In just over an hour, Donald J. Trump suggested that the United States default for the first time in history, cast doubt on the country’s commitment to defending Ukraine against Russian invasion, dangled pardons for most of the rioters of the Capitol who had been convicted of crimes, and refused to say he would abide by the results of the next presidential election.
The second-term vision outlined by Mr. Trump at a CNN event at town hall on Wednesday would mark a sharp departure from the core US values that have underpinned the nation for decades: creditworthiness, credibility with international allies and compliance with the rule of law at home.
Mr. Trump’s provocations were hardly shocking. His time in office was often defined by a “the rules don’t apply to me” approach to governance and a lack of interest in maintaining post-World War II national security order, and at the age of 76 he is not required to change much.
But his performance nevertheless marked an escalation of his effort to bend the administration to his will as he once again runs for the White House, but this time with greater mastery of the Republican Party’s pressure points and a plan to demolish the federal bureaucracy.
The televised event crystallized that the version of Mr Trump who could return to office in 2025 — promising to be a vehicle of “retribution” — is likely to rule as he did in 2020. In that final year of his presidency Trump removed people perceived as disloyal and promoted those who wanted to give in completely to his instincts — things he didn’t always do during the first three years of his administration, when his incumbent advisers often talked him out of drastic policy changes.
“From my perspective, there was an evolution of Donald Trump over his four years, with 2020 I think being the most dramatic example of him — the real him,” said Mark T. Esper, who served as Mr. Trump’s Secretary of Defense . “And I suspect that would be his starting point if he came to power in 2024.”
In a statement, Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, rejected criticism of the former president, who he said “spoke directly to Americans suffering from Biden’s backsliding and President Trump’s desire to see security and economic to achieve prosperity. He added, “Understandably, this view is not shared by the failed warmongers, political losers and career bureaucratic hacks – many of whom he has fired or defeated – who have caused all of America’s problems.”
At the town hall event, Mr. Trump came up with almost haughty ideas that would change the country’s position in the world, promising to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours and refusing to commit to supporting the country, a US ally that has relied on billions. dollars to repel the Russian attack.
“Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins insisted.
Mr. Trump dodged.
“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing,” he replied, adding that he was focused on ending the conflict. “I think in terms of arranging so that we stop killing all these people.” He failed to mention that the majority of the murders were committed by Russia.
Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat who sits on the foreign relations committee and is close to President Biden, said there were international fears over Mr Trump’s return.
“His performance last night only reinforced what so many of our allies and partners have been telling me for the past two years, that a return of Trump to the White House would be a return to chaos,” he said.
Some Republican elected officials skeptical of US aid to Ukraine praised Mr Trump’s performance. Ohio Senator JD Vance called his response in Ukraine “true statesmanship.”
Mr. Miller argued that Mr. Trump had an “entire term without new wars, and he is ready to do it again”.
In New Hampshire, Republican audiences swallowed Mr. Trump’s one-liners and a slew of insults — to Ms. Collins (a “mean person,” he taunted, echoing his old attack on Hillary Clinton), to former President Nancy Pelosi, to E. Jean Carroll, the woman whom a jury found this week to have sexually assaulted and defamed Mr. Trump. And the crowd was dissatisfied as he once again attempted to rewrite history on January 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to undo his election loss.
“It was a beautiful day,” Trump said.
If he becomes president again, he said, he would “most likely” pardon “a large portion” of his supporters who were convicted of their actions on January 6. “They were there with love in their hearts,” he said of the crowd, which he beamed had been the “biggest” of his career.
“You see what you get, which is a presidency that is not bound by truth and is not bound by the constitutional order,” said Utah Senator Mitt Romney, the most prominent Republican Party Trump critic who remains on Capitol Hill. “The idea that people convicted of crimes are all pardoned, or mostly pardoned, is quite a departure from the principles of the constitution and of our party.”
Mr. Trump also embraced the possibility of defaulting on the deadlock between President Biden and Republicans over the debt ceiling, an act economists say could spell catastrophe for the global economy.
“You might as well do it now, because you’ll do it later, because we have to save this country,” Trump said. “Our country is dying.”
Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican running a long-running campaign for the 2024 presidency, said Mr Trump’s potential return to the White House posed a “huge” risk to the nation.
“He has shown such disrespect for our institutions of government that are critical to our democracy,” Hutchinson said, adding that talk of default had made him extremely unnerved. “He talked like it was okay for the United States not to pay the debt. And that’s the same as his past business practices of using bankruptcy as a tool and applying that to the government.”
Despite such warnings from old guard Republicans, the cheers of New Hampshire’s conservative crowd at the CNN event were an audible reminder of Trump’s big lead in Republican primaries.
Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s two presidential victories, said in an interview that “for true believers and staunch supporters, it was a boffo performance” by Mr. Trump. But he said other Republicans would now be forced to answer for “a large pile of harmful material on their doorstep.”
“Do other Republicans believe rioters who attacked police who broke into the Capitol on January 6 and in some cases attempted to overthrow the government should be pardoned?” asked Mr. Rove. Do other Republicans agree that it doesn’t matter if the United States government defaults on its debts? Don’t other Republicans care who wins in Ukraine?”
One of the most controversial policies during Mr Trump’s presidency was the forced separation of migrant parents from their children at the southern border, which Mr Trump reversed in June 2018 after huge backlash.
But at town hall on Wednesday, Mr. Trump proposed reviving it. “Well, if you have that policy, people won’t come,” he said. “If a family hears they’re going to be separated, they love their family, they don’t come.”
Casual observers may be inclined, as some did in 2016, to accept Mr. Trump’s most extreme statements, such as his casual embrace of defaulting the nation, seriously but not literally.
But beneath Mr. Trump’s debauchery lurks detailed plans to smash the federal civil service. These proposals have been brewing for more than two years within a network of well-funded and Trump-connected outside groups.
In the final, chaotic weeks of the 2020 election, after drafting a new legal theory in strict secrecy, Mr Trump’s lawyers released an executive order known as Schedule F which sought to wipe out most employment protections against layoffs for tens of thousands of federal workers.
Mr. Trump ran out of time to carry out that plan. But a constellation of conservative groups is preparing to revive the effort if he regains the presidency in 2025.
Under pressure from Ms. Collins, Mr. Trump would not say he was willing to accept the 2024 results.
Former Representative Liz Cheney, who lost her Republican primary bid for re-election after leading the House investigation into Jan. 6, said of Trump’s town hall, “Virtually everything Donald Trump says strengthens the case against him.”
“Donald Trump has made it clear once again that he fully intended to corruptly obstruct Congress’ official process of counting the electoral votes to overturn the 2020 election,” said Ms. her defeat last year. “He says what happened on January 6 was justified, and he celebrates those who attacked our Capitol.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump also berated his former vice president, Mike Pence, for sticking to the 2020 election results and dismissed the suggestion that Mr. Pence was in danger on January 6, even as the Secret Service tried to evacuate him. the capital.
“I don’t think he was in any danger,” Trump said.
Marc Short, who was with Mr. Pence as his chief of staff that day, spoke out about Mr. Trump’s double standard in defending violence by his supporters while claiming to be broadly championing law and order.
“Many of us called for the prosecution of BLM rioters when they destroyed private businesses,” Mr Short said, referring to Black Lives Matter supporters. “It’s hard to see how there’s any other threshold when rioters injure law enforcement, threaten officials and loot the Capitol.”