By Bill Mosley
June 2024
Image by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash
In a townhall event last December, Donald Trump was asked by Fox News commentator Sean Hannity whether he intended to assume dictatorial powers if he is returned to the White House. “No, other than day one,” he answered cryptically. People scratched their heads over this, or merely wrote it down to Trump’s signature incoherence.
But a more serious question would be: Could Trump, within the confines of constitutional government, effectively assume dictatorial powers? I’m not talking here about the more far-fetched (but not impossible) scenarios in which he gets the army to squelch all dissent, manages to outlaw the Democrats and all other opposition parties, forces the courts to bow to him, and otherwise gains the ability to act with the impunity he obviously seeks through extra-constitutional means.
No, I’m talking about his gaining virtual or not-so-virtual dictatorial powers through legal, constitutional levers.
An argument against his being able to do this is that Trump, who had expansive ambitions for power when he first ran for President, was unable to make himself a dictator in his first term. But much has changed between then and now.
Part of Trump’s inability to gain more sweeping powers was his inexperience in politics. Trump, after all, was the first U.S. president who neither previously held public office nor was a high-ranking military officer. He needed to have experienced, competent people around him, and those people – such as John Kelly, his national security advisor and later chief of staff; White House Counsel Pat Cippilone; and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis – tended to curb his worst excesses and steer him on a constitutional track to achieving his policy aims.
Trump also didn’t control Congress or the courts. Republicans did hold both houses of Congress during the first two years of his term – Democrats captured the House in the midterms of 2018 – but Trump couldn’t always get his way there, often because of fierce Democratic opposition, with Democrats still being able to filibuster legislation in the Senate. There also were Republicans in both houses who brandished enough independence to stand up to Trump at least occasionally – not a majority but enough to make a difference, including John McCain (who cast the deciding vote to save the Affordable Care Act), Jeff Flake, Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski in the Senate and Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger in the House.
But since Trump’s early days in office, most of his critics have been forced or eased out of office; of the six mentioned above only Murkowski has a live political career, with Romney not seeking re-election this year and all others in political retirement. Trump has so effectively gained control of the Republican Party that with merely a word from him and not a squeak of opposition was he able to overturn the party’s leadership, ejecting Ronna Romney McDaniel as chair and installing Michael Whatley as the new chair and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chair. Today it’s the price of admission for Republican candidates for office to swear fealty to Trump and parrot his views, no matter how absurd, including that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that his criminal indictments were orchestrated from the Biden White House.
How was Trump so easily able to purge Republican critics from elected office and gain total control over the levers of the party? Simply put, through his voter base.
When Trump ran for president in 2016 he mobilized voters through appeals that most politicians were hesitant to use, especially at the national levels. He threw subtle dog whistles aside and openly catered to racist, nativist, white nationalist and Christian nationalist sentiment. By saying the quiet parts out loud he mobilized voters who felt left out, and unfortunately there were a lot of them. Many of them had seethed at Barack Obama, a black man, having been elected president. Some came out of the Tea Party, which was substantially rooted in racist resentment of Obama’s election; others hadn’t been mobilized politically until Trump organized them. Estimates of the true size of the MAGA base – those fervent Trump loyalists who support him no matter what – vary, with many analyses pegging them as between a quarter and a third of likely Republican voters. Even if not a majority of the GOP electorate, they are organized and fanatically loyal enough to make or break candidates for Republican nominations at all levels.
Why so many people cling to white identity as their main political outlook at this point in American history is a topic for another discussion. But they are there, and Trump found them.
Therefore, if Trump wins this year’s election, he will enter office backed by a congressional Republican party that will be eager to bend to his every wish. Some of the members will be True Trumpers, their first political identity being Trump acolytes – think Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert – and others Neo-Trumpers, Republicans who have been around longer and once exhibited some independence but now see their political survival tied to appeasing the Trump base. Lindsey Graham is the poster child for this faction, which also includes J.D. Vance, Mike Johnson, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and others.
Republicans in Congress will be eager to pass whatever legislation Trump demands, no questions asked. Trump, deep in the pockets of fossil fuel companies, would order the scuttling of all measures to combat climate change; he will push to accelerate oil drilling and coal extraction, roll back auto fuel-economy and emissions regulations, kill wind and solar energy development, stymie the production of electric vehicles, and much more. He would resume his radical jihad against immigrants by expanding the wall on the southern border and embarking on a campaign to expel as many of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants as possible, requiring a massively expanded ICE empowered to roam the streets and arrest possible immigrants at will. He would likely renew his “Muslim ban,” a modest version of which he achieved in his first term, only this time demanding what he really wants: to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, based on their religion rather than nationality. He would feel enough pressure from conservative Christians to severely restrict abortion nationwide, notwithstanding his protests to the contrary. He would effectively abolish the nonpartisan civil service and make sure the government consists of only his loyalists. If you care about Ukraine’s survival as an independent country, Trump would make sure it is unable to resist the aggression of his best pal Vladimir Putin. And for those on the left frustrated with Biden’s friendliness to Israel and Benyamin Netanyahu during the obliterative war against Gaza, know that Trump would be much worse, writing Netanyahu or his successors a blank check to carry on war against Palestinians and neighboring countries any way they please. This is just a partial accounting of what Trump and a Republican Congress could enact.
Trump also will not make the mistake of nominating or appointing anyone whose personal loyalty to him is anything but absolute. The Cabinet and White House will be stocked with MAGA extremists – Jeffrey Clark for attorney general, for example. Stephen Miller could be Homeland Security secretary.
There would be potential checks on Trump, as there were during his first term. If Democrats hold at least one house of Congress they could block his worst legislation. And unlike during the Reagan era, when Democrats were cowed into submission by the president’s purported popularity, both parties today are more partisan and more braced to do battle with each other. That’s not good for when bipartisan compromise is beneficial, but it’s critical for Democrats in stopping the dictatorial excesses of Trump and his Trumpublicans.
Even if Republicans should gain majorities in both houses, Senate Democrats could still thwart Trump by employing the filibuster, assuming the GOP holds less than 60 seats. That won’t stop Trump from filling his cabinet and the courts with his loyalists, as confirmations are exempt from the filibuster.
Then there is the possibility that, if Republicans hold even a bare majority of seats in the Senate, they could employ the “nuclear option” and simply abolish the filibuster by majority vote. They could then pass any legislation with a simple majority. For years, the left has been calling for the elimination of the filibuster because it enabled Republicans to thwart progressive measures in a Democratic-majority Senate such as Medicare for All and action on climate change. But if the shoe is on the other foot, the left might cherish the filibuster as putting a brake on worse things happening.
Then there are the courts. During Trump’s first term they blocked or limited many of his most toxic measures, such as a more expansive Muslim ban and his desire to circumvent the appropriations process to build his border wall. But Trump spent four years packing the federal courts with judges he viewed as friendly to his ideas, including three on the Supreme Court, and once he resumes office he will resume filling seats with judges whom he is confident will prize loyalty to him over judicial independence.
Analogies with Nazi Germany are overused, but there are parallels between that era and the ambitions of Trump for this one. Hitler rose to absolute power through elections and by convincing the Reichstag that Germany was in the grips of a crisis that only he could solve. Sound familiar?
So how do we keep a Trump dictatorship from becoming a reality? Biden is by far not the ideal candidate, but he may be all that stands in the way of a Trump dictatorship. All those who support democracy, and not only those on the left of center politically, need to step up and support Democrats in competitive races. Voting is not enough. Donations, phone and post-card banking, and door-knocking in competitive states will be needed to save democracy for the next generation.
Trump and Biden may be the names on the ballot, but the election is really a contest between dictatorship and democracy, between constitutional government and strongman rule. Is there really any choice?
Outside the Box 