How to Tell If Your President Is a Dictator

"President Trump prosecutes his political opponents; deports immigrants, including some here legally, to foreign prisons without due process; solicits tribute payments from corporations and foreign governments; deploys soldiers to American cities that are not, in fact, in civil-war-level chaos; and puts his name and image on government buildings that quite obviously don't belong to him. So, a question: What do you call this form of government? Authoritarian? Kleptocratic? Totalitarian? Fascist?"

"Above all, Trump attempts to govern by decree, unconstrained by norms, shame, or the Constitution. (The only limits he sees on his powers come from "my own morality," he recently told The New York Times. "My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me.") But any analysis that attempts to answer the question of whether this makes him a despot must take into account that he is still not terribly successful at despotism."

President Trump prosecutes political opponents; deports immigrants, including some with legal status, to foreign prisons without due process; solicits payments from corporations and foreign governments; deploys soldiers to American cities that are not in civil-war-level chaos; and places his name and image on government buildings. He attempts to govern by decree, unconstrained by norms, shame, or the Constitution, and claims that only his own morality and mind limit his power. Despite aggressive tactics, institutional checks often block or thwart his moves: Congress, courts, local governments, and private institutions retain power and decentralize authority, preventing full despotism.

Read at The Atlantic