Opinion | What Donald Trump Would Do, in His Own Words

After his conviction on 34 felony charges in New York in May, Mr. Trump, in an interview with Newsmax, escalated his threats to use the Justice Department to go after his political enemies.

As president, Mr. Trump repeatedly sought to use the power of government to punish his political opponents. He was open about trying to get other countries to do his bidding — his attempt to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden led to his first impeachment in 2019. Behind the scenes, he was relentless in trying to get his attorneys general and the I.R.S. to investigate people he thought had wronged him, including Hillary Clinton, his former rival; John Kerry, a former secretary of state; his former F.B.I. director, James Comey; and Andrew McCabe, Mr. Comey’s deputy. None of these efforts led to any charges being filed, but if he is re-elected, Mr. Trump will continue trying to use the Justice Department to harass his enemies.

After the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, the Justice Department established policies aimed at insulating its decision making from White House pressure, and during Mr. Trump’s presidency, many senior Justice officials honored that policy and resisted his demands. But rules can be rewritten, and Mr. Trump has made clear that he intends to pick officials who will take orders from the Oval Office. According to NPR, during the current campaign, Mr. Trump has made more than 100 specific threats “to investigate, prosecute, jail or otherwise punish” people he regards as enemies, including Mr. Biden, Kamala Harris, members of Congress, judges and prosecutors.

Standing on a dirt road along the Mexican border in Arizona in August, Mr. Trump offered a version of the promise that has become the signature of his third presidential campaign.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that he would move quickly to deport millions of people who are living in the United States without legal permission. A key aide, Stephen Miller, said last year that militarized detention camps — “large-scale staging grounds” near the border — would be constructed. Mr. Trump would have broad authority to pursue such a plan, though he’d need Congress to provide a lot of money. The estimated cost of mass deportations runs into the tens of billions of dollars. Such a campaign would tear apart families, disrupt communities and create a host of economic problems.

Mr. Trump similarly promised mass deportations during his 2016 presidential campaign, but over the following four years, his administration deported only about 326,000 people; he was stopped from executing a much broader sweep by a lack of funding, as well as legal challenges and resistance from federal, state and local officials. Mr. Trump’s advisers on immigration policy say that they have learned from that experience and that this time they will be ready to mobilize the government’s resources and to withstand legal challenges. One idea is to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law that could be used to deport legal immigrants, too.

In a Fox News interview on Oct. 13, Mr. Trump said he was primarily concerned about election interference by his domestic political opponents rather than foreign nationals.

Mr. Trump has shown his willingness to target people who oppose him and to subject or expose them to violence to suit his ends. After refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election, he incited rioters to sack the Capitol, and several people died as a result. Four years later, he remains insistent that elections are legitimate only if he wins. His power to cause problems after voting ends on Nov. 5 is more limited than it was the last time, because he is not in power. But he could still try to foment violence — Jan. 6 cannot be forgotten.

His threats to deploy the military against his political opponents, merely for being his political opponents, are a sobering reminder of what kind of president he would be. In June 2020, Mr. Trump threatened to send active-duty military personnel into the streets of American cities to confront Black Lives Matter protesters. He wanted the soldiers to shoot them in the legs, according to his defense secretary, Mark Esper, who then took the unusual step of publicly rebuffing the president. Mr. Trump subsequently fired Mr. Esper, and the former president has made clear that if he is re-elected, he intends to pick officials who will do what he says. He would continue trying to blur the important boundary that has long kept the American military out of domestic politics, and he is implying that opposing him politically is, in his view, tantamount to treason.

Addressing what he has described as a plague of unchecked property crime in American cities, Mr. Trump, at a rally in September in Erie, Pa., suggested a brief burst of police violence as a corrective.

Mr. Trump has a long history of encouraging violence against those he accuses of crimes, a category that stretches from thieves to legal protesters, public officials and journalists. He told people at his rallies to “knock the crap out of” protesters. Former officials say that Mr. Trump wanted the military to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters. On Jan. 6, 2021, he told his supporters to “fight like hell” to prevent Congress from confirming Mr. Biden’s victory. And during the current campaign, he has repeatedly returned to the idea that the government should kill shoplifters. Last October, he called it a “simple” solution to retail theft. Mr. Trump’s campaign insisted that his call for a “rough hour” shouldn’t be taken literally or seriously. But there’s good reason to: The violent language frequently deployed by Mr. Trump, and by his acolytes, is contributing to an environment in which acts of political violence, especially by right-wing extremists, are increasingly common.

At an event in North Carolina in September, Mr. Trump said the Biden administration has not done enough to protect him from assassination attempts, including a possible Iranian plot.

A president has broad powers to authorize military action against a foreign country, and the United States has often responded to acts of state-sponsored terrorism with military force. If Iran committed an act of terrorism or tried to harm an American official, Mr. Trump would have the authority to launch a strike. In similar situations, presidents have retaliated against military and intelligence targets. What Mr. Trump is describing — blowing up cities — would go far beyond those boundaries. During the closing days of Mr. Trump’s presidency, Gen. Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reportedly became so concerned about the possibility of an illegal, unauthorized or accidental military strike that he instructed the Joint Chiefs to ensure that no unlawful orders were carried out and that no actions were taken without calling him first. When John Kelly was serving as Mr. Trump’s secretary of homeland security and James Mattis was serving as secretary of defense, The Associated Press reported that the two men made a private agreement not to leave the country at the same time, so that one of them would be on hand to restrain the president. Last month, more than 700 former and current national security officials released a letter describing Mr. Trump as unfit for the presidency because he is vengeful and impulsive. If Mr. Trump’s own top advisers did not trust him to use force with prudence and restraint, can the American public?

At a rally in the Coachella Valley in October, Mr. Trump suggested that he would withhold emergency aid for California after wildfires unless the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, complied with his demands for changes in unrelated agricultural policies.

As president, Mr. Trump repeatedly sought to prevent the distribution of emergency aid to places run by Democrats. His administration delayed more than $20 billion in emergency aid for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria struck the island in 2017, but it expedited aid for the Florida Panhandle after Hurricane Michael struck the following year. “They love me in the Panhandle,” Mr. Trump said, according to the autobiography of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. “I must have won 90 percent of the vote out there. Huge crowds. What do they need?” After wildfires swept California in 2018, the president initially declined to approve emergency aid. Mark Harvey, a senior official on his National Security Council, told Politico that the funding was approved only after aides presented Mr. Trump with data showing that there were more Trump supporters in Orange County, Calif., than in the entire state of Iowa. During the Covid pandemic, Mr. Trump urged Congress to require blue states to adopt his policy priorities, including the elimination of sanctuary cities and payroll taxation, to be eligible to receive emergency aid. The president of the United States is supposed to act in the interests of all Americans. That is a responsibility Mr. Trump has never taken seriously.

At a March campaign rally in Richmond, Va., Mr. Trump said schools would lose funding if they had policies that were contrary to right-wing positions.

The federal government provides only about 11 percent of public elementary and high school funding, and Congress establishes the conditions. But school districts rely on that funding, especially in lower-income communities, and Mr. Trump could try to tweak those conditions in ways that would advance his agenda. He also could try to withhold funding in defiance of Congress; some conservative legal theorists are eager to test the boundaries between the two branches. School vaccination mandates, which are on the books in all 50 states, have played a critical role in reducing the spread of infectious diseases. Eliminating those requirements would invite a public health disaster. Simply put: It would cause the deaths of American children. One alarming piece of evidence is that states that make it easier for families to claim exemptions from the requirements already experience higher rates of measles and other infectious diseases.

At a rally in South Carolina in February, Mr. Trump said “one of the presidents of a big country” asked him whether the United States would still defend that country if it was invaded by Russia, even if it doesn’t “pay.”

As president, Mr. Trump instructed aides in 2018 to prepare to withdraw the United States from NATO, though he was dissuaded from following through, in part by promises from European nations to increase military spending. That spending has increased: Two-thirds of NATO’s 32 members are now meeting the pact’s defense spending guidelines. But Mr. Trump remains a skeptic. While NATO was created in 1949 to bind Western democracies together and as a counterweight to the power of the Soviet Union and its allies, Mr. Trump shows no appreciation for either vital national interest. He has said that he does not see the point of the alliance or the purpose in expending American resources to protect other nations. Last year, Congress passed a law that expressly prohibits the president from withdrawing the United States from NATO without lawmakers’ authorization. But Mr. Trump could act to undermine the alliance even without withdrawing formally, for example, by reducing the number of troops dedicated to NATO, an approach that some experts describe as quiet quitting.