Kathrine Frich
Other scholars see a similar danger ahead.
When a massive wave hits the political map, the first reaction in Washington is usually a deep sigh of relief from the winners.
A blowout victory is supposed to settle the score and restore order.
Yet for those who know how power works behind closed doors, a quiet night after the vote does not mean the storm has passed.
A dangerous flashpoint
According to HuffPost, legal experts and former officials warn that President Donald Trump could still attempt new power grabs once the incoming Democratic Congress takes office in January.
Even though Democrats secured at least 250 House seats and up to 56 Senate seats on Tuesday, the real test starts when lawmakers begin blocking his executive orders.
Ty Cobb, who worked as a lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office during Trump’s first term, told HuffPost that losing congressional support will rattle the president.
“This will roil him and he will become increasingly unpredictable,” Cobb said. “He may try more authoritarian crap, but Congress has considerable authority under Article I to rein in a rogue president.”
Cobb added that the full scale of Tuesday’s defeat has likely not hit the president yet. “Reality will gradually become inescapable, and once he feels the true and staggering magnitude of the wholesale rejection he has suffered, he may start the decomposition his narcissism dooms him to,” Cobb told HuffPost.
Threats on the table
Other scholars see a similar danger ahead as Democrats prepare to hold the administration accountable for bypassing laws and deploying masked Homeland Security agents.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor and authoritarianism expert at New York University, told HuffPost that the huge Democratic margin blocks tricks like refusing to certify election results, yet it leaves Trump “even more volatile.”
Because of that volatility, Ben-Ghiat warned that the president “will likely lash out and threaten all kinds of things, including a national emergency,” though she noted he now has “less support for such schemes.”
Former Obama White House lawyer Norm Eisen joked to HuffPost that the vote was simply “Too big to rig.”
For now, the president has stayed surprisingly quiet about voter fraud despite warning on October 10, “We don’t want cheating.
Do you understand me?” At his East Wing ballroom construction site on Wednesday, he even told reporters, “I’ll get along probably with the Democrats unless they want to be destructive, or if they do, I have the power of the veto.”
Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute told HuffPost he was “flabbergasted at how little disruption there was,” while Protect Democracy researcher Amanda Carpenter warned that voters have “no appetite for his authoritarian overreaches.”
