there’s little reason to have faith that
it would protect the country during a second Trump term. Assume that if Trump
wins reelection, Republicans also hold the Senate. GOP senators have shown little
appetite for standing up to Trump over the past four years. Consider Ratcliffe’s case,
in which objections from Republicans initially sank his nomination, but when
Trump simply put Ratcliffe back up, 49 Republicans voted to con rm him. (Four
did not vote; none opposed him.)

A more curious situation will come if Democrats capture the Senate even as Biden
loses. A Democratic Senate would be loath to con rm anyone Trump put up with
less than sterling credentials, and the pressure on it to oppose nominees from its
own base of voters would be phenomenal. Meanwhile, Trump has made clear that
he only wants to nominate people who will do his will. e likely outcome is that
Trump would rely even more heavily on “acting” appointees.

at’s a blatant end run around the Constitution, but who’s to stop him? Perhaps
the most important lesson of the past term is that if the president is willing to break
the rules, almost no one can keep him from doing so. Democrats might try to
impeach him again, but without enough votes to convict him in the Senate, that
wouldn’t halt Trump.

[ David A. Graham: e Senate’s abdication of “advise and consent” ]

If, as the former Ronald Reagan aide Scott Faulkner noted, personnel is policy, the
probable turnover gives a good window into what Trump 2 might look like. In
some ways, it would resemble a grotesque caricature of Trump 1. Between
presumed Democratic control of the House, and perhaps the Senate, and Trump’s
decision to not even bother laying out a platform for a second term, Congress
would likely achieve even less than its meager output over the past four years.

But Trump’s replacement of minimally competent leaders with fully obeisant ones
would mean that the White House could go much further on some of the worrying
things it has done already. at includes undermining civil liberties, press freedom,
and worker protections; rolling back health coverage through courts and executive
action; and converting the executive branch into an extension of Trump’s personal
interests. Globally, where the president already has broad latitude, my colleague
omas Wright has written, it would spell the wholesale disintegration of the world
order as we know it.
 e result of such a change could radically reorient the federal government and the
United States writ large. If the rst Trump term was recognizable as an American
government, albeit a conspicuously bad one, the second might barely be
recognizable at all.

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