United States: the mammoth in the room
The American stock market continues its vertiginous ascent, with the S&P 500 reaching an all-time high this month (as it often does). This is barely news – the US economy has been defying expectation for the past decade, perplexing the columnists who regularly predict its demise in leading financial newspapers. And, true to this tradition, many analysts have recently expressed concerns over a widening gap between valuations and profits. I join them in their scepticism.
Your eyes having ventured thus far, dear reader, you probably expect another piece on the supposed AI bubble, talk of which has taken over the media in recent weeks. Unfortunately, my unfinished biochemistry degree may have given me outstanding Quizlet-making skills, but it has left me with woeful quantitative deficits which hinder my ability to speculate on the future of the AI industry.
No matter. My point is that people have many legitimate worries concerning the future of America, the world’s leading economic, military and technological power. Beyond the AI frenzy, the issues of tariffs, partisanship, assassination, wildfires, ICE crackdowns, and cancel culture all garner much attention. Yet much to my surprise there is one likely scenario that would completely rewire the world order, and that only gets sparse, timid coverage.
The fact is that the sitting US president is openly considering a self-coup.
“It would be the greatest honour of my life to serve not once, but twice or three times,” Trump said at a rally in January. Apparently disappointed by his Republican friends who refused to admit he was overtly disregarding the 22nd amendment, the president clarified his stance in March. “I’m not joking,” he said, referring to (but not specifying all) “methods which you could do it.”
These claims aren’t just random word permutations stemming from the monkey-with-a-typewriter nature of Trumpian speech, next to claims that windmills give cancer, and promises to kiss the men attending his rallies. Trump’s actions also steal more pages from The Dictator’s Handbook than The Art of the Deal.
Indeed, the presenter of The Apprentice has not lost knack for brutal job terminations, and has been busy firing nonpolitical senior staff in key government agencies since his second term began. The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (the Pentagon’s intelligence agency), the director of the NSA, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the country’s most senior military official), the inspectors general of seventeen agencies, including defence...
These terminations were accompanied by unusual and sweeping changes in senior staff. Conclusion: the people who could oppose an unconstitutional seizure of power in 2028 are either gone or on the way out. Classic salami slicing, hidden between burger buns.
The official Trump store also sells Trump 2028 caps for $50 (“Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat”). The president showed these hats to his Azerbaijani, French and Ukrainian counterparts (having accused the latter of being a “dictator”... was that a compliment?), and displayed a few on his desk earlier this month.
But would he dare? Well, he sure did in 2020, when American democracy survived thanks to a few members of Trump’s circle who thwarted his crackbrained attempt at overturning the election. But only loyalists and lunatics have been cast in season two of the Trump show, including some, such as Steve Bannon, who have explicitly called for the president to run for a third term.
So the risk is very real. And throwing money at a country that will likely see its political system severely disrupted from the inside in just over three years seems unwise at best.
Why is this relevant to readers of a British student newspaper? When America sneezes, the world catches a cold – and Britain, isolated from its European partners and uniquely dependent on transatlantic ties, goes straight to A&E. If nothing else, the breakdown of NATO’s largest member would be a pain faced to the threat of Russian expansionism.
Under the cover of apparent chaos, Trump is slowly thawing the mammoth of democratic usurpation, long considered extinct in the West. As MAGA’s incremental politicisation of government institution is overshadowed by technological and geopolitical concerns, the world forgets to prepare for the big, beautiful coup.
