Editorial: Trump wants to be the U.S.' first dictator

Dec. 13, 2023 3 AM PT

If you have tuned out the many crazy things that Donald Trump has said since he left the White House, it’s time to start paying attention.

The twice-impeached insurrectionist holds more than a 40-point polling lead over his closest rival in the Republican primary, and many Americans remain in denial about how close we are to returning an aggrieved and emboldened authoritarian to power. As former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) warned recently, the U.S. “is sort of sleepwalking into dictatorship.”

How disastrous would a second Trump term be? Exponentially worse than the first, according to the former president himself. For months, Trump has been articulating an unmistakable plan to push the country into authoritarianism through a stream of outrageous comments at campaign events and on right-wing media and his own platform, Truth Social.

Here’s what he says he will do if reelected president in 2024:

Exact revenge on political enemies. Trump and his allies want to investigate, prosecute and punish his rivals and critics and use the justice system to go after the media for reporting on what he says and does. He wants to purge federal officials deemed disloyal and remove civil service protections to get rid of employees that won’t do his bidding.

“For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he told conservatives earlier this year.

Bar, banish and kill people he doesn’t like. Trump wants another Muslim ban. He has vowed to unleash the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, including people who are legally in the country. He would begin “ideological screening” for immigrants and end birthright citizenship.

He would round up people from homeless encampments and move them to tent cities on open parcels of land. He would send the National Guard to cities like Chicago and mount a federal takeover of Washington, D.C., in the name of fighting crime. He wants to execute drug smugglers.

Roll back rights and protections. He would attack transgender people, promote prayer in public schools and help arm teachers with concealed weapons. He has also proposed a national credentialing body to ensure teachers “embrace patriotic values,” in what sounds like a terrifying push for government indoctrination.

He would renege on the Paris climate accord and reverse all manner of environmental protections, even energy efficiency standards. He would almost certainly expand policies hostile to reproductive rights and appoint antiabortion activists to Health and Human Services positions and conservative Supreme Court justices like the ones that overturned the constitutional right to abortion. He wants to establish “freedom cities” on federal land with “baby bonuses” to encourage procreation.

Consolidate executive power. He says he would impound funds appropriated by Congress to paralyze government action, choking off federal money as a way to “obliterate the deep state, drain the swamp, and starve the warmongers ... and the globalists out of government.” He plans to turn independent federal agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Reserve, into extensions of the White House that answer directly to the president.

When given the chance earlier this month to reassure the American people that he would not use a second term to abuse power and take retribution, Trump told Sean Hannity “no, no, no — other than day one.” Then a few days later he doubled down, saying “you know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

Trump has a history of saying vile things in a joke-like way that allows him to deny it later. The keep-you-guessing rhetoric is a hallmark of authoritarian leaders who thrive on murkiness and misinformation, and will tell you that you aren’t seeing what is happening before your very eyes.

This kind of anti-democratic language should tell you exactly what to expect from a man who refused to accept his defeat to Joe Biden and spent years peddling lies about the 2020 election to erode trust in U.S. democracy. His ugly and hate-filled “vermin” speech on Veterans Day showed just how willing he is to adopt the dehumanizing, scapegoating language of Nazi Germany and other authoritarian regimes.

But it’s not new. Trump is following, with a remarkable level of devotion, the authoritarian playbook employed by strongmen throughout history, and more recently by Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Saddam Hussein. And history shows it’s often not the ham-handed, failed first attempt at a coup that pushes societies into authoritarian rule, but the second or third try. It wasn’t the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 that put Adolf Hitler into power in Germany or the 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks that put Cuba under Fidel Castro’s rule, but they were precursors.

Unlike in 2016, Trump’s comments can’t be dismissed as just talk. He has already shown us with his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, the lengths to which he will go to stay in power. He and his allies are also building up an apparatus with which to make his dictatorial pronouncements and his desired expansion of presidential power a swift reality, including a well-funded presidential transition operation called Project 2025 that is lining up policies and personnel to put in place within the first 180 days of his return to office.

Americans should look past the noise of Trump’s timid rivals for the Republican nomination. There is no politics-as-usual left in the Republican Party. Listen clearly to what Trump is saying and take it both seriously and literally.

Editorial: Trump wants to be the U.S.’ first dictator

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