A Trump Presidency

Sept. 30, 2016

Let’s take a brief look at a Donald Trump presidency, based on some of what he claims he will do. Sometimes he’s a little inconsistent.

Trump’s immigration plan, for example. There is, of course, The Wall. He will build a wall, and Mexico will pay for it.

He will round up and deport all 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States. Or he will round up and deport everybody but children. Or he will round up everybody but children and their law-abiding parents. Or he will identify, round up and deport all the criminal illegal immigrants.

He will stop all legal immigration “except for smart people.” Or he will stop all Muslims from immigrating. Or he will stop any immigration from countries that support terrorists. Or he will stop immigration of Muslims from countries with “active terrorism.” Or he will make Muslim immigrants sign an affidavit declaring they do not support Sharia law.

He will ban all refugees, including orphaned children. Or he will ban all refugees from Middle Eastern countries. Or he will ban all refugees from countries that sponsor terrorism.

He will cancel all trade agreements. Or he will renegotiate all trade agreements to make them more favorable. Or he will force other countries to agree because he’s the “greatest negotiator ever.”

He will punish American companies that have off-shored jobs by putting a 35 percent tariff on products they export back to the United States. Or he will make Congress pass laws preventing U.S. companies from moving manufacturing operations outside the country. Or both.

He will change the First Amendment so it’s easier to sue the media for unfavorable coverage. He will make sure all Muslims and their mosques in the U.S. are under surveillance. He will initiate religious, racial and ethnic profiling. He will nominate Supreme Court justices who agree with him. He will reinstate “stop and frisk” police tactics.

He will “bomb the s**t” out of ISIS and take Iraq’s oil. He will kill the families of terrorists and torture prisoners “much worse than water boarding — much, much worse.” He will make the generals — whom he has called “rubble” — do what he tells them to do. He will work with “great leaders” like Vladimir Putin.

He will increase the minimum wage. Or he will not increase the minimum wage. Or he will increase the minimum wage “slowly and not too much.”

Now, let’s take a look at what he can actually do.

Mexico legislators already assertively told him they won’t pay for a wall. It’s unlikely Congress will find the $15–$30 billion the U.S. General Accounting Office estimates such a wall would cost.

Rounding up 11 million people and deporting them is a prohibitively expensive, practical impossibility. We don’t know who they are or where they live, which complicates matters. And the business community that relies on that labor force will prevent it from happening.

(The current president has already deported and prosecuted more illegal immigrants than any president in history, and the total number here has declined by more than a million in the last eight years.)

Trump can’t stop all legal immigration. Again, the business community, especially the tech sector, will prevent it. He can’t single out people based on their religion, like, for example, Muslims, because it is wildly unconstitutional. Nor can he demand a religion-specific loyalty test for the same reason.

He could cancel trade agreements, but it is unclear why any countries would be willing to engage in a new agreement if Trump simply could cancel it on a whim.

He isn’t going to slap a 35 percent tariff on Ford or any other company that has offshored manufacturing; Congress, not the president, has that constitutional responsibility. Most members of Congress count such companies as constituents, and neither will be excited about higher tariffs.

He most certainly cannot change the First Amendment so he can sue the New York Times, or whomever, for libel. The notion that two-thirds of both the House and Senate and three-fourths of the states would approve such an amendment is absurd.

We’d have to bomb several countries into oblivion to wipe out ISIL. That probably wouldn’t be much of a help. Torturing people is against our laws, and U.S. military leaders already have said they won’t follow an order to undertake illegal acts.

The federal courts have ruled both racial profiling and stop-and-frisk as unconstitutional.

Many times, in fact.

He can’t ... oh, never mind. The reality is that when Trump isn’t lying — Politifact.com reports that only 29 percent of what he says on the campaign trail is true — he’s proposing something that isn’t constitutional, legal or possible.

We don’t know what Trump would do as president. We only know, thankfully, he can’t do most of what he says he will do.