Okay, so you’re Al Franken. You had a successful career as a comedian and actor, and the type of comedy you did naturally led you to a life in politics. You get a radio show, and it’s wildly popular among liberals on Air America Radio. Unbelievably, you get elected to the Senate in the footsteps on your hero, Paul Wellstone, one of the most popular senators ever elected.

Then, Republicans and conservative Democrats call for you to resign over a picture that literally everyone agrees was a joke, which only depicts something inappropriate about to happen. Nothing inappropriate ever DID happen, mind you, but it looked bad. Never mind that Republicans rally ’round the family when one of their own gets caught soliciting sex in an airport men’s room. Never mind that they protect their own even when they’re accused of statutory rape by four different women with 30 corroborating witnesses.

Who’s the guest you want on the phone immediately after Donald Trump, the poster boy for the thing that brought down your career, only, you know, he actually DID do it, wins re-election?

Is it a guy from the second-most conservative think tank in Washington? Because that’s who Al called up. After the life he’s led, after everything he’s achieved, Al finally decided to settle in with his wife of nearly 50 years, Franni, and just go ahead and do a podcast. And who should he call to get the lowdown on what we can expect from Trump this time around but Norm Ornstein, a fellow from the American Enterprise Institute.

Those are the guys that the Heritage Foundation grew up idolizing.

Okay, so Norm’s not just any old Republican. I just point out his main organization so that you can see this is a guy with a background much further to the right than someone you might expect on Al’s show. And I point it out to underscore just how serious he is when he says that the upcoming Trump term could be a literal “hellscape.”

His view is so grim that Al even titled the episode accordingly “The Coming Hellscape.”

Sure, there are the things you know about, like an economic crash and mass deportations. But did you know that even Republicans believe that Trump plans to deport people who are here legally as well? Your good friend Luis that you’ve known since middle school could be headed to Honduras by the middle of next year.

Did your friends who voted for Trump consider the food and labor shortages that will be the natural fallout from mass deportations?

Did they think about the fact that if it really was price gouging that made the price of eggs go up instead of bad economic policy from Joe Biden that reversing course could lead to trade wars and a deficit like we’ve never seen?

Oh, and it was. I pulled up my Facebook memories this morning and it turns out I’d left myself a little landmark to point at corporate profits in November of Biden’s first year in office — far too soon for any economic policy of his to have taken hold, so entirely happening under the watch of Donald Trump.

Those corporate profits were up more than 11% from January 2021 to November 2021. I wonder how much faster they’ll go up with Trump BACK in office, and a completely compliant Congress and Senate to pass everything he wants, since it was his policies that led to those record corporate profits.

A sampling of some of Norm’s other predictions:

• “Constitutional constraints” will have to be said while making quote marks with your fingers from now on. Ornstein reckons that Trump will possibly try to manipulate or even cancel future elections.
• Trump will double down on appointing the absolute worst candidates to every job he gets to fill. He’s already talking about Texas’s Ken Paxton serving as Attorney General. Paxton would use the DOJ like a hammer to come down on women’s rights, transgender rights, and religious freedom.
• Trump will probably pardon the people responsible for the January 6th insurrection in 2021. You know, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers who straight-up killed Heather Heyer back in Charlottesville in 2017 at Trump’s favorite “fine people on both sides” rally.
• Remember all those unions who opposed Trump? There was one that didn’t: The police. They WANT a Trump presidency that looks just like the rally all those sheriffs went to, where Trump told them…

Fortunately, Norm has some ideas. He says we need to make the most of Biden’s remaining time in office. We have until January to at least safeguard some things. Confirm more judges. Send aid to Ukraine before Trump’s best pal Vladimir Putin gets his own personal line to the White House again.

And not just that. He says we need to use legal challenges to expose the Trump agenda’s legal flaws. He says we need to solidify a media infrastructure that will counter his constant disinformation campaigns. And he says that state-level elections will now be more important than ever. For example, I’m a little bit insulated from the Trump agenda if he’s serious about handing powers back to the states, because I live in a solidly blue state.

But people in Texas could turn their state blue. Kansas. Arkansas. Even Kentucky already has a Democratic governor. If Trump means to leave abortion, for example, up to the states and not federally ban it, then the voters in states where women are dying because they lack access can change it without Trump’s permission.

And we can build on blue states. It’s how this all started, and we can get it back.

This is a long video, but it’s worth the watch: