By Don Newman

December 21,2023

As the calendar ticked from 2023 to 2024 this year, the usual wishes of “Happy New Year” seemed particularly strained. Not just because wars continue to rage in both Ukraine and Gaza, but because 2024 is a presidential election year in the United States.

Any Presidential year in the United States is significant. The impact of the results is felt around the world. But this year, that impact could be greater than usual, just as it turned out to be in the presidential year of 2016. And it could be for the same reason; Donald Trump could win.

Trump surprised most people in 2016 when he defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College even though the campaign that year revealed him to be unprepared and unfit to be president. After taking office, he quickly proved to be just as uninformed, angry, narcissistic, ignorant and dangerous. The Democrats in the House of Representatives twice tried to remove him from office by voting for his impeachment. But both times, the Republicans who controlled the Senate refused to convict him.

This time, Trump knows how Washington operates and he will use his power to cement his control.

After his defeat in the 2020 election by Joe Biden things became even worse. He refused to accept the results. He tried to get officials in states that he lost narrowly to change the vote totals in his favour. When that failed, he tried to get his vice president, Mike Pence, to refuse to certify the votes electing Biden President. When that failed, he fomented a mob of six thousand thugs to attack the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the certification ceremony and almost got Pence killed.

Obviously, none of Trump’s violent and non-violent schemes worked. Biden is president. But because of his efforts to overturn the last election results and because he removed and kept classified documents when he left the White House, he is now facing multiple criminal charges in Washington and Atlanta. And because he is accused of paying hush money to a porn movie star and lying about it, he is also facing criminal charges in New York.

Since his defeat, Trump has repeated the lie that the 2020 election was stolen by the Biden campaign, even though multiple investigations and court cases have shown that was not the case. Given all that has happened — the criminal charges, the incessant repetition of a serious lie and Trump’s refusal to debate the other candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination, conventional wisdom would hold that by now his campaign to return to the White House would be in tatters.

But conventional wisdom has nothing to do with Trump. In fact, the exact opposite is true. In polls taken among Republicans, Trump has overwhelming support to be the party’s presidential standard bearer. More disconcerting, in polls of general voters in swing states such as Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, which determine the outcome of presidential elections, Trump has narrow leads over Biden. Trump won those states in 2016. Biden won them in 2020.

So, as 2024 gets underway, the prospect of another Trump presidency is a real possibility. And this time, if it happens, it will be even more disruptive than the first go-around. This time, Trump knows how Washington operates and he will use his power to cement his control, punish enemies for slights both real and imagined, and perhaps plot to destroy American democracy more effectively than he did in 2021.

Of course, Trump’s re-election would have implications far beyond the United States. For Canada, the review of the re-negotiated NAFTA, or CUSMA, the trade agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico, would fall into a second Trump term. His first time as president, he tried to destroy NAFTA, the predecessor of the current deal. How the current agreement would fare is a matter of concern.

Internationally, whether a Trump administration would continue to support Ukraine in its battle to repel the illegal Russian invasion of its territory would be questionable. That same trademark volatility would apply to an already volatile Middle East.

All of this will start to play out in 2024. That makes “Happy New Year” more aspirational than imperative in these troubled Trump times.

Contributing Writer and columnist Don Newman, an Officer of the Order of Canada and lifetime member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, is Executive Vice President of Rubicon Strategy, based in Ottawa.