The speed and breadth with which Donald Trump is turning the United States into an authoritarian state, through both legal and unconstitutional means, is breathtaking.
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Donald Trump likes to brag that he has achieved more in his first few weeks in office than most presidents did over their entire term(s). He is absolutely right… if by “more” he is referring to mischief, nonsense, and chaos, or to cruelty, or to diminishing the standing of the United States in the global community.
He has certainly done more to lead the country down a path toward authoritarianism than all other presidents combined — and now he seems to want to take those final steps.
When looking at all of the things Trump has done in these first two months, an important distinction has to be made between the stuff that is merely ill-advised, vengeful, indicative of progressing mental illness, cruel, or just clownish — and all of the things that are illegal and unconstitutional.
Examples of the former include pardoning all of those thugs who stormed Congress on his behalf, plunging the world into a global trade war, appointing his partner in crime and manservant Walt Nauta to the Naval Academy Board of Visitors, pulling the Secret Service detail from Joe Biden’s children, selling out and extorting Ukraine, threatening US allies, doing infomercials for Elon Musk from the White House, or dismantling the federal government.*
Obviously, all of these actions reflect poorly on Trump’s character and/or his ability to capably lead this country. That’s not surprising, because we know that he is a terrible president and an even worse human being.
In addition, some of them, like launching a multi-front trade war for no apparent reason, will do great harm to Americans.
However, and this is key, the Constitution and the nation’s laws allow him to do all of the above, and much more.
If all of this happened in some struggling democracy, we would be talking about an ongoing authoritarian coup.
Perhaps, if US democracy isn’t a smoldering ruin in a couple of years, it would be wise to revisit some of those laws and make sure that someone like Trump can’t lay waste to the United States simply because he is an insecure malignant narcissist.
But we are not holding our breath, which gets us to the second category… all of the stuff that is clearly illegal and unconstitutional.
We saw some of it early on, e.g., the executive order trying to end birthright citizenship, which should be laughed out of the Supreme Court when it gets there.
And by “laughed out of the Supreme Court,” we mean, “deemed unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision with Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch writing a dissenting opinion saying that Trump should be allowed to do whatever he wants, that brown people don’t matter, and that everybody should get a Tesla, which start as low as $35,000 with no money down.”
Then, of course, there are the attempts to usurp the legislative branch’s power of the purse by either freezing appropriated funds or misdirecting them, but that barely counts as “unconstitutional” because congressional Republicans are willing participants (while showing no appetite for oversight).
More recently, however, this lawlessness has taken a different, darker turn.
People are being snatched off the street and taken across state lines to detention facilities.
Others have been sold to El Salvadoran gulags as slave labor based solely on the government’s suspicion that they may be gang members or gang sympathizers.
Lawyers are intimidated — both successfully and unsuccessfully.
Court orders are ignored.
Judges are threatened.
The rule of law and the independence of the judiciary are under a daily assault led by Trump and Musk.
If all of this happened in some struggling democracy, we would be talking about an ongoing authoritarian coup.
And, seeing how he met relatively little resistance to all of those (probably) legal things he did in the first two months, Trump is really going for it now.
Here is the problem: All of this is happening in a struggling democracy… one that the president and his party have spent years undermining. However, not enough people are talking about this being an ongoing authoritarian coup — at least not people in the United States.
Part of the problem is that many news outlets are also cowering in fear of a tyrannical leader who is threatening the media in both word and deed. Others, of course, are just pathetically bowing out of this fight for economic reasons (looking at your editorial page, Washington Post).
Sadly, even fewer people are doing anything about it, even, or especially, those with some power (looking at you, Chuck Schumer!)
And, seeing how he met relatively little resistance to all of those (probably) legal things he did in the first two months, Trump is really going for it now.
Maybe people should have taken seriously the despotic fantasies he shared over the years, or paid attention when he consistently spurned allied democracies while palling around with dictators.
This is the one thing you can’t blame Trump and the Republicans for. They told Americans exactly who they were and what they were going to do. Heck, they even wrote a 900-page democracy-demolition manual — and voters still hoisted Trump onto the throne because of high grocery prices, their fears of an immigrant crime wave that doesn’t exist, and a few fringe issues that the right-wing propaganda networks focused on relentlessly.
Clearly, enough voters believed Trump’s rhetoric warning of a nation in decline that he, and only he, could return to its glory days.
In other words, this one is on American voters as well.
The question now is, what are they going to do about it? Tyranny or democracy, what will it be?
This is one of those moments in history that comes along only every few generations, and what Americans do now will define how they will be judged in the future.
* To be fair, some of that stuff was patently illegal, but the point is that a president has many legal means to destroy the government.
