GARY COHN: We're going to cut taxes and simplify the tax code.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
NAOMI KLEIN: Now, some people have said that's exactly what Trump has been trying to do. Is it true? Well, sort of. But in all likelihood, the worst is yet to come, and we better be ready. The administration is creating chaos, daily.
JUJU CHANG: Breaking news: Donald Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has resigned tonight.
ANDERSON COOPER: All of a sudden, the White House is concerned about James Comey's handling of Hillary Clinton's email?
CBS NEWS ANCHOR: A Senate committee will question President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner about his meeting with officials from a Russian bank.
NAOMI KLEIN: Now, of course many of the scandals are the result of the president's ignorance and blunders, not some nefarious strategy. But there's also no doubt that some savvy people around Trump are using the daily shocks as cover to advance wildly pro-corporate policies that bear little resemblance to what Trump pledged on the campaign trail.
DONALD TRUMP: Save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
MSNBC ANCHOR: The White House released its budget for 2018, and among the $4 trillion in cuts it proposes are billions upon billions of dollars slashed from both Medicaid and Social Security.
NAOMI KLEIN: And the worst part, this is likely just the warm-up. We need to focus on what this administration will do when it has a major external shock to exploit. Maybe it will be an economic crash like 2008, maybe a natural disaster like Sandy, or maybe it will be a horrific terrorist event like Manchester or Paris in 2015. Any one such crisis could redraw the political map overnight. And it could give Trump and his crew free rein to ram through their most extreme ideas.
But here is one thing I've learned over two decades of reporting from dozens of crises around the world: These tactics can be resisted. And, for your convenience, I've tried to boil it down to a five-step plan.
Step one: Know what's coming. What would happen if a horror like the one in Manchester took place on U.S. soil? Based on Trump's obvious fondness for authoritarianism, we can expect him to impose some sort of state of exception or emergency where the usual rules of democracy no longer apply. Protests and strikes that block roads and airports, like the ones that sprung up to resist the Muslim travel ban, would likely be declared a threat to national security. Protest organizers would be targeted under anti-terror legislation, with surveillance, arrests and imprisonment. With public signs of dissent suppressed, the truly toxic to-do list would quickly bubble up: bring in the feds to pacify the streets, muzzle investigative journalism -- you know he's itching to.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You weren't called. Sit down!
NAOMI KLEIN: The courts, who Trump would inevitably blame for the attacks, might well lose their courage. And the most lethal shock we need to prepare for: a push for a full-blown foreign war. And, no, it won't matter if the target has no connection to the attacks used to justify it.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?
REPORTER: The attack on the World Trade Center.
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