What Would a 2nd Trump Term Look Like?

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Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Why Do I Care? My name is Toby Favalora. And I'm Alex Gervais. And today we'll be discussing what a possible second term under Donald J. Trump would look like. So without further ado, let's get right to it.

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Let's not do any more questions. Let's just listen to music. Let's make it into our music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right? Let's just listen to music. The musings of an incomprehensible, incoherent 78 year old man who is clearly unfit to do practically anything in his life. His orange spray tan coalesces his face. Of course this is the man running for president United States, Donald John

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who actively tried to overthrow our government on January 6th. Toby, thoughts on that Trump rally, him just dancing for 40 minutes? Before we get started, I just want to say you are so much better at starting these podcasts out than I am. I think you might permanently have to do that. Big words. I don't do all that stuff. I have bad jokes, apparently. But yeah, just the fact that he was campaigning against Biden, saying,

01:15

He does. He doesn't answer questions. He dances to music. And the whole rally, the more that you kind of listen to, it doesn't sound like it was, I guess, like coherent. Like it wasn't coherent, we know, but it feels like it wasn't the normal Donald Trump level of incoherent. It was like something's up mentally. Yeah, I mean, like something definitely is up. You know, no sane man moves his arms like this.

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But like, the other thing is that he's been canceling media appearances left and right. He won't even speak at the NRA anymore. Right? Like, this is the level that this campaign has come to for Trump that, like, either he is just so overwhelmed or so out of it at this point, that there's just nothing that he can really publicly do anymore. I don't know, maybe he just misses his old friend Joe Biden. We may never know. Maybe he does. Yeah. Because it used to be Donald Trump would say things that are...

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completely crazy, but you could see where it was kind of coming from. Like, oh yeah, Tucker Carlson did say something like that, like on last night's whatever, but now it's just like the level of crazy has gone too far. And I will acknowledge that at first they started playing music when there was somebody in the audience who needed medical attention, but then after that, transitioning to be a 40-minute Donald Trump's on aux, listening to YMCA and Richmond

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or the Richmond and whatever other stuff Trump listens to is just... It's not... It's gotten to the point where not only is it like politically confusing, like why is he doing this, why is the staff letting him do this, but it's also gotten to the point where it's kind of concerning for an American, like, oh my god, if he becomes president, this is who we're going to be dealing with. And four years later, he's going to be even worse off. Like, remember how Joe Biden in 2020? He was fine enough. But now it's like, I'm honestly, as American,

03:10

Not only policy-wise, but just like he's not mentally fit, period, point blank. Well yeah, and I mean like the presidency is one of the toughest jobs in the entire world. You know, any president who reflects on their time will tell you that. You know, look at pictures of Obama from 2008 or 2009 to 2017, right? Like first day he was in office, last day he was in office. He looks about 20, 30 years older. And so do I think that a 78-year-old will be 82 by the time he finishes his term? Is he even gonna make it?

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Absolutely not. Right? So that's something we really have to be concerned about as American voters. Yeah, and another thing to add on, on top of that, is if he is not mentally fit, he's not going to step down. And the Republicans likely aren't going to do anything else, right? Like, we do have the option to, where it was the 25th Amendment, there is a process to remove him from office if he's not politically fit, if something's going on, if, you know, whatever it may be, besides impeachment, right?

04:08

It's just like, if that does happen, if enough Republicans are like, yeah, he's not mentally fit, like we need JD Vance to step up in power. Which, God, nightmare scenario, JD Vance is motioning the Trump. That would be, oh my God. Wow. But would the Republicans in Congress, A, choose to do that? And B, what would that backlash kind of be is what's concerning to me as well. Yeah, I just I think there's too much Trump loyalism for anything like that to ever really happen.

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that like he has become the figurehead in the face of this party and that nobody else can be that figurehead or that face It's gonna bring the same coalition that he currently has But you know, we've also seen him Play out or kind of show us what his playbook is gonna be, you know for the next four years And maybe even longer as he wants to be a dictator on day one So Toby like what are his plans for immigration and border security? Yeah, so starting with immigration border security because that is kind of

05:04

When you think of Trump, you think of building the wall. That's the first policy thing they really go to, besides maybe economic policy. But what he wants to do is he wants to do what he's calling the largest domestic deportation operation in US history. So to an average voter, that might be like, okay, so he's gonna get rid of people who came here legally? Not necessarily. It's not gonna be people that just crossed over the border. He's also talking about dreamers who have been here.

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He's talking about people who may have been here for 25 years and have made a family and they have started a life here. They may do people who kind of would technically be considered illegal immigrants because of the way that the paperwork was filed or something like that, like a very bureaucratic type of mistake. But he wants to crack down on immigration heavy. He wants to have the largest, you know, deportation ever. He also wants to use the National Guard and the military to enforce immigration.

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which is something that's very extreme, considering that as America, we kind of pride ourselves on being a melting pot, and we pride ourselves on being a combination of all these different cultures. And he also just wants these new detention centers to address immigration and to reinforce this idea of border security. And it seems to me like...

06:24

He is, this is more doable than the building of the wall. That's why it scares me. Yeah, and it's also that this is like, this is authoritarian type stuff, right? Like this is things that when it happens in other countries, the United States, you know, Department of State condemns it as like acts, essentially of genocide, right? To try to remove entire ethnic groups from your country, right? Like it's that stuff that we as a country have been like, yeah, you cannot do that. That's so far out of line.

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And yet he's gonna try to do it to Americans, right? To people who live here who may or may not be citizens, but that doesn't really matter because at their core, they're still Americans. They're still from here. And that's absolutely despicable to me. Yeah, and this kind of ties into the next point, but a part of this is that he is going to put people in the bureaucracy that are heavily partisan that in jobs that aren't supposed to be partisan, right? There are some jobs like,

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cabinet positions and you know, members of Congress, elected officials that are partisan and they're supposed to be partisan. But there's also jobs that aren't supposed to be partisan. Like who's the police chief by the border? Who's in charge of ICE? All these positions that aren't supposed to be partisan, he's going to make them very partisan. That's something that he wants to do in his next administration is really focus on making these bureaucratic level officials partisan.

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which is scary for multiple reasons. First and foremost, it's scary because if he does, you know, if he, okay. So say he becomes president and he does this. He puts these people into power. 2020, oh, 2030, 2028, there we go. Will roll around and he has to leave because you know, constitution. If he has enough people in positions of power that aren't politicized, which means that there's next, like not as many checks and balances on them, it will be easier for him to maintain power through

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those channels, which is why this is very scary.

08:22

Yeah, and I mean, I think we should also talk a little bit about kind of the origins of our federal bureaucracy, right? Because it started under Andrew Jackson, right? And his system was one of patronage, where if you're a good friend, if you had done some kind of political favor for him, you were going to get a job in the American bureaucracy. And that's when it was very, very small, right? We're talking like Department of War, Department of the Treasury. Now the federal bureaucracy is huge, right? It employs millions of Americans. Excuse me. And like it is a part of our every day.

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life in seeing us try to go back.

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to patronage to the 1830s with the way that we are selecting our bureaucrats is scary. And it's not the way that our system should be run. We should be trying to push forward, not trying to go back. You know, we're not going back, Toby. There you go. You got to the line. Yeah. And it just, it goes to show that Donald Trump wants to use everything that he has available at his disposal to make as much change as possible. And it does kind of remind me of the Republicans approach to getting judges.

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on the board up and down. That's gonna be a different kind of topic, but this idea that Republicans want to heavily politicize things that shouldn't be politicized and weren't designed to be politicized, we don't have the checks and balances of something that is politicized is very scary.

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And another example of this is what he wants to do using law enforcement to go after these political opponents. So a little bit of, you know, backstory. Richard Nixon, Watergate, he was an absolute crazy lunatic. And that, after him, really saw this idea that the Department of Justice and the executive branch should be as separate as possible. And this idea that what Nixon did in trying to influence people to not, you know, go after...

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his buddies who broke the law and him who kind of broke the law. That just goes to the public opinion that these should be separated and Donald Trump wants to break that tradition. He wants to use law enforcement to go after Democrats. He wants to prosecute political opponents. He wants to, you know.

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Use the Department of Justice as a tool to lock up political opponents because he thinks that's what Democrats did to him. The difference is he broke a law, multiple laws, and that's their job.

10:45

Yeah, I mean, he's preaching lawfare on the people who are just simply his political opponents. And again, that just isn't what we do in America. We are not Nicolas Maduro. We are not Vladimir Putin. We are not authoritarians. We don't do these things. We have democracy. We have rule of law. And they're in place for reasons because we are this representative democracy that's supposed to be about our ideals and our liberal values. And clearly, Trump does not want that.

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be again dictator day one. Yeah and that's what this seems like. If you were dictator day one what do you do? If you wake up you're dictator, get out of bed, you try to get rid of your political opponents. That's your first primary goal because if there's no one to challenge you

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then you've kind of succeeded in your job of securing this power around you. So that's why this is really scary. He's also using this language that seems very dictatorial, this enemy from within, referring to Democrats. So I guess we're the enemies within. Great. News to me. News to me. But yeah, this idea that he wants to go after political opponents, he wants to appoint his buddies and his loyalists up and down the federal bureaucracy, and he wants to weaponize the DOJ against...

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people is what really scares me. Once he does that, he will not only be able to kind of impose his will over elections, but also impose his power and his policies and damage American democracy forever. Absolutely. And you know, not only that, he's trying to touch, you know, every...

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aspect of our lives as Americans, which is again a hallmark of totalitarianism. You know, controlling public and private life. One of the biggest examples of this is abortion policy. You know...

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The Trump campaign does not believe that you should have the right to your own body, that you should be able to decide what you want to do in your own bedroom or what happens after. They want to be the dictators of that. It's these specific policy niches that really show their broader plan for America and just how dangerous that plan is.

12:54

Yeah, and I think this is one of the most blatant examples of what a Republican, especially Donald Trump presidency, would look like. Not necessarily like becoming a legitimate dictator.

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That is something that could happen and very well may happen, but something that almost definitely will happen is that he will try to use the government's power to make women not have the right to choose what they want to do with their bodies. He wants to take the right and the ability of women to make the decision away from them. And that's what's scary. Because if you are able to remove the decision making process about, I think it's the most important decision of somebody's life, period.

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from 50% of the population. That is scary. That is control. And that is something that it doesn't need to be Trump. That's something that the entire Republican Party, especially this conservative legal movement, wants to do. And that's what's concerning because that is something that almost 110% will happen because that's something that every Republican necessarily, almost every Republican agrees with, which is why we talk about all these things that Trump may do, what Trump could do, what Trump wants to do.

14:03

This doesn't matter if Trump is even elected. This is something that Republicans are gonna do even if Kamala wins. They're gonna try to do this. She's gonna veto it. This is what Republicans throughout the country are doing at a state level. This is something that's bigger than just Donald Trump. This is something that is a Republican Party movement, and it shows how aggressively Donald Trump has just yanked his party to the right. Yeah, you know, the Republicans today no longer sound like John McCain or Mitt Romney or even Paul Ryan, right?

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Like who was like complete a-hole but like still sounded like a Republican, you know, like I'm thinking of I was listening to Podcasts about New Yorker the other day and they had Newt Gingrich on right? Who has strangely been one of the staunchest Trump allies But he doesn't sound like Newt Gingrich anymore who was still extremely evil in his day But he uses Trump's insane rhetoric in a way to support him. It's just

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It's wild. Like this is the party.

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that no longer sounds like they used to 10 years ago. Instead, they sound like the party of Barry Goldwater again, right? Which is extremely scary, but it's the reality that we are now living in. So I'm like, for real. Yeah, and Donald Trump hijacked the Republican Party. And no matter what's gonna happen, there's gonna be 40, 35% of the country that agrees with him 100%. That is progress. In 2016, when he was polling under 1% in the Republican primary, and nobody liked him, the difference that, you know, what was it?

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years has made, eight years, eight years has made, is scary. And he's able to have, you know, if you think about it like a board game, he's already taken over one-third of all Americans. What's left? Two-thirds. If he becomes president, he may be able to force this using, A, the expanse of presidential power and B, kind of using that power to get in the way of election security. So this is something that we do want to talk about because this is something that...

16:03

I guess would be a second step, because the first step they would talk about is he would go after his political opponents. The second step is that he wants to expand presidential power and he wants to use that power to get in the way of elections. America was made so that this couldn't happen. What the founders didn't kind of consider is that there would be an executive who effectively brainwashed half of all politicians.

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And that's something that is scary because there will be no checks and balances if the Republicans win a trifecta this election.

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Yeah, not at all. Our system was developed so that a government could be divided, that we could have people who oppose one another. Right? But Trump is instead going to get in the way of our elections. And the things you don't talk about, like that are races down ballot, like election commissioners, like state secretary of states, right? Who before 2020, literally nobody knew who they were. Nobody knew who the Georgia secretary of state was. The Arizona secretary of state was before 2020.

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people are. It was never a public role, right? So our nature of American democracy has changed to where it's not just about voting, but it's about how are we counting the votes and who's counting the votes and are we using the corrupt liberal, you know, Dominion voting machines? Like, it's just, it's ridiculous, Toby. Yeah, that's something that he also has claimed is that he wants to use the National Guard in an attempt to kind of ensure that votes are counted fairly.

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but if he does win then he'll be able to do in 2026 and that is something that is scary because Congress is very important Congress is very important like if Democrats are able to control like the house the difference in his ability to do these things is so like he won't be able to do all these things because

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He just can't because that's how a democracy works. He won't be able to do it. So if he's able to kind of cast doubt or have these officials get in the way in 2026 and he's able to heavily have a red wave come in because he's able to contest all these results, that will be very detrimental to the history and to the future of our country.

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We're going to take a quick break after that. We'll be back to talk about why do you care about these issues and what Project 2025 is going to look a little bit like. So without further ado, we'll be right back.

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All right, everybody, welcome back from that quick break. We're gonna dive in, talk about Project 2025, which now I think it's gotten the media coverage it really deserves, but for a while, it was kind of like a secret hush-hush, nobody really knows what this is. So what is Project 2025? Great question, Alex. It's basically this right-wing wish list for the next Trump presidency, which would begin in... 2025, I believe. There you go, get the naming now. It's pretty, you know.

19:04

Pretty good name, I'll give them that at least. So this is a 900 page policy wishlist that would apply to the next president for, it would be Trump. And while Trump himself didn't write it, it is written by Trump allies, former Trump staffers. And what this would do is they would help hire the next Trump administration.

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So we did, we kind of talked about this earlier with the bureaucracy, but this is just, this is something that is going to happen. It's going to be the hiring of Trump's staff. And if you are able to get staffers in that believe this, that help make it, that help write it, it's going to be a whole lot easier to implement these policies.

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and yeah, you know, the stuff that like they lay out in this plan is very scary. But I think we should also keep in mind the Heritage Foundation does this every time we have a presidential election, right? They may not call it Project 2025 and it might not get the same press, but they've always put this kind of thing out since about the eighties.

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And I think it just goes to show you that these third party groups, like the Heritage Foundation, with lots of evangelical influence in Deep Roots and the Deep Christian Right, they're very concerning and they've been a part of our political process. I think a lot of people need to wake up to that fact and realize the effect that these outside groups are having on the actual policy that's being passed in our Congresses.

20:29

Yeah, and the most concerning part about this is it just really wants to give more power to the president, which is something that

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It's kind of surprising that the Republicans have shifted this much. You used to think of Republicans as like they want a small government. They don't want this to be as expansive as possible. They want the government to move slowly. They don't want as much change, which is why they're called the conservative. You know, that's why they're called conservatives. The ideology. It's supposed to move slowly. But what they're doing is just something that is so unbelievably unprecedented and that it's not supposed to happen. Like, I don't I'm I struggle to find the words

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the absolute 180 that the Republican Party has done from going to know Obama you're doing too much for executive orders to wanting to dissolve homeland security and increase the presidential power in handling the border and to assign all these executive orders and all these things that are so unbelievably not only un-American, undemocratic but

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un-Republican. This isn't something that conservatives should believe in. Yeah, not at all. Toby, you know what? I really, I got a question for you here. Oh boy. Toby, why do I care about this? That's a great question and lucky for you there's a podcast that will explain it. Oh really? Yes there is. So the reason that you should care about this is because this is a real possibility. Like, I don't know how to explain how close this election is going to be. No matter what happens, it's going to be close because that's just the way that the electoral college works.

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founders designed the system. We can talk about the electoral college later and how the whole point of it is that it would prevent a Trump presidency because these electors are supposed to be smarter and would be able to vote against the will of people but that's a completely different story. This is a possibility. It's a scarily likely possibility and every day you need to wake up and understand that this is what could happen and that this

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democracy, this American experiment, is coming closer and closer to an end every day that we approach another sharp presidency. We had a great run, we did a whole lot, we won a couple of world wars, but this is something that is scary, this is something that could happen, this is something that would not only change American history, change the way that America is viewed geopolitically, but it would also impact if America states, is it going to be a democracy, are we going to continue on? And that's something that's very scary. Yeah, and like the reality is that...

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they've given us the playbook, right? Like, Pride 2025 is the X's and O's. It's saying this is the quote unquote reforms we're gonna do, this is how we are going to change the entire system. But like, what we have to keep in mind is that we can stop it, right? It may be, you know, hard as hell to try to-

23:19

like, win away the electoral college to the groups of the Republicans, in a system that was designed for them, for their minority. But we can still do it. We can still beat them. That's what I think people need to understand, that this future is not inevitable. It can absolutely be stopped. Yeah, so that's a very hopeful, optimistic outcome.

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But something that this entire thing really does remind me of is I'm not saying we're going towards a civil war, but it does remind me of this quote from Ulysses S. Grant, great president, who said, you know, after the civil war, quote, if we are to have another contest in the near future,

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for our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason-Dixon, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition and ambition and ignorance on the other." And the fact that that quote is so perfect for describing what's happening today, that it's not necessarily policy that divides Americans, but it's democracy. Do we want to be a democracy?

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Or do we want to turn into an authoritarian right-wing regime that will oppress minorities, oppress women, oppress anybody who disagrees with Donald Trump? That is scary. That is a real possibility. And that is something that could happen unless we wake up and fight like hell every day. We knock on doors. We make phone calls. We volunteer. We tell our friends to vote. We be sure we voted. We register other people to vote. The best way to ensure that Trump is unable to do that is not only to beat him,

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But beat him big. Beat him by enough margins that people will not be able to contest this. Beat him by enough margins that they will not be able to find enough votes, throw enough votes away, that this is possible. We need to win big. We need to focus on down-ballot races as well. And we can't leave anything up to chance because this isn't political anymore. This is about the state of our democracy and whether or not America is gonna survive. Yeah, it's about the sanity of our nation. Yeah.

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So that being said, thank you guys so much for listening to this week's episode. Be sure to go to whydoicarepod.com.

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