Elected officials and editorialists denounce a “dictator” speech and program on the part of Donald Trump. They fear an “authoritarian turn” in the event of the former president’s victory.
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What if America lived its last year as a democracy? The question may seem incongruous, but it is nevertheless being asked implicitly by more and more observers in the United States. Americans will elect their president in 11 months. With, if we are to believe the polls, a duel that could be that of 2020: Joe Biden against Donald Trump.
The former Republican president multiplies the allusions to a possible second term even more extreme than the first. We even hear about “dictatorship”. The neoconservative political scientist Robert Kagan was one of the first to envisage this catastrophic scenario. He left the Republican Party in 2016 to support Hillary Clinton because of the “fascism” of Donald Trump, he said at the time.
“I said I wanted to be a dictator… for a day”
This time, he warns in a column published by the Washington Postend of November 2023 : it’s necessary “face the truth”he writes, before describing, in detail, what Donald Trump would do if he were re-elected: persecution of his political opponents, purge of the state apparatus and, if necessary, the help of the army to crush any dissent.
A very dark picture, and the person concerned does not really deny it. Journalist Peter Baker who covers the White House for the New York Times and who has followed five presidents since Bill Clinton clearly describes him as a possible dictator if he returned to the Oval Office. Donald Trump responded to him during a campaign rally: “Baker says in the New York Times that I want to be a dictator. I didn’t say that. I said I want to be a dictator… for a day.”
“And you know why I want to be a dictator? Because I want a wall! And I want to drill, drill, drill!”
Donald Trump,At a Republican gala in New York
An allusion to the promised wall on the Mexican border, and to the resumption of oil drilling on American soil. Another example, in this speech to his supporters on November 11: “This Veterans Day, we promise to eradicate the communists, the Marxists, the fascists. And the radical left thugs who live like vermin in our country.” Word “vermin” caused a reaction even at the White House. Joe Biden sees it as a term that refers to Nazism.
“A sort of march, like a sleepwalker, towards dictatorship”
The words are there, but is there really reason to worry? There are surely a lot of fantasies, but in any case we have precise clues of what a Trump 2 administration could be. And particularly in what he has already revealed about his program: stopping what he calls “the invasion” at the Mexican border, customs duties of up to 10% on most foreign products, a reassessment of the NATO mission, with perhaps an exit or even takeover of the capital Washington, which it designated as a “death trap full of criminals”.
A “Trump 2” would be even more dangerous than “Trump 1”, believes Liz Cheney, the sworn enemy of the former American president, daughter of the former vice-president of George Bush, and above all one of the two elected officials of the Republican Party who sat on the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the assault on the Capitol. She has just released a book in which she promises to do everything to prevent Donald Trump from returning to power because he will not submit to court decisions, according to her.
“He told us what he was going to doshe explains on ABC. It’s very easy to see the steps he’s going to take. We are witnessing a sort of sleepwalking towards dictatorship in the United States.” Liz Cheney even says she’s considering running for president to counter him.
“Authoritarian reflexes”
Several media outlets agree with his observation. As the New York Timeswho recently expressed concern in his editorial about “Trump’s authoritarian reflexes now face weakened counter-powers”compared to 2020 or like the magazine The Atlanticwhich devotes its entire January February 2024 issue to the perspective it headlines:“If Trump wins”.
The monthly details the billionaire’s program and warns that it could destroy institutions. “Unlike other politicians who, when they say something scandalous, go back on what they said, he goes furtherexplains Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic on CNN. And now he’s embracing the idea that he’s going to become a dictator.”
“American citizens who take politicians and politics seriously should take into consideration the fact that the presumptive nominee of one of the two major parties promises to rule as a dictator.”
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of “The Atlantic”on CNN
Dictatorship and chaos or not… Start of response on November 5, 2024. Until then Trump has other deadlines with four criminal trials, with potentially prison sentences. The former president is already promising revenge if he is re-elected and to attack in particular those responsible at the Department of Justice for what he calls a “witch hunt” against him.