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“I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er”.
This famous quote, from Act 3, Scene 4 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth reflects the moment when Macbeth realises that he has gone so far down the path of evil that there is no turning back from it.
Reflecting on the destructive and lawless nature of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, one has to wonder whether he too, like Macbeth, will conclude that his presidency has gone too far down the path of extremism to be able to course-correct.
Instead, despite his tanking poll numbers, he may be tempted to just keep upping the ante.
Trump is already well-known for his pathological aversion to admitting mistakes. Rather than reversing course, in an effort to reassure voters and calm the markets, he could decide to accelerate the chaos in the hope of keeping his opponents off-balance.
He could also try to exploit the non-stop turmoil to justify taking even more extreme measures – such as clamping down further on free speech; tasking the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to slash the budgets of even more federal agencies and bodies designed to oversee the executive; and weaponising institutions of the state, such as the FBI and Department of Justice, to go after even more political opponents.
His list of perceived enemies already includes officials from his first administration, such as Chris Krebs, former Secretary of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who challenged his claims that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged; and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who has publicly criticised him.
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It includes media outlets and journalists who report critically on his administration. It includes law firms that represented clients in lawsuits against him or his businesses, which have been blacklisted from government contracts or bullied into signing agreements to provide it free legal services. It includes respected academic institutions such as Harvard and Columbia Universities, which have been hit or threatened with budget cuts on the flimsy grounds that they have failed to take sufficient action against antisemitism.
This list is now widening to include judges who have issued court orders against his administration, who are now being accused of judicial overreach. Last week, the administration even arrested a judge on the grounds that she had allegedly hindered the detention of an immigrant by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
His list includes non-profit organisations, think tanks, and independent entities which advocate for causes his administration opposes such as climate change; diversity, equity or inclusion (DEI) initiatives; or democracy promotion.
The list even includes entire towns, cities and states which are accused of not cooperating with his policies. On 28 April, the President signed an executive order directing the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to identify within a month those cities and states that are not complying with federal immigration laws, and designate them as “sanctuary jurisdictions”. These could face federal funding cuts and possible criminal and civil lawsuits if they refuse to change their practices.
The administration has also gone after the state of Maine for failing to comply with the President’s executive order to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports, which the state’s Governor has argued violates a Maine anti-discrimination law.
Both the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services have launched inquiries into the state over alleged Title IX violations (Title IX is the federal civil rights law which bans sexual discrimination). Various federally-funded programmes for the state have been suspended, such as ones supporting its coastal economy or its correction programme.
Attorney General Pam Bondi declared that California and Minnesota should also “be on notice” for alleged non-compliance with the Trump administration’s transgender policies.
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The narrative to Trump’s devoted cadre of hardcore followers is that these tactics are necessary in order to overcome the ‘deep state’, which is allegedly resisting his plans to ‘Make America Great Again’.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has used her official pulpit to spout a non-stop series of exaggerations, distortions, and outright falsehoods about the administration’s policies – for example, branding some of the forcibly deported immigrants as criminal gang members without providing a shred of evidence. Meanwhile, Elon Musk uses his X platform to multiply smears against political opponents.
But there also exists a far more sinister motive for Trump not just to want to double-down on his extremism, but perhaps even to go as far as to try to violate the constitutional ban on running for a third term in 2028 – a notion he has already started to toy with, judging by his campaign’s launch of ‘Trump 2028’-themed merchandise.
This is to avoid the prospect of facing a deluge of lawsuits against him as soon as he steps down in January 2029, for gross abuse of power and multiple conflicts of interest.
This would include the charge of having used his office for personal gain – the most egregious example of which is the $Trump meme coin he issued at the start of his second presidency, which critics say offers a hidden way for people to buy favours from him. Senators Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren have recently called for an official ethics investigation into Trump’s plans to host a private dinner with holders of his meme coin, alleging that it may constitute “pay-to-play” corruption.
Trump may hope that the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling giving him presidential immunity in a case involving election interference may offer him widespread protection against any future lawsuits arising from his second term. Chief Justice John Roberts held that “the president cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority” because “if a former president’s official acts are routinely subjected to scrutiny in criminal prosecutions, ‘the independence of the executive branch’ may be significantly undermined”.
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Writing in The Hill recently, Nick Akerman, a former assistant special Watergate prosecutor and a former assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York, noted that “in response to the Supreme Court’s decision, the White House has cynically dressed up as ‘official acts’ each of Trump’s illegal edicts aimed at law firms, universities, and his two former disloyal administration officials… Based on the Supreme Court’s immunity decision, none of this evidence proving Trump’s true motivation can be used to rebut presidential immunity to show that Trump was not acting in his ‘official’ capacity as president. Roberts was clear, writing ‘in dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the president’s motives’.”
However, what is to prevent any future Democrat-led administration from exploiting those same wide executive powers to launch official investigations against Trump once he has left office, and from further following Trump’s example by defying any court orders seeking to prevent such investigations?
Perhaps Trump could try to grant himself a pre-emptive pardon as his last act before leaving office in 2029 (assuming that he does not win re-election). But Trump has already set an unhelpful precedent which could be used against him, by seeking to overturn the pardons which Joe Biden issued for members of his family in the last days of his presidency.
Even if the Supreme Court’s ruling does offer Trump personally a strong degree of protection, it is unclear if this would extend to officials in his administration who have facilitated his lawlessness, let alone the members of his family or business cronies who have sought to cash in on his presidency. Even if it proves impossible to bring any cases to successful conclusion, the very process of investigation and public trials will expose the administration’s actions to unwelcome scrutiny.
Collectively, Trump and his close associates therefore have a strong interest in trying to cling onto power through any means possible.
This could even include engineering some major domestic crisis, or an international emergency, such as conflict with Iran. Perhaps that’s one reason why Trump has been so reluctant to fire Pete Hegseth from the Department of Defence, despite his manifest incompetence and unsuitability for the role. Trump needs to have people around him who are totally loyal and can be relied upon to do his bidding without question. In turn, the more his associates are implicated in his administration’s misdeeds, the greater their self- interest in propping him up. They sink or swim together.
Trump would not be the first authoritarian leader to go down this path in order to stay on in power.
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Consider the case of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who many believe has deliberately extended the war in Gaza in order to justify emergency powers and stave off the numerous corruption cases against him. Or Russia, where many believe the Russian state orchestrated the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow as a false-flag operation blamed on Chechens in order to garner public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya and solidify Vladimir Putin’s ascent to power.
Conventional wisdom suggests that, in a democracy, any leader facing tanking opinion polls either voluntarily changes course, is forced to do so by their party, or is unceremoniously ousted by voters at the next election. At the 100-day point, many pundits are speculating that the tide is already beginning to turn against President Trump.
Even if he personally remains reluctant to back down, the sheer combination of hostile public opinion, the multiplying number of court orders against his administration, the turbulence of financial markets, and perhaps, even, a few brave Republican members of Congress ready to speak out, may finally begin to tell against him.
But this is a President who has defied all conventional wisdom so far. He has an affinity for dictators. What if he chooses to go down a different, more dangerous, path instead?