If He Wins June 16, 2024 Yesterday, I shared Norm Ornstein’s must-read essay. Today, Tom Hartmann’s take: If Trump wins, this will be referred to as “the age of Trump,” Laura Ingraham told her Fox viewers, dreaming of a repeat of the kind of consequential presidency that stamps political eras. “He dominates the policy debate in ways that no one has done since Reagan. And if he picks a strong VP… this coalition could be in power for 50 years.” Ingraham — who I also once debated, at a Heritage Foundation event — could be right. If Trump becomes president this fall, he and his Project 2025 allies will transform America in ways that go far beyond FDR’s New Deal or Reagan’s war on working people. The Christian Taliban that has surrounded him will take over public school instruction and birth control policy, racist militias and skinheads will be running elections and immigration policy, the media will be finally and fully seized by rightwing oligarchs like in Russia and Hungary, unions and equality movements will be functionally outlawed, and Trump’s “enemies” (including reporters and commentators like yours truly) will end up in prison. Each of those things is already promised explicitly by Trump himself or part of the Project 2025 program for the next Republican presidency. Unthinkable? So was the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Likewise, the idea that two-thirds of the Court would have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. Or that a twice-impeached convicted felon — an adjudicated rapist found liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties, now awaiting trial in three much more serious criminal cases — who cheated to get into college and cheated to get out of the draft, cheated on his wives, cheats at golf, cheated on his taxes, cheated contractors, cheated with his charity and stiffed creditors of the four companies he put into bankruptcy — “the undisputed world champion of destroying things,” as Tucker Carlson put it, whom dozens of his own former top staffers consider dangerously unfit for the job — could actually be the next president. If you’re not scared, you’re not paying attention — which is just what Trump and Putin want. If you can help, click here (cash) or here (effort). We’re going to win because, unlike the Germans or Italians 90 years ago, we have the benefit of hindsight. And if you think all this is alarmist — that even if he wins “the system will hold” — read Norm’s essay again and tell me where you think he’s wrong. THANK YOU!