Donald Trump makes it very clear that he’ll stop at nothing in his second term

You’d never know it from the cursory coverage in most of the mainstream media, but Donald Trump and his followers have been very, very clear about what they plan to do should they be returned to power. And power is the operative word here, because it’s what they plan to wield relentlessly against their enemies as they reshape the presidency.

Up to now, a lot of the focus has been on the work of Trump acolytes. The far-right Heritage Foundation has formulated “Project 25,” a blueprint for stacking the government with Trump loyalists who will carry out his will to “deconstruct the adminstrative state.”

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Republicans should be worried.

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Now, Trump has given an interview that underscores just how serious this threat is. Talking to TIME magazine, Trump happily described a dystopian world where he will do whatever he wants, without any concern of consequences or fear of backlash.

Trump learned one thing from his first term. He made a mistake in letting his own Cabinet members restrain him. “When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,” he says. “I had to rely on people.” He won’t make that mistake again.

First and foremost, Trump will become the law. He will make the Justice Department report directly to him, making it a political weapon for retribution. He will appoint a special prosecutor to go after President Joe Biden, assuming the Supreme Court says presidents don’t have total immunity, as Trump has asked the Court to do.

“If they said that a president doesn’t get immunity, then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes,” Trump said. There are no crimes, of course. He also hinted that he would go after Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney currently prosecuting Trump in court, and Fani Willis, who has charged Trump with election fraud in Georgia.

Trump will also pardon all the people found guilty in the January 6 insurrection. “I call them the J-6 patriots,” he says.  If any U.S. attorney balks at Trump’s politicization of the department, he would fire them.

Trump also said he would use the military to round up the estimated 11 million people who are in the U.S. without documentation. When the reporter noted that the military is prohibited from acting against civilians, Trump responded, “Well, these aren’t civilians.”

He doesn’t seem to view people who live in cities as civilians, either. Trump insists big cities – that is, where people who will vote against him live – are riddled with crime, despite statistics showing crime falling. (He says that numbers are “a lie.”) He would send the National Guard in to address crime, even if the governors don’t want them there.

As for LGBTQ+ issues, it’s obvious Trump will be gunning for them as well. He promised to rescind Biden’s diversity and racial equity executive orders. You can count as a certainty that any pro-LGBTQ+ executive orders – like those that use the Supreme Court’s reasoning that anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination is a form of sex-based discrimination – will fall as well.

Meanwhile, just as he outsourced the Supreme Court nominees to the Federalist Society, Trump seems perfectly happy to have turned the planning for the logistics of his second term over to the Project 25 team. That group has promised to reject “gender ideology,” “uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities,” and turn the Justice Department into the law firm representing right-wing Christians in challenges against LGBTQ+ rights.

Project 25 would also classify “gender ideology” as pornography and would arrest and imprison anyone who distributes it, with its new ban on pornography. Those who advocate for trans rights could be branded as sex offenders.

There’s not much reason to think that the courts or public opinion will restrain Trump. For one thing, Trump does have the Supreme Court on his side. For another, given how radical his vision is, it would be entirely in character for Trump to simply ignore a court ruling. When the Supreme Court ruled last January that the state of Texas had to remove razor wire from the border, multiple Republicans counseled the state to simply ignore the ruling. After all, how could the Court enforce it?

As for public opinion, the outcry against the Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade is the perfect example. Trump only cares insofar that it threatens his election chances. Once he’s in office, he will sign a federal abortion ban if the people who put him in office bring it to him. He’s a transactional politician.

Congress will also be filled with more compliant Republicans this time around as well. “He’s going to have the backup in Congress that he didn’t have before,” Rep. Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican whom Trump has endorsed for an open Senate seat, told Time.

There’s plenty more to fear. Trump will embolden Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and slap an economy-killing tariff on imported goods. He will go after journalists and politicians who have had the temerity to criticize him. No wonder people in D.C. are not-so-jokingly considering where they will move if Trump is re-elected.

Trump’s supporters characterize such fears as Trump Derangement Syndrome. “They really think it’s going to be the end of democracy as we know it, and I think it’s misplaced,” David Urban, a Trump ally, told the New York Times. “There are plenty of grown-ups, plenty of serious people who will want to roll in a second Trump administration.”

But that’s not true. The grown-ups who were there in the first administration have said that Trump is unfit for office. Instead, Trump has surrounded himself with true believers who are serious only about unleashing the worst of Trump on the nation.

If someone tells you who they are and what they will do, you have to believe them. Trump just did that, at length. As Kellyanne Conway told Time,  “I don’t think it’s a big mystery what his agenda would be. But I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action.”

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