In a second term, Donald Trump has vowed to jail his political rivals, muzzle the press, gut the civil service, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, use federal agencies to reward corporations friendly to him and punish those deemed unfriendly, eliminate taxes on Social Security (resulting in severe benefits cuts), weaken the Federal Reserve’s independence so he can cut interest rates at will (which would likely spook investors and cause capital flight), and build a wall of tariffs around the U.S. economy (which could spark a trade war and possibly a global recession). The press has dutifully reported on these alarming campaign promises, sometimes quoting experts explaining their potentially disastrous consequences.
Most of these stories, however, leave room for the idea—via cleanup-in-aisle-eight quotes from Trump-friendly Republicans or shrewd-sounding assurances from the journalists themselves—that what the former president promises on the campaign trail isn’t what he’ll do in office. For instance, in an otherwise fine column on the potentially catastrophic results of some of Trump’s stated economic plans, The Washington Post’s Eduardo Porter dismisses the seriousness of others:
Many of the proposals voiced by Donald Trump on the campaign trail have been cast aside as probably meaningless. The offer to make interest payments on car loans tax deductible, like the promises to exempt tips and Social Security payments from taxes or restore the state and local tax deductions, can be read as empty electoral pandering to Americans with car loans, restaurant workers, the elderly — you name it.
Porter is right that Trump has expressed more passion about tariffs than FICA taxes. Yet by saying that much of his economic agenda can be “cast aside” as “empty electoral pandering,” Porter is making a mistake that other journalists and millions of voters fall prey to, which could have disastrous electoral consequences.
The assumption that presidential candidates routinely make campaign promises they don’t intend to keep is widely held and wrong—about victorious nominees generally, and Trump in particular. Jonathan Bernstein, the political scientist and Bloomberg columnist, addressed this issue back in 2012 for the Washington Monthly:
Political scientists…have been studying this question for some time, and what they’ve found is that out-and-out high-profile broken pledges like George H. W. Bush’s [“Read my lips: no new taxes” promise] are the exception, not the rule. That’s what two book-length studies from the 1980s found. Michael Krukones, in Promises and Performance: Presidential Campaigns as Policy Predictors (1984), established that about 75 percent of the promises made by presidents from Woodrow Wilson through Jimmy Carter were kept. In Presidents and Promises: From Campaign Pledge to Presidential Performance (1985), Jeff Fishel looked at campaigns from John F. Kennedy through Ronald Reagan. What he found was that presidents invariably attempt to carry out their promises; the main reason some pledges are not redeemed is congressional opposition, not presidential flip-flopping…. More recent and smaller-scale papers have confirmed the main point: presidents’ agendas are clearly telegraphed in their campaigns.
The scholarly findings Bernstein summed up in 2012 are now a bit dated, and it’s fair to ask whether the pattern continued, especially during the administration of Donald Trump, a habitual liar. The answer is yes: Trump, like previous presidents, did govern mainly on his campaign agenda. You can see that in the “Trump-O-Meter” published by PolitiFact, which connected more than a hundred of his 2016 promises to his actions as president. It’s also clear from the Washington Monthly’s “Presidential Accomplishments Index,” published this summer, which tracked 149 significant achievements of the Trump and Joe Biden administrations across 21 policy areas.
The PolitiFact and Monthly data show that Trump didn’t get as much of his agenda implemented as did either Obama or Biden. But our reporting revealed that was primarily due to Trump’s incompetence, inexperience, and a staff with sense enough to slow walk his most lunatic policy directives. Two of those three conditions won’t exist in a second Trump term. And a second term could also bring with it a Republican-controlled Senate and a House still in GOP hands, both more beholden to Trump than during his first term.
So, there’s no reason to assume a second-term Trump won’t try to make good on all or nearly all of the radical, dangerous, fascistic promises he’s making now. And he’s likely to be more successful in getting his way than before.
Trump only wins when Americans don’t believe he’s serious, or as the old saying goes, take him seriously but not literally.
Michael Podhorzer, the political analyst, has observed, that Kamala Harris’ strongest and softest supporters equally believe that Trump’s agenda is dangerous. Where they differ is that strong supporters “are much more likely to believe that Trump will follow through on his agenda,” while the soft supporters think he’s mostly just talk. The soft supporters, Podhorzer says in an email, are also more likely to sit out the election because they don’t think Trump will act on what he’s saying, or at least not in ways that will affect them.
The press has unwittingly fed this dangerous psychological denial among the American public by not reporting what history and the facts show: that what a presidential candidate, including Trump, promises on the campaign trail is what they’ll try to do in office. Getting this truth across to voters is one thing journalists can do, even at this late hour, that could make a real difference.
