I remain pretty pessimistic about the US. The likely scenario is that the Republicans will overturn democracy enough so that they can rule indefinably through the Orban method. But even if they fail then the US remains on the verge of being a hostile actor due to its electorate being so intensely unreliable.
Toppling US democracy and more importantly betraying and subjugating Europe are the pet projects of Trump and Vance. But its not really about those two. Trump us just a random mentally ill demagogue and Vance is just a random psychopath. That they are on their post is due to the American electorate voting for them to be on those positions despite having full knowledge of what freaks they were. Trump being unwilling and unable to govern was known by the US public, as was Trump doing a coup against the US. Despite knowing this the voters gave him another chance to do them harm. That's their problem, but they also knew Trump always wanted to betray Europe and they still voted for him to do that. Which makes their self inflicted problem our existential one.
Even if the US votes the Republicans out and things return to normalcy, then four years later some inbred folk in the swingstates can still randomly decide to go set everything on fire again just for the thrill of sticking it to ''the establishment'. 2016 might have been an accident or a glitch in the system. But 2024 proves that this is not the case and that its the American voters themselves that are to blame. The numerical majority proved themselves as ignorant, erratic, malicious and thoroughly ungrateful. The best we can expect of the US is some twisted Russian roulette they keep switching from dubious allies to freaks wanting to do their allies harm.
Ultimately the question will come down to how much economic damage the Trump admin will do, if it does get really bad, they maybe you could see some large change in population willingness to vote for the next Trump, but for now the people who voted Trump aren't really hurting, so they'd gladly do it again just to stick it to the man. Poll after poll show that they are really happy with the direction of the country. I don't see the media landscape changing at all, and with most communication channel drifting right ward, they'll stay in their little bubble and will be completely ignorant of any problem that doesn't directly affect them.
Even if somehow the GOP doesn't massively stack the deck in their favor, after every Jan 6th traitor were pardoned, I don't see a peaceful transfer of power being possible. Even then, SCOTUS will absolutely block anything the dem could possibly try to do (and the dem will forever remains useless and won't use the extreme power Trump amassed for the presidency to fix things).
Realistically the fix would require immense intervention in education and reform of the media and social media, something the democrat would never have the stomach to do (and which are pretty drastic). The most I could see is some extreme version of devolution, where the dem could hand over massive amount of power to the state (healthcare, wealth fare) while stooping the problem of rich blue states funding poor republican one, and let the republican live the way they constantly say they want to. The authoritarian fan are uneducated and pretty poor, so this would dis proportionally affect them, and maybe they'd wake up then, but it would probably be spinned as a democrat plot and would be reverse pretty quickly.
I don't think they care about europe at all, like I wouldn't be surprised if a large segment of his voter would have a hard time naming and pointing on a map the major european player. I just don't think they have the capacity to interact with other people outside of a weird domination play, either they're on top or on the bottom in their mind.
