At this point, the coronavirus pandemic will intersect with Trump’s authoritarian impulses in truly frightening ways. With parts of the country experiencing levels of privation and death rarely seen in peacetime, Trump will feel justified in invoking emergency powers. In a declared state of emergency, the president has extraordinary powers, including the ability to freeze an American’s finances and deprive them of the ability to legally work, to control digital communications, and to deploy the military domestically. Aside from these enumerated items, Trump has repeatedly shown that he anyway believes that there are no legal or constitutional limits on presidential authority.
When he no can longer lie or deny, he’ll blame immigrants, journalists, people of color, liberals and other enemies