“I love the guy,” Trump told a studio audience. “He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ And I say, ‘No, no, no, not on day one.'”
The crowd cheered in approval, and Trump soon used the “dictator for a day” line as a cheering catchphrase at his own rallies, to similar effect.
Of course, Hannity was hoping that Trump would reject this idea out of hand and embrace the traditional and natural rejection of authoritarianism that has characterized American politics since the founding of the country. But Trump seems clear that he likes authoritarians, tolerates authoritarianism, and, given the chance, would like to run the country with absolute monarchy, just as he has run the Trump Organization for decades.
That would be much more likely if Trump were re-elected, as he would be in a much more unfettered position than he was in the last presidential election, and he has repeatedly pledged to exercise that freedom.
He will know the means of power. One of the constraints Trump faced when he arrived at the White House in January 2017 was how little he knew about the presidency or the power of the federal government. Through trial and error, he learned how things worked and where the flaws were. He learned where a blockade was little more than a “No Trespassing” sign on caution tape. And, of course, he learned who was standing in his way, and who wasn’t.
His team will be loyalists in the White House and on Capitol Hill.Trump came to Washington in 2017 with a contingent of right-wing allies and institutionalists who understood how presidential power worked, or at least how it traditionally worked. Some of them clearly saw it as their job to tie Trump to tradition and the Republican establishment. And by 2020, most or all of that had been cast aside for the loyalists.
Trump now knows full well who he needs to bring in. He knows he wants an attorney general who will follow orders, not lead an independent Department of Justice. He knows he wants people who will put his interests first, from his Cabinet to lower-level staff. He knows he needs to strengthen his own advantage among candidates seeking congressional elections.
His administration will seek to quickly reform the federal bureaucracy to reduce friction. In the waning days of his administration, Trump announced plans to change the jobs of thousands of federal employees to make them easier to replace. His staff had already been conducting a similar purge in the White House, aiming to rid the agency of employees seen as insufficiently loyal to Trump.
If re-elected, he would move quickly to implement such reforms, with loyal cabinet members helping to push his ideas forward. Alliances and sympathetic groups are already compiling lists of loyalists who should be put in post, and federal officials who deserve to be fired.
Trump will understand that his actions had no significant consequences. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday Trump vs. the United States It declared to the world that no official act taken by the president would lead to criminal prosecution. If re-elected, Trump would undoubtedly use this as a cover rather than a safeguard. The Supreme Court’s decision, for example, explicitly allowed Trump to order his attorney general to investigate, something he would have done regardless. Trump now has the backing of the judiciary.
There is no other effective way to ensure accountability. Unless constitutional boundaries are eroded more dramatically, Trump is unlikely to seek reelection, so he has no need to pay lip service to the demands of voters outside his base. Trump knows impeachment is ineffective; Senate Republicans are not going to vote en masse to remove him from office, and there is no danger of the party’s conference shrinking to 33.
He has the backing of the final arbiter of legality. Court Discharge Trump vs. the United States The Supreme Court has made a distinction between official and informal presidential acts, the latter of which can lead to indictments. But that distinction has never been defined. The federal indictment of Trump in Washington prompted the Supreme Court’s decision, requiring the judges in the case to determine whether each element of the indictment was official or informal. But the final authority on such matters lies with the same Supreme Court that granted Trump immunity in the first place.
The Supreme Court’s conservative, right-wing majority is not unquestioningly loyal to Trump, but it has repeatedly sided with the right on issues from abortion rights to bureaucratic power to presidential immunity.
The system is designed to ensure that the executive branch and Congress act as checks on President Trump’s power, but in practice both have often succumbed to it or facilitated it.
Trump will have more international allies. The rightward shift in American politics is playing out in other allied countries, including France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, too, and Trump’s approach to immigration, Russia and democracy is no longer as exceptional as it once was.
The media will not be able to hold him accountable. Since 2016, the media landscape has become more fragmented, readership for many traditional publications has declined, and social media efforts to combat misinformation in the wake of the 2016 election upheaval have been rolled back or abandoned.
He will come into office with the confidence that he will be what he promises to be. If Trump wins in November, even if it’s again by electoral vote alone, he’ll likely point to it as an acknowledgment of what he promised. And he’ll have a point.
This isn’t like 2016, when voters heard Trump’s campaign promises and assumed he was a relatively moderate. Now Americans need to know what he wants to do and how he plans to get it done.
On his first day in office, Trump said he wanted to be a dictator. His supporters welcomed the idea. But that won’t happen. Instead, we’ll have an authoritarian president who will punish his enemies, benefit his allies, and reshape the government to suit his own whims rather than those of the country — all while hiding a web of corruption.
It’s something he said he would do, and it’s something allies are working to make sure he does it.
