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OPINION

HE’S BACK


THIRTEEN COLUMNISTS ON WHAT WORRIES THEM MOST ABOUT TRUMP’S RETURN — AND THEIR
REASONS FOR OPTIMISM.

20 min
1370

Cheering supporters are reflected in bulletproof glass as Donald Trump speaks at
a campaign event in Lititz, Pennsylvania, on Sunday. (Jabin Botsford/The
Washington Post)
Skip to main content
 1.  David Ignatius: Going to war with the generals
 2.  Ruth Marcus: We all live in Trump country
 3.  Perry Bacon Jr.: The specter of mass deportations
 4.  Ramesh Ponnuru: A breach of trust
 5.  Matt Bai: The end of the American idea
 6.  Megan McArdle: The good news about non-White voters
 7.  Eugene Robinson: A world on fire
 8.  E.J. Dionne Jr.: The resistance collapses on itself
 9.  Jim Geraghty: A Trumpier Trump
 10. Theodore R. Johnson: A multiracial nativism
 11. Dana Milbank: Authoritarianism everywhere
 12. León Krauze: American Latinos found their ‘caudillo’
 13. Karen Tumulty: Keeping faith in the future

By Washington Post Opinions staff
November 6, 2024 at 6:53 p.m. EST


DAVID IGNATIUS: GOING TO WAR WITH THE GENERALS

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Of the many ways President-elect Donald Trump could damage our country, the most
dangerous is that he could undermine the military, the FBI and the intelligence
agencies — the “deep state” that he and his supporters have long ranted about.


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Candidate Trump talked as if the generals, FBI agents and spy chiefs were tools
of a conspiracy against him and the country’s real patriots. It’s a laughably
false portrait: Military and intelligence officers are the opposite of rogue
elephants. They swear an oath to the Constitution, and they’re sticklers for the
rules. If they stray from appropriate behavior, they face potentially
career-ending internal discipline, as with one very talented four-star general
who’s now under investigation for allegedly shoving an airman.

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Trump has made wild threats against Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, claiming that he is a “woke” general. Anyone who knows
Milley realizes that is a ludicrous accusation. His crime was that he spoke up
to defend the Constitution when Trump put it at risk. Thus my worry: In the four
years that lie ahead, Trump might try to force military and intelligence
officers to choose between that sacred oath to the Constitution and personal
loyalty to him.

If Trump tries to play politics with the chiefs again — questioning Gen. Charles
Q. Brown Jr.’s status as chairman, for example — he will begin pulling on the
threads that hold our military together. If he tries to appoint a flamboyant
supporter as CIA or FBI director, he will run the same risk. These institutions
are precious: They keep all of us safe. But they’re also fragile. Trump has a
chance to be a decent president. He’s right that the world is too dangerous and
unstable, with too many wars. It’s a moment of opportunity for “the art of the
deal.” But if he wastes his time on reckless attacks on military and
intelligence leaders, shame on him.


RUTH MARCUS: WE ALL LIVE IN TRUMP COUNTRY

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I’m most worried that this country is not what I thought it was, but someplace
much more cruel and nasty and selfish, both in its attitude toward our fellow
Americans and in its conception of America’s place in the world.

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Perhaps these results can be explained by a rebellion against the price of
groceries, or by resentment about being dictated to and looked down on by
cultural elites. Change vs. more of the same is always a motivating force. And
yet I fear something more is at work. We thought women, outraged by having a
constitutional right yanked from them, would turn the gender gap into a chasm;
that didn’t happen. We thought voters would be repelled by Trump’s authoritarian
pronouncements; that didn’t happen, either. We thought the country was — maybe,
just maybe — ready to elect a woman of color to the presidency. Silly us.

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Where to find optimism in this bleak landscape? My optimism is that the
Constitution endures; that, though it will be a long and terrifying four years,
democracy will be bruised but survive; that we will hold a free and fair
election four years from now; and that a majority of Americans — in the popular
vote and the electoral college — will recognize, albeit belatedly, that we chose
the wrong path.


PERRY BACON JR.: THE SPECTER OF MASS DEPORTATIONS

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The overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants living in the United States
are just seeking a better life for themselves and their families. They just
happen not to have been born into a country as wealthy as ours. I’m morally
opposed to removing hundreds of thousands or even millions of people from the
country. I also have a hard time seeing how that policy could be carried out in
a way that isn’t violent and perhaps deadly, even for the people with legal
status.

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Trump might also use the Justice Department to launch criminal investigations
against anyone he doesn’t like or who criticizes him. I’m extremely concerned
about potential firings of nonpartisan federal employees who perform vital tasks
and have deep expertise but might care about following the law instead of doing
whatever Trump’s lackeys want. I’m anxious about Trump sending in the National
Guard to stop protests he doesn’t agree with, thereby squelching mass dissent.

What makes me somewhat optimistic is that I am not sure the country is as
conservative in a policy sense as Trump’s fairly resounding victory suggests.
According to the exit polls (take them with a grain of salt, of course), most
Americans support abortion rights and oppose mass deportations. Ballot
initiatives in favor of abortion rights, paid leave and raising the minimum wage
passed in lots of states, including some conservative ones. Meanwhile, school
voucher initiatives failed in Nebraska and Kentucky.


RAMESH PONNURU: A BREACH OF TRUST

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When it comes to domestic policy, we are in an era of stasis. Joe Biden’s
presidency has been lauded by progressives and deplored by conservatives for its
transformative effects. Yet it did not even succeed in raising the minimum wage,
something every Democratic administration from FDR onward had done.

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Trump, even fresh off an amazing comeback, will not be able to make drastic and
lasting changes in government policy (to the extent he even plans to). He is
likely to have a narrow majority, at best, in the House. Republicans have no
partywide consensus on how to use their new power. The filibuster is likely to
survive. The courts have already implemented tighter controls on how much the
executive branch can change policy on its own. Even more than most new
presidents, Trump will face opposition and scrutiny every day.

What ought to concern us most is the continued decay and derangement of our
political culture and institutions. We are awash in conspiracy theories. Trump
is responsible for spreading a lot of them. But Democrats are wrong to consider
themselves immune to this kind of disordered thinking. Febrile coverage of
“collusion with Putin” led a great majority of them to believe that Russia had
tampered with vote totals to help Trump in 2016.

Our willingness to believe the worst of our opponents is rising, while our
standards for accuracy and honesty in public discourse are falling. Our loss of
trust in one another is often lamented. What’s worse, and less discussed, is
that those with responsibility for important institutions — from the press to
the courts to the public health world — have been too heedless of the need to
act in trustworthy ways. An important early test of whether we do better this
time will be how many Democrats object to certifying Trump’s undoubted victory.


MATT BAI: THE END OF THE AMERICAN IDEA

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What am I not worried about? I certainly fear for our governing institutions and
the rule of law, but I guess I’m most worried about the rise of a new kind of
nationalism that defines people as less American based on where they’re from or
what they wear or whom they love. I worry that voters have legitimized the
message, as JD Vance put it during the campaign, that America is a place rather
than an idea — a country that belongs more to White, male, straight Christians
than to everyone else. That leads nowhere good.

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And yet, I woke up this morning hoping that the American left might now have a
debate about what Americanism means to them — beyond policing pronouns and
categorizing grievances. It ought to be clear that voters (and not only White
voters) are tired of being lectured about societal inequities as their finances
grow more precarious and the border less secure. (Kamala Harris wisely avoided
all that, but she couldn’t outrun her party’s focus on trans rights and fighting
other forms of oppression.) Maybe Democrats can find a way to their own kind of
nationalism — one that champions the American idea rather than ceaselessly
harping on its failures.


MEGAN MCARDLE: THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT NON-WHITE VOTERS

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Trump has no respect for institutional guardrails, and he will try to tear them
down wherever he can. I believe in America so deeply that I think our
institutions will ultimately hold, as they did during his last term. But I think
they might be badly damaged in the process.

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Yet I do see some reasons for optimism. Trump looks to be on track to win the
popular vote as well as the electoral college, which obviously hurts if you
voted against him but is better for the country than a corrosive split in which
half the country views him as the “president select” rather than the
president-elect.

I’m also heartened to see him improving his standing among non-White voters.
Minority groups tend to vote as a collective when they face discrimination,
making their identity the most salient fact of their life. When people are
voting on the economy or the border, that means they don’t feel that their
racial identity is the most important determinant of their future. That should
make us happy, even if the vote count doesn’t.


EUGENE ROBINSON: A WORLD ON FIRE

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I’m most worried about what Trump will do on the world stage, the area in which
presidents have largely unfettered authority. I worry he will damage our most
vital alliances, weaken our ties with Europe and our Asian allies — and throw
Ukraine and Taiwan to the wolves. I worry he will seek to reverse the global
transition to clean energy. I worry about his failure to appreciate how we
should forge closer economic and strategic ties with our neighbors, Canada and
Mexico, rather than wall them off. I worry his approach to diplomacy will be
entirely transactional and that the United States will no longer stand tall for
freedom and democracy.

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I’m optimistic that Trump’s presidency will galvanize a broad opposition that
blocks his most ill-advised domestic initiatives, whatever they might be, and
that formulates an effective anti-Trumpist message that resonates with his
voters. After Trump will come JD Vance, with his weirdness and his
ethno-nationalism, and I have to hope and believe that by then, we’ll have an
antidote to this poison.


E.J. DIONNE JR.: THE RESISTANCE COLLAPSES ON ITSELF

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Like many of my colleagues, I am deeply concerned that Trump will keep his
promises to order mass roundups of immigrants, take criminal action against his
political opponents, restrict freedoms of the press and expression, and
concentrate power in his own hands.

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But I am just as worried that those of us trying to defend constitutional
liberties will spend less of our time countering the danger we confront and more
of it on recriminations — factional arguments aimed at advancing positions held
long before a single vote was counted.

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The point of analyzing this failure should be to find arguments, organizing
tactics, legal strategies and political approaches that can mobilize a different
majority, the 54 percent who told exit pollsters that Donald Trump’s views are
too extreme.

I am hopeful by nature, especially about my country. But I find it very hard to
be optimistic after so many of my fellow citizens made a decision I see as
antithetical to values I revere. The hope I maintain is that many of them cast
ballots out of anger and frustration, and had no intention of endorsing the
authoritarian retribution to which Trump pledged himself.

Thus, my other hope: The nation needs a movement that includes these Americans
who are dedicated to standing up to democratic erosion. I have to trust that the
urgency of this task will take priority over futile blame games.


JIM GERAGHTY: A TRUMPIER TRUMP

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We should all be bracing ourselves for a rerun of the first Trump term, with all
his old flaws turned up to 11, as they said in “This Is Spinal Tap.” Approaching
octogenarian status, Trump will be angrier, crankier, and even more erratic,
vengeful and aggrieved, ranting and raving on social media and in front of any
microphone. The lesson Trump will surely take from Election Day 2024 will be
that he’s right about everything, his critics never had a valid point, and he
needs to be less easygoing, conciliatory and humble than last time.

It will be enough to make us miss the youth and coherent speaking of President
Joe Biden.

Policy will move in my preferred direction on a few fronts: extending the Trump
tax cuts, more defense spending and increasing our defense industrial base, and
more border fencing and immigration enforcement. Supreme Court Justices Clarence
Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. can retire if they wish in the next two years.

And though the recriminations among Democrats will be delicious for
conservatives, no party stays down for long. Someday — perhaps as soon as 2026 —
the Democrats will come back, having learned some intensely painful lessons.
They’ll probably be smarter, more centrist, less insular, more attuned to the
concerns of both rural, blue-collar voters and suburbanites. Maybe we won’t get
a full-scale revival of the Democratic Leadership Council, but we’ll see
Democratic candidates who are genuinely tougher on illegal immigration and
crime, and less convinced that taxpayer-funded abortion at any point during
pregnancy is a surefire winner.


THEODORE R. JOHNSON: A MULTIRACIAL NATIVISM

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Trump successfully builds political capital by turning us against one other; he
has cited the “enemy from within” — fellow Americans — as more of a threat to
the country than foreign adversaries such as Russia. My biggest concern for a
second Trump administration is that MAGA’s nativism and rank nationalism will
grow legs and find multiracial appeal.

But worry is not reason enough to be hopeless. In the face of threats and fears
and disinformation, democracy held. The election was safe and fairly adjudicated
in the states. The winner of the electoral college also won the popular vote.
For all the concerns about our fraying democracy, the system channeled the
people’s voice, and the nation has abided by the result. This was neither
accidental nor inevitable; liberal democracy holds because of our faith in it.

That faith is also what fuels the country’s checks and balances. It’s what
energizes protest, often led by people who are marginalized or disenfranchised.
I am mostly optimistic about the American experiment after the election because
we are a people who don’t stand idly by in the face of oppression or
infringements of our rights. There will be hard days ahead — perhaps even
terribly ugly and destructive ones, as in eras past — but there will be people
at every turn to face them and overcome them. And to bend the arc toward justice
once more.


DANA MILBANK: AUTHORITARIANISM EVERYWHERE

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government is openly celebrating Trump’s win.
“Kamala Harris was right when she quoted Psalm 30:5: ‘Weeping may remain the
night, but joy comes in the morning,’” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Maria Zakharova posted on Telegram. “Hallelujah, I would add for myself.” She
also expressed delight that Trump’s win will “spur increased internal tensions”
in the United States — something Russia was clearly hoping for with its
interference in the election.

Trump’s second term will almost certainly mean victory for Russia in Ukraine as
the incoming administration abandons that American ally. Former Russian
president Dmitry Medvedev, now a senior security official, praised Trump’s
“useful quality” for Russia: “He mortally dislikes spending money on various
hangers-on,” a reference to Ukraine. Trump has already said he would let Russia
“do whatever the hell they want” to certain NATO countries.

Russia can congratulate itself for the role it played in our election, including
bomb threats on polling locations in several states Tuesday, coming from Russian
email domains, as the FBI reported. They targeted Democratic-leaning and largely
Black areas in Atlanta, and similar threats hit Arizona (where polling locations
in Native American communities were affected), Michigan and Wisconsin.

Nationalist governments and strongmen elsewhere in the world celebrated what
they anticipate will be an American retreat from global leadership. Hungary’s
repressive leader, Viktor Orban, hailed Trump’s “enormous win” as “a much needed
victory for the World!” Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has dismantled
democracy in that country, embraced the return of his “friend” Trump.

In Israel, the ultranationalist minister Itamar Ben Gvir celebrated Trump’s
victory by commenting “Yesssss” above an earlier post saying “God Bless Trump.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated Trump’s win as “history’s
greatest comeback!” and “a huge victory!”

Most of America’s European allies and NATO partners have issued diplomatic
statements about Trump’s win. But I took some comfort in a statement issued by
French President Emmanuel Macron, who, after talking with German Chancellor Olaf
Scholz, said the two countries had agreed to work toward a “more sovereign
Europe in this new context.”

That is at least some small cause for optimism: Our democratic allies will carry
on the struggle against authoritarianism until America one day rejoins them.


LEÓN KRAUZE: AMERICAN LATINOS FOUND THEIR ‘CAUDILLO’

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Trump made punitive immigration policies a centerpiece of his campaign. In his
speeches, he regularly threatened to deport millions of people. By invoking the
18th-century Alien Enemies Act, he could target both documented and undocumented
immigrants.

This cruelty appears to reflect the will of the U.S. electorate, including,
regrettably, millions of Latino men. What explains it?

Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times conducted a rapid analysis on X of the
Latino male vote, which favored Trump by a historic margin. Garcia-Navarro
suggests the lurch to the right might be because of a mix of economic concerns,
anti-immigrant sentiment within the Hispanic community (an unfortunately common
form of nativism) and the growing influence of the evangelical Christian
movement.

Trump correctly tapped into the desire among this generation of Latinos for
assimilation, with many preferring to see themselves as “American Latinos”
rather than simply Latinos, proposed Julio Ricardo Varela of MSNBC. Some voices
in academia have recently pointed to a backlash against identitarian terms such
as “Latinx” and their association with progressive politics.

This whole interpretation appears reasonable. But I believe there is another
painful factor that, though difficult to measure in polls, might help explain
Trump’s appeal with Latino men: the allure of the “caudillo.”

Trump represents a familiar archetype in Latin American history: the charismatic
leader, the strongman. The United States had never encountered a figure quite
like Trump: the providential man, the messianic leader, deeply ingrained in
Latino culture. The extent of his populist draw is now evident.

I would like to say I am optimistic that the United States can avoid the fate of
other nations that have fallen under the shadow of the caudillo. But I’m not
sure I can.


KAREN TUMULTY: KEEPING FAITH IN THE FUTURE

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What is most dispiriting is to learn that we live in a country that cares so
little about decency, about mutual respect, about regard for law and norms,
about truth itself. Slightly more than half of us would prefer Trump’s
gale-force bluster to sober democratic processes.

There will be people who blame the outcome of the election on sexism and racism.
They will say this is a country that simply wouldn’t accept a woman of color as
its chief executive and commander in chief.

Others will say that most Americans are just stupid.

But I think the main thing that happened Tuesday was an expression of
frustration and impatience with a political system so wrapped up in itself that
it no longer hears the concerns of ordinary Americans, much less addresses them.

For too long, Democrats have been in thrall to their educated, affluent elite.
They denied that there was chaos at the border, until the impact began to be
felt in blue cities. They told less fortunate people that they were imagining
the economic stresses in their lives; the statistics, after all, said otherwise.
They kept businesses and schools under lockdown during the pandemic, taking a
toll on the working class and their children that will not be overcome for
years, maybe decades. They refused to see past group identity — race, gender,
sexual orientation — to individual circumstance.

My hunch is that this will begin an overdue period of soul-searching by
Democrats, which I hope leads to a realization they need to do more listening
and less lecturing.

And in the meantime: Will Trump do some of the things he has proposed? No doubt
he will. But having witnessed the sheer incompetence that was the hallmark of
his first stint in the White House, I’m skeptical that the more radical of his
proposals — mass roundups of migrants, raining retribution on his opponents,
punitive tariffs — will actually come to pass. There are still guardrails in our
democratic system and in the public’s tolerance for chaos and fanaticism.

The other thing we have seen, again and again through our history, is that the
American experiment has been imbued with a remarkable set of self-corrective
powers. We’ve lived through so many dark times and have come out of every one of
them stronger.

The people have spoken. But the great thing about our form of democracy is that
one election is never the last word.


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