NOVEMBER 11, 2024
Donald Trump has been president before. But all indications are that we should expect an even bolder Trump — or more extreme, depending on your point of view — in a second term.
Gone will be the many establishment-oriented administration officials who served as checks on him and have since criticized him. Republicans will most likely control both chambers of Congress, with GOP contingents more Trump-y than before. The Supreme Court recently gave presidents a substantial degree of criminal immunity, which will insulate a president who has been convicted of felonies and charged with others. And Trump as a term-limited president will no longer be burdened with reelection concerns.
All of this raises a pressing question: Just how far will he go?
Trump was not exactly sheepish about previewing some far-reaching and controversial policies even as he was appealing for votes. The question becomes whether he will actually pursue them, and how they might play with the American public.
With that in mind, I thought it a good opportunity to look at how some of the big ones might play.
Mass deportation
This policy polled remarkably well after border crossings surged to record highs early in the Biden administration.
Polls showed Americans were about evenly split — and sometimes leaning in favor — of deporting most or all undocumented immigrants, of using the military to do it, and even of putting people in detention camps while they awaited their deportation hearings. An October ABC News-Ipsos poll showed Americans supported deporting all undocumented immigrants 56 percent to 43 percent.
But few proposals better demonstrate how Americans often hold contradictory feelings about policies.
For example, polls have shown that many people who say they favor mass deportation also say they favor allowing undocumented immigrants to have a path to legal status — with the latter polling much better.
A recent CNN poll asked people to choose between the two, and registered voters chose a path to legal status over deporting all undocumented immigrants by a 2-to-1 margin.
There’s also the matter of people potentially liking this better in theory than in practice. Deporting millions of people would be an arduous and expensive enterprise that could involve separating families, expelling friends and neighbors of many Americans, and raising prices by cutting off a huge segment of the labor force. Trump himself has talked about how removing undocumented immigrants could get “bloody.”
Americans tend to balk more when you dig into the details.
A Marquette University Law School poll in September showed the percentage who favor deporting immigrants (it didn’t say to what extent) dropped from 61 percent to 45 percent when you cite people who “have lived here for a number of years, have jobs, and no criminal record.”
Another poll showed strong opposition to deportation for many types of undocumented immigrants — all except criminals and recent border crossers.
And then there are the costs. Another recent poll showed just 31 percent of people thought mass deportation would increase prices. But it would come with a hefty price tag for the government and the economy, potentially in the trillions, according to the pro-immigration American Immigration Council and the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Jan. 6 pardons
Trump has pledged to pardon at least some Jan. 6, 2021, defendants. It’s not clear how many, and Trump’s campaign has said it would be handled on a “case by case” basis.
But he regularly played up the supposed plight of many of them, suggesting he’s inclined toward clemency. And he has even left open the possibility of pardoning those convicted of seditious conspiracy.
A CNN poll early this year showed Americans opposed pardons for “most” Jan. 6 defendants by a 69-31 margin.
Even if the scale of the pardons is smaller, though, opposition could be strong. A CBS News-YouGov poll around the same time showed Americans broadly opposed such pardons, 62-38.
And outside of a noisy segment of the GOP, Americans have little sympathy for those who forced their way into the Capitol. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll in January showed just 26 percent said the sentences for Jan. 6 defendants were “too harsh.” Seven in 10 said they were about right or not harsh enough.
Firing civil servants
Trump has spoken about wanting to be able to fire nonpartisan civil servants who aren’t loyal to him — what he refers to as “rogue bureaucrats” — possibly en masse.
A May poll from Ipsos showed Americans opposed allowing a president to fire civil servants at will, 49-28. Just 9 percent strongly supported the idea.
An earlier Reuters-Ipsos poll showed even stronger opposition if you characterize it slightly differently: firing civil servants for expressing disagreement with administration policy (67-11) and doing their job in a way the president doesn’t like (63-15).
Government employees are not the most sympathetic characters. And much depends on the scale. But these are overwhelming margins that suggest anything amounting to a wide-scale purge would be met with strong opposition.
Tariffs
Trump has proposed a 10 to 20 percent across-the-board tariff on imports and a 60 to 100 percent tariff on Chinese imports.
Perhaps on no policy is the devil more in the details. Americans generally like the idea of tariffs, but they also largely don’t understand them or their effects. And these would have major economic impacts.
A September Reuters-Ipsos poll showed that Americans said they were more likely to back a candidate who supported the lower numbers in those ranges (10 percent on all imports and 60 percent on Chinese ones) than one who didn’t, 53-42.
But a February poll from YouGov showed just 61 percent of people who said they wanted increased tariffs stood by that support when tariffs were attached to higher prices for American consumers. Tariffs can protect American industry, but they generally do lead to inflation — possibly high inflation, depending on the scale of what Trump does.
Reducing Ukraine aid
Trump’s posture toward Ukraine’s war effort is more nebulous than a lot of people appreciate. But he has suggested he will scale back support and has declined to even take Ukraine’s side over Russia in the conflict.
Those positions are out of step with the American public. While many on the right and some in the middle — around 3 in 10 Americans — want to cut funding, significantly more Americans say our current level of support is “not enough” or “about right,” generally around half.
The American people also overwhelmingly say they want Ukraine to win. And a strong majority of Americans are broadly fearful of the threat Russia poses to the United States.
The downside here for Trump would seem to be that a lack of support eventually makes Russia loom larger in Americans’ minds and creates a more tense situation in Eastern Europe.
Prosecuting political rivals
Trump has sent mixed signals on this, too. But he has suggested potential prosecutions of many dozens of political foes.
He tried to target his political foes plenty in his first term — often privately and without the investigations leading to charges. He might be less burdened by the propriety of that this time around. Trump has regularly claimed that the Biden administration is behind his own criminal prosecutions, even as there’s no evidence of political influence. He says he has “every right” to seek prosecutions himself.
If Trump did do it?
The same CNN poll above showed Americans opposed him directing the Justice Department to investigate his political rivals, 69-31. Independents opposed it even more, 73-26.
Targeting vaccines
Trump has long espoused vaccine skepticism, and now he’s talking about giving significant power to one of the country’s foremost vaccine critics, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Like Trump, Kennedy suggests a link between vaccines and autism, a link scientists have not found in study after study.
Exactly what Trump and Kennedy might do isn’t clear. But Trump’s transition co-chairman Howard Lutnick recently suggested Kennedy could use whatever position he gets to demonstrate that vaccines aren’t safe and get them pulled from the market.
Vaccine skepticism took off on the right when the coronavirus vaccines hit the market. But that anti-vaccine fervor has increasingly ensnared other vaccines and led to more opposition to vaccine mandates. A recent Gallup survey showed that only half of Americans think the government should mandate vaccinations for conditions like measles — down sharply from the 1990s.
But Americans also overwhelmingly believe that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, for one, is safe and valuable, with 9 in 10 saying the benefits outweigh the risks.
And the problem with getting rid of vaccines or even just mandates is that diseases tend to reemerge. When Republicans in some states in recent years flirted with revisiting their mandates for non-covid vaccines, they quickly backed off. People might like the idea of choice, but they also tend to line up behind mandates when there is a clear and present danger to the public health.
A good example of that: When covid was raging, Americans strongly supported such mandates.
Courtesy/Source:The Washington Post
