In Trump's first term, it was obvious that he wanted to rule as an authoritarian. His background, both as the head of a privately owned business and an entitled rich kid, caused him to act with impunity and unaccountability. What kept him from going full dictator was the people he surrounded himself with. While it is true that he had the Republican members of Congress cowed, and there were certainly sycophants in his cabinet, there were enough people in positions of responsibility who would not let him do what he wanted to do if it was illegal or unconstitutional. There were a few "adults in the room". The second term is another story. There are few if any responsible people who are willing to put the country's wellbeing over fealty to Trump. The danger is twofold: in addition to the obvious incompetents like Robert Kennedy and Pete Hegseth, the next layer of officials below those requiring Senate confirmation are conservative policy geeks from think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the creator of project 2025. These people have been planning for decades for the time when they had a president who would be willing to enact their radical agenda of "dismantling the administrative state". They are also architects of the "Unitary Executive Theory" (Some thoughts on those items here: "Dictators Gonna Dictate")
The second source of danger is Trump's volatile personality. His staff kept him provided with a steady stream of Executive Orders, which despite Trump's insistence that he knew nothing about Project 2025, were straight out of the Project 2025 playbook. But in addition to the precision strikes against the structure of government and the unilateral reversal of decades of Congressional action, Trump is still a loose cannon who makes decisions with little regard, not only for the consequences, but for easily verified facts. His entire tariff policy, for example, is based upon his ignorance of what balance of trade is.
I first identified Trump's actions as dictatorial on January 20, 2025. The flood of Executive Orders overturned existing laws; virtually dismantled whole departments; fired people he had no authority to fire, including government lawyers and military JAG officers who might be tempted to point out illegality; opened up IRS records to a bunch of computer hackers under the leadership of a businessman with a questionable grasp of reality; nullified the 14th Amendment to the Constitution; in addition to actions that were certainly not priorities, like renaming the Gulf of Mexico. All of this was being done on his sole authority.
But wait, there's more!
Trump, during his campaign last year, was very vocal about exacting retribution against his perceived enemies. He walked his stance partly back by saying that the retribution would be his election victory, but he and his main aides constantly talked about investigating and prosecuting those who stood against him, including President Biden. His supporters sometimes cheered on this promise of revenge, while elected officials usually downplayed his words as merely campaign rhetoric. This was somewhat believable in that, for all his yelling about "locking up" Secretary of State Clinton for imaginary crimes, he did not follow through during his first term. The second term would be different.
In the last few months Trump has pushed his Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate anyone who investigated or prosecuted him, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey and Special Counsel Jack Smith. At least one prosecutor who declined to continue an investigation due to a complete lack of evidence was summarily fired. Scores of FBI and DOJ agents and lawyers were fired or demoted because they were part of investigations into Trump. His FBI Director Kash "Crazy Eyes" Patel is infamous for publishing a Trump "enemies list" is his book. William Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is using his access to mortgage records to provide the DOJ with potential targets for mortgage fraud allegations. Trump has been very vocal about his reasoning for this push: they investigated him, they indicted him, they impeached him -- it's time for payback. Turning our law enforcement agencies into vehicles for personal revenge is a sure sign that we are in a dictatorship.
The apparent transformation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into an unaccountable secret police organization is another sign of dictatorship. I haven't spent a lot of keystrokes on that subject yet, but anonymous masked men in unmarked vehicles, deporting people without due process, scooping up legal residents and even citizens in their nets, is turning out to be not what we thought it would be. To give this subject the attention it deserves, I'll devote a separate article to it.
Finally, the one that blew up this week: free speech.
I wrote a few words about free speech and the First Amendment in the article The Cost of The First Amendment. In just a few days it has gotten worse. Most of what we have seen is a right wing version of cancel culture. As abhorrent as attempts by private citizens to stifle free speech can be, it's still legal in most cases. What's not legal is the government, or any part of it, abridging freedom of speech. That's exactly what happened in the case of Jimmy Kimmel. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the government agency tasked with regulating broadcasting, threatened the network Kimmel was on, ABC, and its parent company, Disney, with "doing things the hard way" if Kimmel was not fired. Kimmel was supposedly removed for "celebrating Charlie Kirk's death", when in reality all he did was criticize "the MAGA crowd" for doing everything they could to convince themselves the killer wasn't one of them, he subsequently mocked Trump for focusing on the ballroom construction when asked about the shooting. But even if Kimmel had overtly mocked Kirk and celebrated his death, that's not illegal!
Follow up remarks from both Bondi and Trump are concerning, even frightening. Bondi initially drew a distinction between "free speech" and "hate speech", but changed her tune later, correctly pointing out that there is no legal definition of hate speech, and it's not illegal. Trump and his most vocal supporters are defining "hate speech" as anything critical of Trump. He has stated that critical coverage of him is illegal, and that "...when 97 percent of the stories are bad about a person, it's no longer free speech". He has been emboldened by several settlements in response to his lawsuits against media companies (falsely claiming to have "won" his suits). He has come out in favor of "canceling" other late night comedians as well. He is mulling over taking away broadcast licenses of companies that offend him. Stephen Miller is calling liberal organizations a "vast terror movement" and vowing to "identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy" them using every resource of Homeland Security and other government agencies. It's no longer a matter of "oh that's just campaign rhetoric", it's happening now.
Ironically, the only thing that reliably moderates Trump's dictatorial actions is Trump's personality. He is ignorant, incompetent, and inconsistent, and frequently doesn't follow through on his threats. But I wouldn't put too much hope in that. The dictatorship is already in full swing.
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