To Trump fascism has been a means of filling his coffers and dodging criminal prosecution for his many crimes. That kind of changes now, though, as he will have more or less achieved those ends entirely. His twilight years are coming to a close. He doesn’t have an infinite stretch of time in front of him. The MAGA movement wants blood. They want to start on the home front, with mass deportation of Latin Americans and widespread institutional violence against queer people. But fascism as political movement does not and can not end there. By necessity, it will escalate into small territorial gains and proxy wars before devolving into conquering military campaigns and eventually collapse under its own weight. He’s already preparing for this. This is legitimately already happening. He’s already starting to create ideological justification for the forced annexation of several nearby nations.

Fascist countries have a life cycle. It’s pretty hard for Fascist nations to justify their own existence without constant conflict. There always has to be another enemy. Fascist thought is dominated by ultra nationalism, patriotic purity tests, and racialism. The more dogmatic the fascist becomes, the more they come to see the world itself as the inheritance of their race and nationality. Unless Trump intends to abandon fascists at some point (something I think is pretty unlikely), then he will have to justify the continued existence of the fascist movement. His followers will be angry, and he has to keep them that way.