Donald Trump repeatedly promotes authoritarian impulses and appears unconcerned with legal and constitutional constraints. He issues policies and executive orders that challenge the rule of law and undermine democratic institutions. Trump has weakened oversight bodies, targeted judges and critics, and pressured corporate and media figures. He has deployed armed troops and National Guard forces domestically, threatened military intervention in major cities, and authorized aggressive actions such as an FBI raid on a former adviser. These actions collectively erode legal norms, concentrate power in the executive, and move the country toward a more authoritarian posture.
A lot of people are saying that maybe we'd like to have a dictator. So spoke Donald Trump on Monday, during another one of his rambling Oval Office press conferences. It may be time to invent a new terminology that describes the amazingly rapid political transformation now underway in the United States. Seven months ago, America was a functioning democracy. Today, it is governed by a much-despised bully who has no respect for the rule of law and feels emboldened to do anything he wants.
Donald Trump, on an almost daily basis, launches policies and executive orders that violate the law, the Constitution, and turn upside down the norms and practices of American democracy. Until a few months ago, my principal fear was that Trump would transform America into an illiberal democracy, in the style of Hungary's Viktor Orban. He would weaken the Justice Department, the FBI, and the courts, and then use the Supreme Court to do his bidding.
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