Trump’s Second Presidency: We Will Persevere
The next four years of Trump will be a brutal and remorseless winter, but we must persevere.
Donald Trump has won the 2024 U.S. presidential election. He won with 312 electoral votes versus 226 for Kamala Harris. Trump also won the popular vote with approximately 50.2% of the votes against 48.2% for Kamala Harris. Not only that, the Republicans also won a majority for both the Senate and the House of Representatives. This means that they now control all three branches of government: the presidency, the legislative-focused Congress and they have a majority of Supreme Court judges. With many traditional republicans and respectable civil servants no longer interested in being part of a second Trump administration, the guardrails are now off. Trump also knows how the system works much better now than when he became president in 2016. The total damage that he can do has now grown substantially.
Trump has pushed many forms of pseudoscience over the years. He has dismissed climate research, he has spread nonsense about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, and he almost completely botched the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also pushed racist pseudoscience on a number of topics such as diseases, allegedly bad genes and blood-poisoning. The list is figuratively endless.
Trump is arguably also a threat to the fabric of the U.S. democratic system. He has falsely claimed that the 2020 U.S. general election was stolen and has supported a literal coup attempt when he sent his supporters to storm the Capitol to prevent the certification of the election. He pardoned war criminals, are pushing economic policies that will hurt trade and lead to higher prices for consumers. However, the threat posed by a second Trump administration grows beyond domestic concerns. On the foreign policy stage, he might pull the U.S. out of NATO, stop supporting Taiwan against a potential Chinese military incursion and greatly reduce funding for the Ukrainian efforts to defend themselves against the Russian war of aggression. He has coddled up to dictators, even going so far as to salute a North Korean general.
Where does this leave the science advocacy community? How can we promote science, critical thinking and scientific skepticism in this coming age of darkness?
Trump has failed many times
For all the danger that a second Trump administration poses, Trump has failed in so many respects. Several of his companies have gone bankrupt, he has been convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records and also for paying hush money.
He tried to launch a non-accredited “university”. It turned out to be a scam that he had to close down after being exposed. He failed. He tried to launch his own Trump Magazine. It had to call it quits within two years. He failed. He tried to make steak, vodka, airlines, casinos, a mortgage company and has tried many other business ventures. Many of them failed completely. Trump tried to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. He failed. He tried to overturn the U.S. 2020 general election. He failed. His foreign policy ambitions also failed in many respects. North Korea, Iran and Russia were able to move forward their positions on the world’s stage. Despite his constant whining about fake news, he has more or less admitted that by “fake news” he really means negative media coverage.
According to the Washington Post, Trump has lied 30 573 times during his first four years in office.
Perhaps one of the most important ways in which the damage that Trump could have caused was somewhat limited was due to his own stunning incompetence.
Trump is ego-driven and chaotic
The staff turnover during his first presidency was enormous and likely unprecedented. During his first term, many in his cabinet left over policy differences, resigned over his support for the January 6 insurrection or got fired for perceived disloyalty.
While Trump is now more experienced and has larger plans on reforming the civil servants into MAGA loyalists.
There is no reason to suppose that he will be more effective during his second presidential term. He will be bogged down by personal conflicts with journalists and other politicians. He will spent an enormous amount of time fighting the media. He will have his energy drained by the new chaotic situations that he creates and statements that he makes every day. He will have a very large turnover of staff like he had during his first term and this will also contribute to inefficiencies. To be sure, Trump knows the system now and is more experiences, but he cannot escape his own ego. Make no mistake, the next four years will be rough, but there are reasons to be hopeful.
There is good in this world that is worth fighting for
At the end of the movie The Two Towers, the ring-bearer Frodo and Sam find themselves in Osgiliath, the earlier capital of Gondor. As Faramir fights of a Nazgûl, Frodo is experiencing existential angst. His dear friend Samwise gamgee delivers the following motivational speech that easily rivals many famous battle speeches:
Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.
Darkness comes. The next four years will be extraordinarily difficult with a wealth of challenges that threatens to overpower everything that we have achieved when it comes to critical thinking and science advocacy. Yet, even the darkest night will end eventually, and a new dawn will spread its warmth. We survived the previous Trump presidency, so we will survive this one.
What hope can we see in the horizon? First, the states can do a lot of good work on climate mitigations even if the federal government takes a step back. Many of the people that Trump will appoint to his cabinet are so inexperienced and incompetent that some of them might not be confirmed, or will not be sufficiently legally or administratively skilled to cause damage to society in an efficient way. There will likely be many legal challenges against the worst actions taken by members of the new cabinet. Even if the Supreme Court ends up supporting the Trump administration, the actions of the latter can be blocked while the case goes through the legal system. Also, the U.S. midterm election are only two years away and it is common for the party of the sitting president to lose support. Without a congressional majority, Trump will face more difficulty in pushing through legislative changes.
I have full confidence that if we all do what we can, we can throw a spanner in the works for the most damaging consequences of a second Trump presidency. We will be able to defend at least some achievements. Once you get someone out of the swamp of pseudoscience and quackery, they are to some degree immunized from falling back into its seeping grasp. We can also contribute to lasting change in the lives of individuals. We can still work to persuade people that vaccines are effective, that GMOs are safe, that water fluoridation reduces cavities, that psychics are scams, that anti-psychiatry harms people, that climate change is real and that fact-checking is vital to a vigorous democracy.
We will fight for science advocacy with soft voices, in peaceful protest and with the aid of the mighty pen.
We will save the minds and lives that we can.
We will never surrender.
We will persevere.
