Trump’s Authoritarian Instincts Are a Serious Threat to Our Democracy - Horowitz

Trump’s Authoritarian Instincts Are a Serious Threat to Our Democracy - Horowitz

The combination of Donald Trump’s increasingly incendiary and disturbing comments, a series of articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post on his plans to violate democratic norms in his second term, the publication of Liz Cheney’s memoir with its attendant publicity, and The Atlantic devoting pretty much its entire January/February edition to the dangers of a second Trump term has put Mr. Trump’s authoritarian impulses and instincts front and center in the national conversation. Driving the intensity of these concerns is that he remains a strong frontrunner for the Republican nomination and is running even or ahead in head-to-head matchups with President Biden, making the prospect of Donald Trump reentering the White House a distinct possibility.

 

While his far-right MAGA supporters such as Steve Bannon and Kash Patel have predictably embraced the strongman charges arguing that is exactly what America needs, his more mainstream supporters are falling back on the old playbook of saying you can’t take what Donald Trump says on any given day all that seriously. The long-time conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt called the warnings about Trump’s authoritarianism, “silly" during a panel discussion on Fox News’ Special Report, essentially saying that it's just Donald being Donald. It reminded me of the old Art Linkletter show, “Kids Say the Darndest Things” in its blithe dismissal.  Similarly, Morgan Ortagus, a former State department spokesperson during the Trump Administration, said on a different Special Report panel discussion that she didn’t understand how someone who would be elected democratically could then become a dictator, conveniently ignoring numerous obvious historical examples.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

 

The casual rejection of the dangers of a 2nd Trump term to our democracy might have been understandable before his launch of an unprecedented, undemocratic, and reckless all-out effort to invalidate the votes of the American people, inciting the January 6 insurrection, as he sought to cling to power by any means possible in the wake of his 2020 defeat.   People like Hugh Hewitt must either have very short memories or think the rest of us do.  

 

Far more applicable to evaluating the dangers of another Trump term is Maya Angelou’s apt words: “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” And Mr. Trump not only continues to falsely claim that he won the 2020 election against all the evidence, he is sounding more and more like the “dictator wannabe” as Mark Milley, the chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, referred to the former president. 

 

“In recent weeks, Trump has promised his supporters that he will be their "retribution" if he retakes the White House, and has used language reminiscent of the worst of European fascism in the 1930s and 1940s, calling his political opponents "vermin" and warning that immigrants are "poisoning the blood" of the United States,” VOA reports. “There are echoes of fascist rhetoric, and they’re very precise,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor at New York University who studies fascism, told The New York Times, “The overall strategy is an obvious one of dehumanizing people so that the public will not have as much of an outcry at the things that you want to do.”

 

Additionally, the former president recently said he will crack down on media outlets like MSNBC that are critical of him. His second-term plans include putting the Justice Department explicitly under his thumb in all respects, doing away with the post-Watergate practice of the president not interfering in decisions on whom to investigate and prosecute.  He also never seems to miss an opportunity to declare his admiration for the world’s authoritarians from Viktor Orban to Vladmir Putin to Xi Jinping.

 

In a recent interview with John Karl, Liz Cheney pointed out another problematic aspect of a Trump second term, noting that those who served as guardrails preventing Trump from acting on his worst instincts in his first term would not be there to do the same the second time around. “It would be worse because he has had practice and because those people who were around him who actually did stop the worst, that what he was trying to do would not be around him again," the former Congressman told Karl. "I mean, our institutions don't protect themselves. It's the people who do."

 

Referring to Trump telling Sean Hannity in a recent Fox News Town Hall that he would only be a dictator on day one, Chris Christie put it this way, "Do I think he was kidding when he said he was a dictator? All you have to do is look at the history, and that's why failing to speak out against him, making excuses for him, pretending that somehow he's a victim empowers him.”

 

It is reasonable to discuss whether the traditional American checks and balances and other safeguards could once again withstand an all-out assault from Donald Trump. To dismiss concerns about the former president’s authoritarian impulses and plans, however, is what's truly silly. It's time for Hugh Hewitt and others to get the memo.