Trump could be U.S. president again. Here's what he plans to do if he wins

There's been abundant international attention this summer to Donald Trump's copious criminal quandaries; not so much to his presidential bid.

It may be time to start paying attention.

Trump is not just the overwhelming favourite to win the Republican presidential nomination; early polling for next year's general election suggests he could win that, too.

In fact, he's running neck-and-neck against U.S. President Joe Biden and his polling is better than at any point in the 2020 cycle, where he lost by a hair in several swing states.

So his plans for the presidency are no longer hypothetical — despite Jan. 6, despite his 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions, and despite the chance he could become the first general-election candidate in over a century to run from a prison cell.

His newest campaign platform goes farther than past ones on multiple fronts: in its nationalism, its economic populism, and its evident punitive streak. Early contours of his plan put adversaries on notice, with warnings to Biden, federal officials and others they'll be investigated.

"It would definitely be radical in terms of some of its implications," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston who studies the presidency.

He says Trump's promises definitely promote a stronger presidency in a system that's "supposed to balance power."

Vengeance: It's a recurring theme in the platform. On his first day in office, Trump says he'd appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden and his family's revenues.

He also wants a truth-and-reconciliation commission to expose what he says are misdeeds against him and others by the U.S. national-security apparatus. He wants reforms to surveillance rules and says: "I will shatter the deep state."

He appeared to suggest at a campaign rally that, since he's been prosecuted unfairly, in his opinion, he could do the same to his opponents.

"That means that if I win and somebody wants to run against me, I call my attorney general and I say, 'Listen, indict him!' " Trump said in a speech last Friday in South Dakota.

"[If the attorney general says], 'Well, he hasn't done anything wrong,' [I'll say], 'I don't know, indict him on income-tax evasion. You'll figure it out.' "

For his own allies, he promises clemency, saying he wants to pardon a large portion of the rioters from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.