The Only Way to Prepare for Trump Is to Expect the Worst

Even the thought of the United States using any kind of military force to take over Greenland is nuts, and any rational person could provide many reasons why doing so would be foolish, reckless, and illegal.

That’s probably why, until now, people haven’t taken US threats of annexing the territory of a NATO ally as seriously as they ought to have. After all, who would be crazy enough to do something so mind-bogglingly stupid?

Donald Trump, that’s who.

And what is as crazy as the president’s insistence that the US “needs” Greenland, and that the only acceptable outcome is for the Danish territory to be turned over to him “the easy way or the hard way,” is that people dealing with Trump have still not realized that they have to be prepared for him to do the most foolish, reckless, and illegal thing.

In this case, even though (or perhaps because) he has been talking about acquiring Greenland for years, albeit in an increasingly blustering manner, they dismissed it as just another insane idea in the president’s head.

They are right, of course. That’s what it is. However, that doesn’t mean that it won’t happen.

We have seen this play out many times before.

Pre-Trump, nobody would have thought that a president would stage a coup after refusing to accept the outcome of an election. Or allow his vanity to get in the way of an effective pandemic response. Or be so openly corrupt. Or try to turn the US into an authoritarian state. Or blatantly lie about everything and anything. Or create a Gestapo-like police force. Or turn the Oval Office into something resembling the anteroom of a bordello. Or demolish the White House. Or attack a NATO ally. Or conduct domestic and internal affairs like a mafioso.

But all of this is happening, and because they do not expect a US president to behave like a mentally ill criminal, the people who have to counteract his lawlessness are caught flat-footed all the time.

What they should be doing is imagining the absolute worst they think Trump might do, and then preparing for a scenario that is even more troubling.

Right now, for example, every person interested in preserving US democracy should figure out all of the “traditional” ways in which a corrupt head of state could rig an election and assume that those things are going to happen in November.

However, that’s not enough.

They also have to think about what that most reckless and illegal thing might be with which Trump will try to ensure that Democrats won’t win control of either chamber of Congress.

Because while Trump may feel that he “needs” Greenland, he needs a GOP-led Congress, i.e., one that conducts next to no oversight and rubberstamps whatever he wants, even more.

And if he is willing to dismantle the most successful military and diplomatic alliance in human history and risk armed conflict with just about all of America’s greatest allies to achieve the former, what do you think he is willing to do to accomplish the latter?