Other than Claiming Failure as Success, What Else Can Trump Do to Salvage His Fading Legacy?

Other than Claiming Failure as Success, What Else Can Trump Do to Salvage His Fading Legacy?

Donald Trump is a street fighter who gets bully politics better than any modern president. Teddy Roosevelt had his “Speak softly but carry a big stick.” James Monroe asserted his hegemony against Latin America in what has been labeled “the Monroe Doctrine.” With the help of so-called “yellow journalism,” President William McKinley used the 1914 “mysterious” sinking of the US battleship, Maine, in Havana harbor, as partial justification for the Spanish American War, which resulted in some serious territorial annexations that benefited the United States at the expense of Spain. JFK interpreted the 1964 attack on a US destroyer in the Tonkin Bay (Vietnam) – they only found a single bullet lodged in the USS Maddox, by the way – as justification to move the nation into what became the failed Vietnam War. In May of 2003, George W Bush expressed vindication at what he perceived (incorrectly) was a successful invasion of Iraq (over weapons of mass destruction that were never found) and the pursuit of the perpetrators of the terrorist 9/11/01 air attacks against the United States. The Afghan War that paralleled these efforts was the longest war in US history, which (like Vietnam) completely failed.

Some the above cited historical “reactions” were successful, but in the modern era our “victories” are limited skirmishes like the 1983 rescue and support of the incumbent government in the Caribbean nation of Grenada, the 1989 invasion of Panama ordered by President George H W Bush resulting in the arrest of strongman Manuel Noriega for drug dealing and racketeering, and in 1999, and the combined NATO efforts (Bill Clinton’s administration) in former Yugoslavia to contain a brutal genocidal civil war. Donald Trump’s claim that US bombers totally “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment program on June 22nd turned out be another Trumpian exaggeration.

Each of the above presidents traded on orchestrated American outrage to move American firepower to bear against these perceived enemies. And while there has been very limited use of US military forces applied against specific incidences of focused civil domestic disturbances (civil rights/anti-war focused in the 1950s-70s, for example), until Southern Forces fired on US Fort Sumter in 1861, US forces had not previously been pervasively unleashed against American citizens… until 2025. If the November 4th elections had any message for Donald Trump – which despite his and MAGA congresspeople’s efforts to explain away the Democratic sweep – those sinking polling numbers were now being reflected in political results. No Kings seems to resonate.

So, what can Donald “double down” Trump do to secure his legacy… and more importantly, what is he likely to do? Here goes: Keep trying to force his Project 2025 agenda through a currently GOP controlled Congress, which includes blowing away the Senate filibuster rule, so that every single one of his platform priorities become the law of the land. But even US Senators fear that rule change would ultimately benefit Democrats, when they gained the requisite majority, so that change is unlikely to pass. If you look at this situation, you realize that even Republican Senators assume that free, full and fair elections will continue… while Donald Trump and his merry minions are doing everything, they can do ensure that never happens. As long as the Supreme Court continues to refuse to restrict gerrymandering, erroneously claiming lack of jurisdiction to do so, expect gerrymandered elections to be the main partisan battle ground.

But if these political players cannot sufficiently guarantee GOP victory in a well-gerrymandered midterm election, there are a couple of cards Trump can play to continue to give him an edge with the high court. Two elder justices can resign before that election – Clarence Thomas and Samual Alito – and be replaced by relatively younger ultra-Trump loyalists, confirmed by a Trump majority in the Senate. That combines well with red state legislatures’ efforts, successful to date, to fight Democrats, who continue to oppose the restrictive red state policies enacted to tilt election results (before and after election) heavily in favor of GOP candidates. Legions of well-financed private lawyers join the cadre of biased federal and red state government attorneys ready to quash any effort to diminish GOP candidates from benefiting from rigged elections.

Additionally, as reported by Jordan Zakarin, writing for the November 4th The Gander, “Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and 11 other GOP-controlled states passed restrictive new election administration and voter eligibility laws after the 2020 election, making it harder for Democratic-leaning communities to access the ballot. In some places, the laws also empowered conservatives to take control of local and state election boards. There are now over 100 Big Lie proponents serving on election boards across eight swing states, giving them outsized power to refuse to certify vote counts and make antidemocratic last minute decisions.” Trump’s war on “woke” has worked reasonably well with his diehard followers, although to this day only definition of that culture war term that makes any sense is: “woke” is whatever Trump says it is… from time to time.

With Trump’s eliminating military leaders, governmental department heads and thousands of law enforcement and legal officers from the federal government who do or might oppose his vision, replacing those with ultra-“whatever Trump wants” loyalists, he effectively has a massive anti-free-and-fair-elections in-house team engaged in elevating his autocracy to unmitigated power. They all believe that Trump’s executive orders, reviewed by friendly judges, are enough. And when courts strike down those orders, Trump has several standard responses: ask for clarification and delay or only partially comply, demand an “emergency” immediate Supreme Court review… or even better… an undefined “docket” stay that allow his policies to continue, file parallel lawsuits in friendly federal venues, finding different statutes or judicial decisions to effect a workaround and try again, or simply defy the order.

The November 4th election results are abundantly clear, so if Trump cannot mitigate against the obvious major recent revised public sentiment against most of his policies and prevent journalists and social media from countering his “spin” with facts, if GOP members of Congress still believe in elections and notice that Trump coattails are imperiling their electability, he still has his new secret ICE police and, assuming their leaders set aside their duty to protect the Constitution, the military to force his way to dictatorial power, clearly no longer relegated to “day one.” He doesn’t have to twist and squirm to seek a third term. And if he is not up to any of this, he can anoint his successor and use all those manipulative powers to ensure his legacy continues. Red alert.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if the sleepy complacent public is finally beginning to wake up to reject more wrong-headed government policies than we have ever seen before, perhaps the republic can survive, damaged, but still alive.