Trump Dials Up the Authoritarianism to 11

Early Saturday evening, the headlines were full of the type of tragedies that have become almost run of the mill in the Trump era:

• A mass shooting, this one in New Hampshire—the victims of which Trump ignored, busy as he was preparing for his rally Sunday in Arizona to commemorate the life of Charlie Kirk

• The resignation of Erik Siebert, the principled federal prosecutor who refused to bow to Trump’s dictate that he find something, anything, for which to prosecute New York Attorney General Leticia James (Trump’s response was petty even by his standards: “He didn’t quit. I fired him!”)

• The arbitrary overnight imposition of a $100,000 per year fee on H1B visa recipients—a change that Trump has illegally implemented without congressional input, that threatens to tank many of the high-tech companies that recently made bargain-with-the-devil deals with the president, and that will scramble the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in this country and overseas

• The ongoing efforts to bring the media to heel over coverage of Charlie Kirk’s murder, including the aftermath of FCC chair Brendan Carr’s explicit threat to ABC that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way”—in other words, either suspend Jimmy Kimmel or the FCC would have to investigate whether to cease issuing the company a broadcasting license

So just another Saturday in hell as Trump continues his version of Mussolini’s March on Rome and in the process destroys the foundations of American democracy.

But a few hours later, the headlines had gone from being simply alarming to full-blown totalitarian. Before I’d finished my dessert, The New York Times and other major outlets published stories saying that Trump was demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi immediately prosecute James, former FBI director James Comey, and US Senator Adam Schiff. Simultaneously donning the garb of detective, prosecutor, jury, and judge, Trump announced that all three were “guilty as hell”—though of what he didn’t say. Trump posted on social media, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.” He continued, “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

Trump’s all-caps version of “justice” is about revenge. His notion of the state is a twist on the Bourbon king’s assertion that “l’État, c’est moi.” Instead of “I am the state,” Trump is essentially saying, “All state agencies exist to bolster my power, puff my ego, and punish my enemies.”

On the New York Times webpage, the story immediately beneath that one informed readers that the FBI allegedly caught border czar Tom Homan accepting bags containing tens of thousands of dollars in cash. The money was allegedly given to Homan last September by undercover agents posing as businessmen who were hoping to get preferential treatment for doing business around border security should Trump get elected. Once Trump was inaugurated, the Department of Justice shut down the investigation.

The Trump administration’s response? Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche released a statement saying that the Justice Department “must remain focused on real threats to the American people, not baseless investigations. As a result, the investigation has been closed.” A White House spokesperson followed up by arguing that this Biden-era law enforcement operation showed that the Democrats weren’t serious about tackling illegal immigration. This is a non sequitur as well as a clear example of the bait-and-switch moves this administration performs to deflect attention from its own criminal tendencies.

I’m not sure how many ways to say “gangster government” there are. But I do know this: In a functional democracy, Bondi would have resigned in response to Trump’s totalitarian demands. Homan would have resigned—since it’s hard to see how anyone could have confidence in his leadership with such a cloud of scandal over his head. Patel would have resigned for overtly politicizing the FBI. Blanche would have resigned for signing on to such a disingenuous statement. The entire career staff of the Justice Department would have walked off the job the moment Trump’s missive to Bondi went public. Carr would have been fired for his assault on the First Amendment. Secretary of State Marco Rubio would have been forced to resign for his attacks on free speech for his role in denying visas to people who said the wrong things in the wake of Kirk’s murder. Hegseth would have had to resign in light of the oh-so-Soviet announcement that the Department of Defense—or, rather, the Department of War—would revoke the press access of any journalist who reported anything not approved by the department.

Some of these people—maybe many of them—are too stupid to understand the implications of what they are doing. (Yes, Hegseth, I’m talking about you.) But others must understand the gravity of what is happening. Bondi has a law degree, for Christ’s sake! She’s got to know that Trump’s pressure campaign is authoritarian. Yet, she hasn’t resigned. If she doesn’t do so, she will have forever be known as a costar in the destruction of America’s 250-year democratic experiment.

This isn’t about a president occasionally crossing a constitutional line. This is a coordinated attack on the foundational principles of a government limited by checks and balances and of a constitutional system that restricts how capricious, cruel, and power-crazed the executive branch can be. It’s an attack on the rule of law, on the First Amendment, and on congressional authority.

This weekend, exactly eight months into Trump’s second term, was already far past time to call all this what it is: a putsch against constitutional governance. Demanding the political prosecution of opponents is the stuff of caudillos, of dictators, of strongmen in jackboots backed by a secret police. We, the American public, have a duty to respond. We must do so peacefully, but we must do so powerfully. It might be a fantasy to imagine tens of millions of Americans walking off their jobs, but to preserve US democracy, we will have to stop Trump. If that means a general strike, then we must start planning it now. If that means consumer boycotts of companies cooperating with this corrupt, totalitarian government, then we must begin sowing the fields for such boycotts now.

What we cannot do is dismiss all this as white noise. Because when the president demands that his top legal officers find excuses to prosecute his political opponents and when those legal officers don’t push back, at that point we are in a dictatorship.