I expect former president Donald Trump to omit declaring his candidacy, skip getting nominated, bypass running and denounce the 2024 presidential election, but, in the fall of 2022, declare he has won that 2024 election and is the president-elect. Millions of loyal, grateful, relieved patriots will recite, “Why of course. It’s only fair. After all, the 2020 steal. And Obama!”
Certain elements of the Secret Service will immediately close ranks, “sanitize” their cellphones, and protect him from threatening facts.
Following his victory declaration he will begin crony-pardoning and demanding prison gates be thrown open for Steve Bannon and his ilk. Alex Jones will be awarded a Medal of Freedom. Trump will briefly toy with pardoning unindicted former Vice President Mike Pence for his dereliction of duty on Jan. 6, but then will finally declare “No Pardon For Traitors.” Make America White Again (MAWA) members will cheer.
Trump will order a corpse, preferably a former wife, be buried in each of his golf courses, making them tax-free cemeteries. Hundreds will volunteer to marry/divorce him and be buried in service to their liege lord. They do that for him.
Presidential orders for the arrest of Democrats and their transport to Guantanamo will flow. Momentarily, peace will allow Christian Nationalists to take a breath.
Attempting presidentishness (presidentiality?), out of character, Trump will attend to the problems of the day. First, an executive order concerning the Second Amendment right to own one or more German Leopard 2A7 Main Battle Tanks. Many of his devout followers have cited the Supreme Court observation that the Second Amendment does not limit the armament an individual can own. They infer that the originalist position permits, perhaps even implicitly encourages, tank ownership. They argue free white people must be sufficiently armed to throw off the yoke of tyranny should it come rolling into town on the M1A2 System Enhancement Package, a successor to the M1A2 Abrams tank.
Next Trump will consider the polar melting threat to golf courses and hotels. Naturally his response will be ketchup-colored blind rage. Various close advisors, also known as interim officials whose advice he never takes, will say, off the record, that he’ll be so outraged by the polar misbehavior that he’ll consider punishing the regions with nuclear attacks using B83 bunker busting 1.2 megaton yielding nuclear bombs. So far, only the Russians having more than 40 ice breaker ships near the north pole, and President Putin’s reluctance to permit the attacks, will give Trump pause.
Also, Trump has indicated he needs to respond to the violently inhospitable Ukrainian response to the peaceful exploration of Ukraine by loving, logistics-less, religious pilgrims from Russia. President Putin, who helped Trump plan his nonelection declaration of a peaceful transfer of power, will urge Trump to stop the flood of sophisticated weapons into Ukraine. The U.S. Defense Secretary, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the UK, and the EU will argue strongly against Trump complying with Putin’s demands. Naturally, Trump mistrusts their advice and will discontinue the weapons shipments.
West Wing leakage suggests that China’s response to Congresswoman Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan will move Trump to revise U.S.-China policy. He likely will reject the one-China policy, reject the two-China alternative, and move to a no-China position. This policy entails denying China’s existence. Trump recently realized if you can assert the existence of something (election fraud) when no evidence for it exists, it is a reasonable continuation to assert the non-existence of something (China) when evidence for its existence is abundant. Now that is leadership. Who else could so peacefully dissolve all difficulties with China!
Trump associates also report he will change voting for public office by abandoning one-person, one-vote and moving to a new system: same-sex married persons would each get one half of a vote; other LBGTQ persons would get .75 of a vote, subtly disincentivizing gay marriage; twisting originalism, people of color would get 3/5 of a vote; non-Christian white people, especially Jews, would get no vote but could enter two-year religious reeducation camps; and white Christians would get a vote weighted by the fraction (100/IQ). Thus, someone with an IQ of 50 would get their vote weighted by 2, and someone with an IQ of 150 would get their voted weighted by 2/3.
Trump claims this 100/IQ weight gives reparations to his crowd, the dim, who have suffered at the hands of the elitist bright. As a genius with an IQ that he estimates at 200, he is willing to make the sacrifice of having only half a vote.
Richard S. Bogartz is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
