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Donald Trump’s opponents shouldn’t celebrate too quickly even if, as expected, his Republican Party is routed at next week’s US midterm elections. Former UK diplomat Alex Hall Hall has told the Byline Times Podcast the US President is likely to react to defeat by sowing chaos domestically and becoming even more extreme in his foreign policy.
Opinion polls show that Trump’s personal ratings are tanking, and there’s a distinct possibility the Democrats will take control of both sides of Congress – the House Of Representatives and the Senate. Hall Hall said that in this scenario, “I genuinely worry that the administration will try and disrupt the swearing in of the new Congress. If the elections go against them, I think there will be lawsuits, there will be challenges, there will be attempts to claim there was foreign interference, or non-citizens voting, or faulty voting machines. And even if they don’t win all of those challenges, it could cause, particularly in close races, enough chaos and disruption and enough snarling in court cases, that by January 3, when the new Congress is supposed to be sworn in, it might provide an opportunity for the Trump administration to postpone it or disavow the elections, or declare a state of emergency. That is something I’m genuinely worried about.”
It’s not as though Trump doesn’t have form in this regard. He famously refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election which swept Joe Biden into the White House; an episode which culminated in the January 6 riots, when thousands of protestors stormed the Capitol in hope of overturning the result. In a cynical attempt to woo disillusioned voters and reduce energy prices this time around, Trump recently lifted sanctions on Russian diesel imports, but Hall Hall says that voters can see through this “naked ploy”.
“The implication,'“ she said, “was that it was Ukraine's attacks on Russian oil that were partly to blame for their rising prices, rather than – as everybody knows, including most Americans – the war he started in the Middle East against Iran. It's a hopeless deal because the amount of diesel oil he will buy from Russia, according to one estimate, will provide enough fuel for 20 hours in the US of diesel energy. It's a drop in the ocean, and by far the more serious restriction on oil supply is because of the situation with Iran and the Straits of Hormuz and the Houthis. So it is a very transparent ploy. But I don't think it's going to work. I don't think Americans are fooled. I think most Americans understand that the prices at the pump are affected by Iran, not by Ukraine, and most Americans disapprove of the dealings with Russia over this. But in the process, he's selling Ukraine down the river.”
Assuming the Republicans do lose control of Congress, Trump will be left as a lame duck President as far as domestic politics are concerned. Hall Hall fears that, as a result, he’ll become more belligerent on the international stage. “Every President does this in their last two years”, she observed. “If they've lost control of the domestic agenda because they've lost control of Congress, they switch their attention even more to foreign policy because, as Commander-in-Chief, Congress has almost no control over what they do. I think Trump will become even more dangerous. He can sow chaos. He can sow disruption. So I think, sadly, even if the Republicans get defeated in the midterms, I think it's going to lead to Trump being even more erratic, even more dangerous – leaving the Democrats still floundering about how to handle it.”
Watch Alex Hall Hall with Adrian Goldberg on the Byline Times Podcast here.
