As we approach the November 5, 2024 election, we reflect on the past four years and consider how history might have played out if Trump had won the 2020 election. We do not intend to relitigate that election. Instead, let us assume that 20,000 votes across three states had gone the other way, resulting in Trump’s reelection. We set out to explore what the country and the world might look like, and, more importantly, what the future would have held if that had happened. The answers we discovered may be surprising.
Imagine a world where, on November 3, 2020, officials in swing states did not stop counting votes at midnight. Instead, they continued counting, and by 2 AM on November 4, Trump was declared the winner of the election. Trump’s presidency would likely have continued much as it had during his first four years, with him attempting to implement his ideas and policies while the Deep State, for want of a better word, vigorously pushed back. Things would have progressed steadily, but it is unlikely that there would have been any significant change in overall outlook.
While there would have been no January 6, there probably would’ve been a second Trump impeachment on some other contrived grounds. Would Trump have released the infamous Russiagate binder that might have brought accountability for the treachery perpetrated against both Trump and the country? Given that the Deep State bureaucracy would have used the same dirty tricks to stop it from being released that they used during Trump’s final days as president, it is likely we’d have never seen the binder. We could go on and on. At every twist and turn, the cat-and-mouse playbook of the first four years would simply have been replayed, over and over.
While a Trump presidency from 2021 to 2024 would likely have continued along the same trajectory it had been on, several outcomes would certainly have differed from what eventually happened. The first that comes to mind is the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump has consistently stated that, while the withdrawal would have proceeded, he would have retained control of the sprawling Bagram Air Force Base, strategically located near Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and not far from China’s nuclear facilities. This approach would have addressed killed two birds with one stone, and it is unlikely that the Taliban would have been able to advance so quickly on Kabul had the United States maintained the base instead of abandoning it without even informing the then-Afghan government.
The war in Ukraine, particularly the conflict that began in 2022, might have been averted. Trump would likely have also attempted to resolve the earlier conflict that began in Donbass in 2014. However, given that he would have faced the same obstacles as during his first term—chief among them the criminalization of diplomacy with Russia due to the Russia collusion hoax—it is uncertain whether he would have been any more successful. In other words, that situation too would likely have remained at a stalemate.
There are numerous other examples we could discuss, ranging from the Middle East to the border to the ballooning deficit. But let’s face it: while things would have been far better under Trump instead of Biden and Harris, there is little likelihood that there would have been any fundamental change in direction.
Delusions of Adequacy 