How Authoritarian is Donald Trump?

Reviewing the written version of Donald Trump’s acceptance speech, Matt Welch writes,

here are seven* lines that drip with alarming levels of authoritarianism: [Welch proceeds to list the lines]

My question is, compared to who?

Compared to some mythical libertarian ideal, Trump is an authoritarian, but so is every politician in the two major parties. In fact, I am pretty sure that you could find a speech by President Obama with more alarmingly statist rhetoric and even more of what Welch calls Great Man rhetoric (it is not as if Mr. Obama is shy about using the word “I”).

My Facebook feed is filled with comparisons of Trump with Hitler, which I find unconvincing. Hitler was the leader of a very large paramilitary organization. When Hitler was appointed chancellor (he was not elected), his paramilitary organization went about killing and intimidating men, including other Nazis, that Hitler wanted removed as threats. The Nazis in the Reichstag (Germany’s parliament) physically intimidated their colleagues into approving a law that essentially gave Hitler dictatorial powers.

Donald Trump has fervent supporters, but they are not an organized paramilitary. He has neither the plans nor the means to carry out any plans to alter the Constitution to establish a dictatorship.

Many of us believe that Mr. Obama violated the spirit of the Constitution and took Presidential power too far. For example, waivers and subsidies under the Affordable Care Act were created administratively rather than by Congress. Another example would be his decision to not enforce immigration deportation.

Some of us believe that the appropriate response to Mr. Obama is to return to the spirit of the Constitution. That view appeared to be represented in the Presidential race by Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Instead, Trump supporters seem to be saying that they want to respond with a power-aggrandizing President of their own. I enjoyed Jay Nordlinger’s quip that what Trump’s acceptance speech needed was a Republican response. I still plan to vote for Gary Johnson.

It is fair to say that Mr. Trump is further from libertarianism than the other contenders for the Republican nomination, but I think to go beyond that is hysterical. I am yet to be convinced that he is more of an authoritarian threat than what we have already experienced, or even that he is a more authoritarian threat than his opponent.

As Reihan Salam points out, Trump’s language fits my model of the conservative civilization-barbarism axis, even though his platform has little in common with recent conservative policy positions. I think it is that intense civilization vs. barbarism tone that leads people to see him as authoritarian. But to a libertarian, an intense oppressor-oppressed tone also comes across as authoritarian.

49 thoughts on “How Authoritarian is Donald Trump?

  1. I think Trump is more confused than anything. He thinks that kind of stuff is what politicians say. We are going to hear a lot about is how he is not polished or professional by people not self-aware enough to understand that will be majority-viewed as a feature rather than a bug.

  2. Rather than authoritarian, I think it speaks of arrogance and ignorance, that everyone else will follow or can be ignored, somewhat different from being thrust into the position where no one follows and being left to ones own devices.

    • However, please note Arnold’s point. From “our” “realpolitik” perspective this is far preferable to Hillary. Having a lone strongman is preferable to someone we are constantly reminded has a corrupt momentum machine behind her. If she turns out to be half as bad as Trump she might still get twice the terms compared to a guy who we can withdraw support from because he is out on an Island.

      • Between Trump and Hillary, which as a history similar to this regarding Germany going for them?

        “For more than seventy years the German professors of political science, history, law, geography and philosophy eagerly imbued their disciples with a hysterical hatred of capitalism, and preached the war of “liberation” against the capitalistic West. The German “socialists of the chair,” much admired in all foreign countries, were the pacemakers of the two World Wars. At the turn of the century the immense majority of the Germans were already radical supporters of socialism and aggressive nationalism. They were then already firmly committed to the principles of Nazism. What was lacking and was added later was only a new term to signify their doctrine. ”

        –von Mises, Ludwig (1947). Planned Chaos (LvMI)

        • If you are concerned about a Hitler-like individual, it would be advisable to see which candidate reflects that ideas the professors have been imbuing into their disciples for the last 70-90 years. All of which would have prepared the populace for the individual reflecting these ideas. That candidate is not Trump.

      • This is actually my main reason for preferring Trump over Hillary. I think Trump would be opposed by both Republicans and Democrats, and would end up ineffective. Hillary on the other hand, would be more likely to be able to push an agenda, and honestly, what I want more than anything out of the Federal Government is inaction.

  3. I agree up to a point. Other candidates and past Presidents may be no less authoritarian than he is, but they don’t sound as out of touch with reality as he does. He sounds frankly delusional–just failing to grasp basic reality and living in a bubble of his own making. But that may not matter much, and incompetence may not be a bad thing if we would rather see less stuff done. The problem with Presidents is usually that they get *too much* stuff done (both parties). So what matters is: what can he get done, and is it better or worse than other candidates and past Presidents? Here I tend to agree with Dr. Kling.

  4. Reasonable people can disagree, but to me Donald Trump’s rhetoric sounds markedly more authoritarian than that from a modal politician. Whatever the issue, his approach is stuff is broken, establishment politicians haven’t fixed it because they’re knaves and fools, and the country needs a great leader like him to take control. Details to come after he’s elected.

    On the other hand, once the president has claimed the power to kill anyone in the world, anywhere (except the territorial U.S.?), in secret, with no review from the courts or legislature, where do you go from there?

  5. Sensible arguments against Trump are:
    1) Statements he has already made (and financial ties to Putin) could, if he is elected well lead to Russian invasion of NATO countries which could lead to wider war
    2) Statements he has already made (about not honoring US debt) could, if he is elected lead to financial collapse
    3) Likely continual constructional crises over conflicts between his administration and courts.

    Yes HRC has authoritarian tendencies and she is highly corrupt, but her election is not likely to trigger any of the above.

      • “3) Likely continual [constitutional] crises over conflicts between his administration and courts.”

        I’m not trying to be snarky, but maybe I am succeeding nonetheless, is that one meant as a joke?

      • I agree HRC tried to get Obama to move more on Syria but after the hassles of Libya she (and Kerry) were not able to get Obama to commit to anything more than weapons. (In reality, weapons is not a good solution as he is giving the participants hope in a terrible Civil War.)

        In terms of Ukraine, it happened after she left the Administration. In reality, Obama did little in Ukraine (as I believe he is following Merkel’s POV) but on the other hand Putin’s Ukraine meddling has not been successful as both nations have real economic problems.

        • “I think Russia is the single most substantive issue that she failed at from conception to implementation,” argued political-risk expert Ian Bremmer, of the Eurasia Group.

          Read more: http://www.politico.com/

          I am not criticizing her performance in her largely ceremonial, and yet remarkably pesky, position. I’m pointing out that while Trump has made comments, Hillary has a record.

  6. You’re criticizing Obama for not being a constitutional originalist; not for being an authoritarian. In fact, one way in which you criticize him is for decreasing the size and scope of government (immigration) because his method violates the constitution. These are not the same thing. On regulation, Obama has been more authoritarian than usual and this has been concentrated in health care and the environment, but he’s been much more libertarian than is typical on spending. Trump is promoting himself as anti-free trade, pro-foreign intervention, and anti-immigration as his signature issues. He comes across to me as strongly authoritarian.

    • Obama’s executive action shields illegal immigrants from deportation, grants access to federal benefit programs. Obama requested large immigration budget increases to assist undocumented immigrants and refugees. Obama has also explicitly advocated, “Immigration benefits everyone”. How you spin this as shrinking the size and scope of federal government is absurd.

      • Arnold Kling specifically referenced Obama’s executive order; nothing else regarding immigration policy. That order was budget-neutral; paid for by fees collected from the immigrants themselves.

        “This implies that the difference between the original FY 2015 proposal and the modified figures represents the fee collections and hiring from President Obama’s November 2014 executive actions (including but not limited to the deferred action portions). The difference between the two documents comes out to about $530 million and exactly 2,150 employees. Because USCIS is almost entirely funded by processing fees, these changes are budget-neutral.”
        http://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/immigration-in-the-presidents-2016-budget/

        His other immigration budget increases are unrelated to the executive order. The order itself was a clear decrease in the amount of regulatory oversight of immigrants. Whether something is legal or illegal is a separate question from whether or not something increases or decreases the size and scope of government. Deporting someone is a clear increase in the size and scope of government.

        • If a President goes against the Constitution then that is authoritarianism, because it is one person making the rules. If the president woke up one morning and dismissed the entire House and Senate that would be making the government smaller, but it would still be authoritarian.

          • You’re confusing fascism with authoritarianism. A fascist can also be libertarian. A fascist cannot be an anarchist since there has to be something in place to maintain the government, but then a democracy cannot be an anarchy either.

          • Correction: I should say dictatorship rather than fascism. Generally fascism is associated with an authoritarian form of dictatorship. A dictator can be libertarian, but not a fascist.

          • One of the main parts of being authoritarian is having a strong central power. The US Constitution has protections against that, and Obama ignored those protections. Therefore, what he did was authoritarian.

        • If Obama simply practiced reduced enforcement discretion on immigration, he wouldn’t have needed to use an executive order, there would have been no violation of the constitution, and the supreme court wouldn’t have blocked it. Obama went beyond simple non-enforcement, which is why he needed an executive order and why the supreme court effectively blocked it.

  7. Two books to compare and contrast: Eric Posner’s The Executive Unbound and David Bernstein’s Lawless. Both say that Obama has been stretching the traditionally understood legal and normative boundaries of Presidential authority, with Posner saying this is a good thing and arguing Obama can and should do a lot more, and Bernstein arguing the exact opposite case. Yet we don’t see a lot of “Obama the Authoritarian” articles.

    The trouble is that ‘authoritarian’ is a motte-and-bailey, conveniently-shifting-standard boo term like ‘racist’ and ‘fascist’ and, when necessary, ‘Nazi’. It should be retired (or at least temporarily suspended) from the lexicon of people who are trying to have a neutral, reasoned discussion of the key issues on the merits. Even Douthat lost his usual cool and rigor when he kept erroneously doubling down on the fascist charge against Donald Trump.

    There is a technical and stricter definition of these terms in the dictionary, but in practice they are used by people in an inconsistent, double-standard way, solely against their opponents, with intent to denigrate, defame, and create an impression of menace, evil, and guilt-by-association. It’s pointless to enumerate or engage in a debate of whether or not someone meets the technical standard for this or that boo word, when the point is always only the non-technical boo.

    I have seen some Libertarians support Obama acting in the face of Congressional disapproval when he issued those illegal executive orders related to immigration. Are they also ‘authoritarians’ now? Technically yes, so then rhetorically yes also, so long as someone wants to slander them and provoke a chorus of boos.

    And anyway, as the ‘Hard Delegation Doctrine’ Administrative Law critics like Epstein and Hamburger point out, the whole post-New Deal system is inherently authoritarian. The current structure of the US government is full of delegations – duly enacted by Congress and typically upheld by the judiciary – of tremendous amounts of discretionary authority to a large number of executive officials, from the President, cabinet secretaries, and district attorneys on down. Look up how many times the word ‘discretion’ appears in the US Code, CFR, or any of the latest kilopage bills. Sometimes whole sections or chapters are entitled “discretionary activities”.

    Is an institution like the Fed or the Treasury ‘authoritarian’ when they arguably exceed their authorities when issuing orders and allocating trillions in capital, and yet no one is ever held to any kind of account? Remember early on in the ‘The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008’ / ‘TARP’ negotiations when Paulson literally requested a blank check with his three-page bill, and arguably ended up using the fund that way anyway? Congress blessing off on huge expansions of unaccountable authority of indefinite duration doesn’t suddenly erase the authoritarian nature of the way power is exercised by these officials.

    At any rate, even a real authoritarian in theory and rhetoric can’t act in practice in the US without the willing cooperation of many other individuals and institutions. Trump would face loads of resistance, while Hillary would get a pass, if not applause. So, in practice, the unimpeded party is the one a critic of government power actually has to worry about, and on whom one should be concentrating their efforts instead of wasting their time on the one who won’t actually be able to exercise that authority most of the time.

    • “Trump would face loads of resistance, while Hillary would get a pass, if not applause.”

      I think it would actually be the opposite. Assuming that the GOP retains control of the House, I believe that they would automatically rally to deny HRC as much as they could. But they would, at least initially, fecklessly bow down to the DJT agenda.

      I am voting for Johnson, but I think I am marginally more willing to accept the downside of POTUS Hillary than that of POTUS Donald

      • Hillary would find ways to bypass congress in many ways, and the media would give her a pass. Trump would struggle with an unfamiliar system and a congress that doesn’t actually like him that much, only a bit when compared to the alternative. There would still be resistance to him from the right, and the media would never let up on anything, including things that the obama white house is doing right now that will continue regardless of who takes office next.

    • Trump plus Reps in Congress vs Hillary plus Dems in Congress … and Dems in media (pass! applause for illegal acts against Koch bros or other Reps), Dems in Academia (only dummies vote Rep, ever), and mostly Dems in Think Tanks,

      The “intellectual elite” who get paid to publish, and the “famous elite” who get on TV a lot, are now and will be after the election Dems. They will cover for Hillary crimes, and will magnify, exaggerate, and often even invent Trump crimes & mispoken phrases.

      Any and all who support Clinton are undermining “rule of law”, one of the key pillars of American success.

      Finally, neither you, I, nor media, nor Putin, nor even Trump himself really know what he will do in office — in many cases it’s not even clear what he’ll even be trying to do. This is the biggest unknown (but because it’s a known unknown, it is much more scary than the unknown unknowns which are not at all frightening, until it’s too late). Never have we known less about what policies a candidate will actually attempt.

      Trump’s list of SCOTUS was a great stroke tho, if one believes he’ll really choose according to it (as I do believe).

      • “Never have we known less about what policies a candidate will actually attempt.”

        Trump: Build the wall, fix immigration, clean up international entanglements. The only candidate I can recall who has sharply criticized Iraq 2 as well as nuclear weapons, by the way, possibly why he’s painted as so dangerous.

        Clinton: ummm … subjugate the white male and more overseas wars? I’m not sure, because media has little interest for her policies, but that’s what her coalition seems to be about. (Anti-whites + anti-males + the donor class.) More Obama for those who haven’t had enough.

        • +1

          Asked a Hillary supporter the other day what policies she supported. They had no clue, but they were sure she must have some!

          Obama already implemented everything Hillary ever wanted. This is pure vanity for her.

    • That’s one point for Hitler, I guess. But his not pandering doesn’t entirely make up for the rest of it.

  8. I admire Kling for being so calm and level headed on this. Trump is no Ron/Rand Paul or Ted Cruz, but he’s not necessarily more authoritarian than Bush or Obama or Hillary.

  9. “Authoritarian” is not a synonym for statist or even “wants a powerful executive”. For example, blaming and promising to cleanse ethnic outgroups is a hallmark of authoritarianism that neither Bush nor Obama really engaged in. Delegitimizing opposition to the point you want to lock up the opposition leader is something neither bush nor Obama really did (though plenty of dems and republicans have been heading there). Etc. Here’s an article about the poli sci definition of authoritarian:

    http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism

    I think the ethnic cleansing point is especially salient. The great thing about America is that our statists, even our “strong leader” types, have generally not been able to harness racist or ethnic gripes. Our racists, for historically contingent reasons, got into federalism and decentralized government, not authoritarianism . Unfortunantly, they’ve come round with trump.

    • Chester A. Arthur and FDR both harnessed racist gripes to specifically target minorities.

    • Authoritarian personality research is largely bunk and is too steeped in political bias to be worth taking seriously. It’s basically just a convoluted attempt to portray people who want their children to be generally obedient and well-mannered (i.e. good parents who just want their kids to grow up well-adjusted and happy) as secret fascists who would support the gassing of (insert favorite minority group here) if given half the chance.

      (Adorno even uses the term “F-scale” to denote one’s level of “authoritarianism”. Are only fascists authoritarian? Of course, comrade!)

      The major philosophical issue is that it is a classic motte-and-bailey trick:
      motte: “Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by strong central power and limited political freedoms.”[1] Contrary to what you claim this is indistinguishable from Statism[2]
      bailey: Authoritarianism is political power being exercised by conservatives.

      [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism
      [2]”The practice or doctrine of giving a centralized government control over economic planning and policy.” https://www.wordnik.com/words/statism

    • Come on… Do a google search on “racist american presidents” and there is tons. Even some of the most egregiously racist acts of America in my mind don’t make the top ten lists I see. I’m thinking of Ulysses S Grant running military campaigns to literally exterminate native american indians. Trump isn’t remotely this bad. More controversially, I’d argue that Obama has tons of racist dog whistles to black nationalists. Look at Obama’s 2016 favorite music album pick, look at the cover art. That is a racist dog whistle.

  10. I am yet to be convinced that he is more of an authoritarian threat than what we have already experienced.

    Yes, I think the hold Trump = Hitler is completely overblown and I do believe the Trump is the Putin lackey is over-the top heresy. But it does not have to be Hitler to be concerned here:

    1) Trump seems to hold ridiculous grudges that are very concerning.

    2) He shift incredibly on issues even in the same speech. He is claiming what a problem Iraq 2 was when in reality, he supported the war at the beginning just like HRC.

    3) He really makes big sweeping statements and then backs down. There are a lot of concern of current NATO treaties but it strikes me wrong to make such sweeping statements about them. Incremental change would be more effective not just tearing them up.

    Let us just say Johnson is still a better choice.

  11. A few points

    1) It is always somewhat misleading to compare a candidate as he presents himself to the historical record of actual presidents, because everyone governs in a way that is more authoritarian than they campaign. Candidate Obama promised to close Gitmo. Candidate Bush ran on “compassionate conservatism” and a “humbler” foreign policy. Candidate (Bill) Clinton declared the “era of big government is over.” I would bet anyone that a President Rand Paul would still be ordering drone strikes in year 4 and that the process would be just as opaque as it is under Obama. There are a myriad of reasons for why this is so, but it’s a recurring fact. This is relevant to Trump because the persona he presents on the campaign trail is markedly more authoritarian than any other candidate in living memory.

    2) “Authoritarian” != “Statist”. There is a critical difference between the two, namely where the implicit seat of legitimacy lies. Your stereotypical European Social Democracy has all manner higher state intervention in the economy than say, Singapore under Lee Kwan Yew or Chile under Pinochet. You wouldn’t call the former “authoritarian” because the state intervention occurs in accordance with the popular will, established constitutional practice, is administered by a theoretically disinterested civil service, and most importantly is authorized by legislative bodies. Whereas in the latter cases, “authoritarian” is entirely appropriate to use despite more modest statism, because the underlying basis for the policies is the personal will of the chief executive. The difference between authoritarianism and statism is abstract but still very real. What distinguishes “authoritarianism” is that the authority becomes personal rather than institutional.

    3) I agree that it is extremely frustrating when people compare Trump to Hitler. Hitler occupies a unique level in the pantheon of evil due to the Holocaust and launching WW2. Trump is offensively tolerant of racism, but he doesn’t appear to have much in the way of personal racial grudges, nor does he have any apparent systematic ideology of racial purity, nor is there any piece of foreign territory he seems to covet as “rightfully ours”, all of which are central to any explanation of who Hitler was and what his motivations were. As a personality, Trump is much closer to the more straightforward self-aggrandizing egotism of Mussolini. Mussolini had people around him whose job was to claim there was some sort of ideology going on, but it’s more accurate to say what he really wanted was for any and all important decisions made to be made by him on his own personal gut instinct. He cared much more for the theater of the dramatic gesture than for the actual end results. He wanted fealty not in service to any particular goal but merely as ego validation. This is much closer to what seems to motivate Trump. Your point bears repeating though- Trump does not command a paramilitary organization that can physically intimidate people into compliance with his will. A**hole alt-righters on twitter are a far cry from the brownshirts.

    4) Despite all the comparisons being overblown, it’s still pretty clear to me that Trump is authoritarian on a level new to American politics. What makes me convinced of that is
    a) his open and public contempt for the institutional limits on the presidency and of the government as a whole. That contempt is something he shares probably equally with Obama and Woodrow Wilson, but what’s new is that he considers that contempt to be an asset on which to campaign rather than something he should obscure or hide from the public. That to me implies that as president he would feel little to no obligation to maintain a facade of lawfulness. We’ve had awful and cynical power abusers as presidents (e.g. LBJ, Nixon), but the need to maintain the appearance of lawfulness puts real constraints on how badly they can behave and implicitly accepts submitting to the consequences if they are caught. Trump does not seem to have any such constraint.

    b) his demands for not just loyalty but abasement and fealty from his subordinates. All politicians want personal loyalty and many are petty tyrants to their staff, but very few humiliate and gaslight their supporters in the mode of Trump. The typical reason politicians lie to their supporters is that they feel the practical need to do something dirty and don’t want their supporters burdened with a guilty conscience, sort of like how white collar criminals never want their wives & kids to know that they are thieves. Trump gaslights though- he (presumably intentionally) places his supporters in the position of defending obvious and transparent lies. That is a classic method of authoritarianism and tyranny (Theodore Dalrymple said it best here: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=7445). It indicates that Trump will not even accept the soft boundaries implied by having to articulate a coherent justification for his actions, and will instead just try to humiliate and ruin anyone who gainsay him, even if what they are doing is constructive criticism. That also is something new in presidential politics, and one which bodes very ill for how a Trump presidency would operate.

    • It is curious that an article from 2005 is supposed to be describing Trump.

      • The quote is not about Trump per se. It’s about the phenomenon of gaslighting. The quote I had in mind was:

        Dalrymple: Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

        Dalrymple is talking in this case about political correctness, and more generally how it is similar to communism, but the phenomenon applies to all tyranny. All politicians lie, but gaslighting is a special kind of lie- unlike a normal lie, in which the politician wants you to believe something that isn’t true, the purpose of gaslighting is not to convince anyone of something untrue but to demonstrate your power to compel people into saying things they know to be lies. It is a cruelly effective intimidation tactic, because there are few things more dispiriting than watching someone you respect succumb to it. I’ve seen it too much this year in the GOP, and seeing the process he describe unfold happen repeatedly has convinced me Trump really is aspirant authoritarian tyrant. All political lying is shady to some degree, but repeatedly gasligting your supporaters is an especially depraved form of it. As often as not, lying politicians believe their own BS. Gaslighting does not have much history in the US, and to see it is alarming

        • This is instructive. Trump sounds crazy and impulsive but he doesn’t sound calculated and focus-grouped.

          Hillary is to me like that sonic weapon that the Navy was developing that makes people puke uncontrollably.

          She got in front of the VFW yesterday and said “I don’t understand how people can badmouth this country” and then she drove over to the DNC to meet with DWS.

          • Is political pandering a subset of this?

            The VFW knows she is lying, but maybe they feel some connection because they are participating with her in the lie?

            So, when they are seeking support you get the velvet glove and when you ask for more soup, please, you get the iron fist.

          • Pandering is something different. It involves contempt for the audience, but is closer to hypocrisy. We can be reasonably confident that Hillary gives <0.01 f's about the people in that VWF hall, however an actual decent person would and she knows it. That she took the time and effort to fake an attempt at decency is in its own bizarre way a sincere and genuine compliment to the VFW. It communicates that she understands the amount of respect she ought to give them, and by adhering to decorum communicates that she feels constrained in how raw a deal she can actual give them.

            If you encounter someone with whom you have mutual antipathy in a public place, say the grocery store, it’s better that you both go through motions of civility than to air it all out. Sure, it’s hypocritical and dishonest on some level, but it communicates something important, namely that the rules of civilized behavior are more important to me than our antipathy.

  12. The behavior of the Democrat and Republican parties has made someone like Trump inevitable. The Democrats by slandering every Republican candidate as racist, sexist homophobe (including the very courteous and accomplished Mitt Romney, who was called a murderer, among other things). The Republicans for being too cowardly to fight such lies and being all too willing to let Obama do what he wanted. So here comes Trump who fights back and seems impervious to the Dems’ slander techniques. Too bad. I’d rather take my chances with Trump, with Republican majorities in the Congress to curb his bad impulses.

    If George HW Bush hadn’t been rolled by the Dems on a tax increase and Ross Perot hadn’t entered the race on a personal grudge against the Bush family, we might have avoided the corrupt Hillary and Bill Clinton. If David Axelrod hadn’t been able to unseal Ryan’s divorce records, we might not have had to suffer the lawless Obama. Such are the accidents of history.

  13. Trump is the most authoritarian Presidential candidate by far since Nixon.

    I think the right response to Hitler comparisons here is to invoke Godwin’s Law. But just because Trump is very different from Hitler doesn’t mean he isn’t an authoritarian.

    He has enthusiastically endorsed torture of criminal suspects as long as the crime looks like terrorism and the suspect looks Muslim. He has said that we should just ago into Iraq and take their oil. He has admired almost all of the worst dictators in the world. He has said that it’s still too hard to tell if putting Japanese citizens in internment camps in WWII was a good idea. He has encouraged violence against peaceful protestors. I could go on but you get the point.

    This you consider equivalent with Obama taking a position on the ACA that was upheld by John Roberts? Give me a break.

    As usual, in this discussion the word “statist” simply means “wants more government than the speaker.” To every anarchist, Gary Johnson is a statist. The term could hardly be more meaningless the way it has been used in this discussion.

  14. Trump has not issued a single signing statement. He has not had a top official lie to Congress and then lied about it. He has not claimed authority to not enforce acts of Congress because Congress has “failed” to pass the law he would prefer. Etc.

    • Trump is just a dot on this s#itty trend line two party boosters have doomed us with. Is he microscopically an outlier? Maybe. We certainly don’t know.

    • Of course it’s true that Trump hasn’t done any of the things that he could only do after becoming President. So what? That’s true of everyone so it’s trivial. He is telling you he wants to do things that are much worse.

      Both the original post here and most of the comments have been a parody of the idea of “taking the most charitable view of those who disagree.” Maybe you think you have a good reason for not taking a charitable view. OK then fine. Make your argument. But don’t tell me that most of what I’ve seen here is taking the most charitable view.

      This blog should stop starting its header with a self flattering slogan it can’t begin to live up to.

  15. Should Trump win the election, he will take it as proof of his infallible instincts. How does an infallible man behave in a position of power? A bit like Hitler, no?

Comments are closed.