Day 17: Donald Trump Hot on Authoritarianism, Cold on Democracy
Donald Trump likes authoritarians.
He has praised everyone from Vladimir Putin to Saddam Hussein to Kim Jong Un to Bashar al-Assad to Muammar Gadhafi. (The latter of whom Trump did some actual business with.)
Trump, as the CEO of the Trump Organization, is used to being in absolute control, too. That may be okay in business, but running the country is quite different than running a real estate company.
Checks and balances, bureaucracies, dealing with the press, diplomacy: they all contribute to the complicated nature of the presidency. They’re also all vitally important to a democracy.
Donald Trump is actively seeking to harm key democractic ideals in three obvious ways.
- Discrediting the Press
Anytime Trump doesn’t like something the press writes, he lashes out.
The New York Times? Failing!
The Washington Post? Dishonest!
CNN? Fake News!
Media as a whole? Liars!
To Trump and his rabid base, this gives the perfect cover for any negative story. A prominent publication drops a bombshell of a story about Trump’s conflicts of interest? Trump can turn around and say, “All they do is lie. I already warned you about that. Of course they love to come after me because I point out their lies.”
The scary thing is many people will believe Trump over a well-researched piece simply because they want to believe the man they voted for, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.
By making preemptive strikes at the media, Trump seeks to weaken their credibility, at the very least, with his own base. This serves to insulate himself from damning story after damning story.
The moral: Trump is right, everyone else is wrong.
- Slandering Congress
Trump is also learning that dealing with Senators can be frustrating.
Presidents constantly lament Congress’ inefficiencies. But Trump’s comments go beyond that.
Anyone who disagrees or doesn’t capitulate to Trump’s every demand is immediately slandered and labeled wrong. After all, surely Trump must know more than John McCain and Lindsey Graham and their combined 56 years of Congressional experiences.
Of course if Democrats don’t immediately agree to approve Trump’s cabinet appointees en masse it’s because they’re playing games.
The moral: Trump is right, everyone else is wrong.
- Undermining the Judiciary
Perhaps most alarmingly, Trump is constantly seeking to undermine qualified judges.
Issue a stay for illegal executive orders? You’re just a “so-called judge.”
Issue rulings unfavorable to Trump? You’re biased and unfair…
…or it’s because of your heritage.
All of this seeks to discredit one of the primary checks against Trump.
Trump and team tried to spin his executive order banning refugees as a lawful use of authority, and the judges who issued a stay on it as doing so in contravention of the law.
While Trump’s team certainly entitled to make that argument to the court, they don’t get to be the court. Courts determine legality of constitutional issues every day. The bigger ones work their way up from district courts to circuit courts and few all the way to the Supreme Court. The White House doesn’t get to determine what’s legal and what’s not.
By casting aspersions about the judges interpreting and ruling on legality of various executive orders and laws, Trump is inherently questioning the authority of the courts themselves.
Federal judges aren’t “so-called judges,” they’re just judges.They are — by and large — fair and measured in their decisions. Partisans may not always agree with rulings, but their decisions are followed and largely binding.
Trump is threatening the enforcement powers of court orders by work around and by way of propaganda.
The moral: Trump is right, everyone else is wrong.
By excoriating three key democratic tenets — an open, independent media, Congress and the judiciary — Trump attacks access to information and his primary checks and balances to limitless power.
These are largely the same tactics that the authoritarians who Trump praised used to consolidate and wield power.
The United States is not a business and cannot be run like one.
The United States certainly is not an authoritarian nation, and we can cannot allow it to be run like one.
17 days in, 1445 to go
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