Judge rejects attempt to enshrine abortion rights on Nevada ballot Ranking the swing states: Where is Biden most in danger against Trump? This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. “I think he would feel just more emboldened to go after people, and so I think it would be a mistake to downplay any of his proposals.” TagsĬopyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. “Trump would feel even more liberated to go after people in a second term, and there were maybe times when he backed down about something in his first term, like the family separations he was doing,” Dallek added. And that’s a major worry,” said Matt Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University. “The constraints to the extent they existed during the first term, those constraints would be less robust and maybe far less robust. Recent polls have also shown Trump leading Biden in key battleground states and in some national polls, underscoring the reality that the former president could reasonably win reelection next November.Įxperts and former Trump administration officials turned critics have raised alarms that the former president could be less constrained in a second term, when the government could be filled with appointees more willing to do his bidding and less inclined to push back on his impulses. His lead in state-level polls is smaller but still more than 20 percentage points in most cases. Trump is dominating the Republican primary field, leading in national polls by an average of nearly 60 percentage points. He demonstrated as president he would act on his grudges, so I think these threats are real,” said Grant Reeher, director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at Syracuse University. “I think that as far as the question of is he just blowing off steam or would he be intent on doing that, I think he would be intent on doing that. Multiple reports in recent years detailed how Trump wanted then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey.įormer Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote in his memoir that Trump wanted to call retired military officials back to active duty to court-martial them after they were critical of the former president. He was impeached in late 2019 over a phone call in which he urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Biden family. Reinforcing the concern among experts is that Trump showed throughout his first term a willingness to use the levers of government to target those who he perceived as enemies. But Trump’s own rhetoric has in many ways set the tone.

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