Μake us preferred on Google One Donald Trump is urging voters to imagine that they are voting for him in every congressional district in the House of Representatives and in every state in the Senate elections. “So, close your eyes and imagine that I’m on the ballot. I’m on the ballot because we have to win,” he said in Mobile, Alabama, on October 2, and then again on October 19 in Park City, Kansas: “I’m asking you to pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot. Just pretend.”
Another Donald Trump is equally active in the election campaign. He, too, is the Trump we know. He describes the Democrats as a party of “anti-Western Marxists” and “hostile Third World migrants,” urges his supporters to defeat the “communists,” the “jihadists” and the “corrupt anti-American lunatics,” and brings his speech to a climax with a promise: “If we win, we’re going to shove the victory up their a…”
Indeed, the first Trump secures a landslide victory in next Tuesday’s midterm elections. The second, however, loses control of both chambers. Which of the two is more dangerous? The one who adds a Congress entirely his own to his dominance as a bonus and becomes even more unrestrained? Or the other, who will be forced to spend the second half of his presidential term with a Capitol that may not be “Marxist, jihadist and anti-Western,” but will certainly be painted blue? In any case, what will he do with the other side’s victory?
In the eyes of many analysts, a defeated Trump already appears more threatening than a victorious one. A defeat would mean losing some states that have traditionally been Republican strongholds for decades. How would he react? The possibility that he would denounce the election process remains open and is entirely credible. The New York Times calculated that, out of the 730 days in the first two years of his term, Trump claimed that elections were “stolen” on 449 of them.
Over the same period, the victorious Trump, with a Congress entirely under his control, has essentially governed without it, even though he could have worked with it. No other president has passed less legislation than he has in the past 70 years, and no other has issued more executive orders than he did during the first 100 days of his presidency.
If the scale and combination of these factors say a great deal about Trump at Home—the Trump who despises American democracy, with all its burdens and checks and balances—they say even more about Trump Abroad. The president who had Congress entirely on his side did not even seek its approval for the attack on Iran. The War Powers Act, which provides that only Congress can declare war, was simply thrown in the trash. Resolutions opposing the attack were simply ignored. It was his decision; he did whatever he wanted.
A defeat that handed control of Congress to the Democrats would amount to a turning point. Not because Trump would show it even greater contempt, but because his opponents would have the power to investigate his actions through committees that could subpoena witnesses and make documents public. Why shouldn’t they seek to impeach one of his cabinet members? Why shouldn’t they go after Trump himself?
Like all leaders inclined toward monarchism, Donald Trump exports his domestic problems in order to turn them into international crises. The danger is twofold, and no one is exempt—not even his friends, such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan or even Kim Jong Un. A defeated Trump will not only be more anti-democratic but probably more “anti-Western” than the other Trump, his half-brother, who would have won.
Whatever is heard elsewhere in the world will reach us here in Athens, too. Either the cry of victory. Or the crash of defeat.
