The Deuce: Narrator: ...and it didn't*

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We will pressure and threaten Ukraine to accept a cease fire or peace treaty that cedes control of the areas of the country Russia has conquered. Trump will use threats against NATO and individual countries to try and force Europe to also put the screws to Ukraine. Once that is done, Trump will withdraw the US from NATO.

He will bully Taiwan to try and force them to share IP and significantly expand their US facilities. “We are protecting you and you’re taking advantage by running a big trade surplus in key technologies!” Reasonably likely he takes a similar tack with South Korea and Japan, but maybe he just pulls out troops.

Big branching point decision here is whether China decides to try an invasion of Taiwan. Trump will likely make some noise about not being willing to fight for them, and he likely wouldn’t if it came to that. But will China want to risk this in the short term, or continue to just expand influence as we cede the entire world to them?

Domestically, in the short term they will continue their assault on the government. I’d expect the Department of Education and the EPA will be in the crosshairs first, but across the board they are trying to decimate the workforce and either divert all funding streams for personal or political benefit, or else slash or eliminate them. Social Security and Medicare will probably be last on the list, since too many people rely on them. But after the midterms, they will be slashed, too, once power is firmly consolidated.

The speed here will depend on the other big branching point—whether they will openly defy court rulings or not, and if so, how other groups respond. But the work will go on, regardless.

They will massively purge higher levels of the civil service, replacing them with partisans. Starting with “enemies” like the FBI, but this will expand across the whole government as fast as they can manage. Also almost certainly will eliminate or massively reduce federal pensions, since they all go to enemies of the regime.

Beyond sabotaging government functions, the other clear goal of all the cost cutting is to provide spending offsets to allow them to push through more permanent tax cuts. Which will be top loaded for high earners and the wealthy but will have a few sops to the middle class.

They will definitely be actively working to compromise voting and elections, to consolidate their position. If they are successful by the midterms I’d expect the resulting Republican Congress to at least eliminate the filibuster so they can rubber stamp everything the admin does. But maybe they’ll just vote Trump emergency powers so they don’t have to be bothered.

There will probably be some political prosecutions of enemies during the next two years, but here again I’d expect things to accelerate after the midterms.

Immigration I expect them to really move out on in a few months, once they’ve had time to prep and prepare. Large scale sweeps, mass roundups, internment camps and mass deportations, hitting hundreds of thousands of people, and possibly involving the military, at least to construct the camps and serve as guards. Especially if they do decide to respect court orders for now, this will provide an arena for large scale action.

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How much worse can it get?