The Joys of Immunity; Think Like an Autocrat and Predict Trump’s Behavior

Three predictions, including a Dec. 2020 forecast of a "shock event" on the way

This post is long because I wanted to comment on the Supreme Court immunity decision and also review three of my past forecasts about Trump that relate to the methods he may use if he returns to power.

We are in a dangerous situation, but we must face it head on, and knowing what could happen lets us organize to defend ourselves and educate others. It is important to understand how strongmen and their enablers think, because this can sometimes let you predict how they will behave in the future, or at least have insight into the range of options they will pursue.

A Jan. 2017 piece looked ahead to what he would do as President and named that agenda as authoritarian. A Feb. 2017 piece anticipated Project 2025. The third, in video form, is from December 8, 2020 and predicted that Trump would stage a “shock event” in the near future.

For those who read and say “what I am interested in is the future, what do you say about that?” I am developing my ideas and “feel” about where America is going. More on that in the coming weeks.

Immunity: The Autocrat’s Fantasy

The decision by the Supreme Court to grant immunity to American presidents for any “official acts” they engage in, no matter how violent or corrupt these might be, is a grave and historic blow to our democracy. As Asha Rangappa observed on X, the court –an entity with no ethical watchdog of its own—has the final word on which acts are “official” and which are not.

That does not bode well given that this is a rogue court packed with far-right extremists who are using their decisions to lay down the legal infrastructure for autocracy. As I commented on MSNBC to Nicolle Wallace yesterday, it’s as though these jurists made their decisions with Project 2025 in one hand and an autocrat’s playbook in the other.

In so doing, the court has enabled Trump to use legal methods to realize his personal vendettas and revenge fantasies. The former president’s call for Liz Cheney to be subjected to a televised trial for treason recalls what Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi did to some of his enemies (I write about that in the propaganda chapter of Strongmen).

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Jan 2017: Trump Will Govern as an Authoritarian

I published this CNN op-ed on Jan. 17, 2017, days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, to let Americans know what to expect from “a strongman who cultivates a bond with followers based on loyalty to him as a person rather than to a party or set of principles.”

From turning the public against the media, to discrediting the judiciary and attacking Latino judges who uphold the rule of law (it was Gonzalo Curiel then, and Juan Merchan now), to trying to “delegitimize the history of civil rights in our country,” the design of Trump and his enablers for a model of “governance” based on racism, propaganda, and self-protection has translated into the policies and attacks on our democracy that we have endured for years now.

The piece ends with a call to resistance. The advice I gave in 2017 to my fellow Americans, based on my research on opposing autocrats, holds up today:

“Each of us can stand our ground in our own way, but the lessons that come to us from a century of authoritarian rule around the world – and the civil rights movement in America – meet up in one phrase: Do not lose hope. Do not hide away. Be visible and be heard, on the street and in phone calls to your elected officials.”

Feb. 2017: Trump and Bannon’s Coup Plans that Flowed into Project 2025

Like many Americans, I listened to Trump’s inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017 with a sense of dismay and foreboding. It cast America as a desolate place of “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation,” with a desperate population waiting for Trump to enter the scene.

Trump official Steve Bannon wrote the speech, and while some of its populist language came from the Tea Party, its crisis rhetoric and positioning of the male leader as savior was strongman territory. Former President George W. Bush, who was at the inauguration, had this reaction: “That’s some weird shit,” but what he saw as strange was familiar authoritarian rhetoric. “The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action,” Trump intoned, sounding like Il Duce.

Over the next week, amid streams of threatening rhetoric, Trump’s most spectacular executive order – the ban of individuals from selected predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States – generated confusion and chaos. “Get used to it. @POTUS is a man of action and impact …Shock to the system. And he’s just getting started” tweeted Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway on Jan. 28.

That night, I could not sleep, and a horrible vision materialized of what Trump and Bannon were up to. The Fascists believed you must destroy to create, as did their authoritarian successors on the left and the right who staged coups. At 3am, I got up and wrote this piece, which CNN published on Feb. 1 with the title “Trump and Bannon’s Coup in the Making.”  

“Welcome to the shock event, designed precisely to jar the political system and civil society, causing disorientation and disruption among the public and the political class that aids the leader in consolidating his power,” I wrote.

“Trump gained power legally but this week has provided many indications that his inner circle intends to shock or strike at the system, using the resulting spaces of chaos and flux to create a kind of government within the government: one beholden only to the chief executive,” the essay continued, describing a design for a hostile takeover of government that has now become Project 2025.

Many are now familiar with Project 2025’s plans to ready armies of MAGA zombies to spring into action on “Day One” to abolish numerous federal agencies and fire tens of thousands of civil servants who have not pledged loyalty to Trump. Fewer agencies will mean fewer cabinet positions and more influence for the “inner sanctum” of sycophants and extremists who, as in regimes everywhere, are the real source of power.  

Trump’s authoritarian agendas as I described them that night in 2017 could be realized in 2025: “the creation of a small group of loyal insiders, who take orders directly from the leader’s inner circle and…bypass those of the existing federal government and party bureaucracies,” and “the unleashing of the political purges…to cleanse the government of troublemakers and leave a power vacuum to be filled with loyalists – or not filled at all, for added disruption of the state bureaucracy.”

“Bannon has repeatedly talked about “destroying the state” in the name of securing power for ‘an insurgent, center-right populist movement that is virulently anti-establishment’,” I wrote. Seven years later, taking down the administrative state and acheiving “self-government” are pillars of Project 2025.

“Trump and Bannon are in this for the long run,” I concluded. “Our focus, in the middle of this storm, is to keep our feet on the ground and our eyes on the prize: the defense of American democracy.” That will be more necessary than ever if the forces of autocracy prevail.

Dec. 2020: A “Shock Event” on the Way

When Joe Biden won the 2020 election, we thought we could have a break and exhale. Instead, history-making events ensued. Trump refused to recognize the outcome of the 2020 election and began plans to subvert the results, with the aid of co-conspirators ranging from sitting GOP politicians to Roger Stone and Michael Flynn to Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

As someone who had studied authoritarian takeovers, I saw this period as a state of exception, when extremist forces were challenging habitual norms and procedures and legal frameworks. To communicate the danger to the public, a few days after the election I started a video blog, “The Transition,” which was the genesis of Lucid. Its mandate was to name what was happening and counter the assaults on our democracy by examining “what has gone wrong and what we can do to correct course.” 

Here is that Dec. 2020 video, which asked Americans to be vigilant in the coming weeks. “Trump came in with a shock event,” I state, referring to that so-called “Muslim travel ban” of Jan. 2017, “and he’s going out the same way, with another shock event.” On Jan. 6, 2021, we all found out what form that took.