What’s going on with Trump?
If he succeeds in installing Matt Gaetz as attorney general and Kash Patel as FBI director, even Trump's allies might not be safe from retribution
With the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the United States will be convulsed in turmoil for the next several years. It’s hard not to conclude that he’s laying the foundation for dictatorial government, given some of his key cabinet picks.
Putting Matt Gaetz in as attorney general, Kristi Noem in charge of homeland security, and possibly Kash Patel as FBI director ensures that Trump will have ardent loyalists overseeing key mechanisms of federal power. Less than a year ago, Patel declared that a second Trump administration would go after “the conspirators not just in government, but in media”.
These are not normal times.
In 1922, Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party attempted a coup with a March on Rome. That led to a constitutional transfer of power to Mussolini’s party, enabling him to become leader through intimidation. The fascists won the 1924 election in which the party with the largest share of votes received two-thirds of seats in Parliament. The next year, Mussolini ended Italy’s experiment with democracy.
Less than a decade later, Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in the midst of the Great Depression. In 1930, the Nazis became the second-largest party in the Weimar Republic after capturing 19 percent of the votes. There were four chancellors in three years, culminating in Hitler, who ruled through presidential decrees. It didn’t take long for Hitler to crush opposition and eliminate perceived threats in his own party through the Röhm Purge.
Wealthy businesspeople thought they could restrain Hitler and Mussolini, but that proved to be illusory. Fascist dictators also rose to power in Spain and Portugal, leaving these countries impoverished for decades.
Trump has surrounded himself with outsiders who’ve lusted for power for many years. They include his nominated national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, who’s been accused by some Democrats of being a Russian asset. Then, there’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump has nominated for health and human services secretary.
Gabbard and Kennedy are both former Democrats who’ve criticized Trump in the past. If we’re really looking at a future Trump dictatorship, they could easily be forced out as Trump centralizes power around his two closest and most trustworthy allies, Patel and Gaetz.
In they are confirmed, Patel and Gaetz could easily manufacture evidence and mount a prosecution against any member of the cabinet, including Gabbard and RFK Jr.
The truth doesn’t matter to Trump and his inner circle. Even the incoming vice president, J.D. Vance, isn’t immune from prosecution. Especially if Trump decides that he no longer needs him to speak on television because Patel has already defanged the media.
Putin let oligarchs in Russia know who was boss when the country’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsy, was charged with fraud in 2003. This was three-and-a-half years after Putin became president.
If businesspeople like Jamie Dimon or Elon Musk or Peter Thiel think that they can control Trump, they need to brush up on their history. Fascist agents of chaos, like Trump, thrive by creating “enemies of the people”. I suspect that this term won’t only be applied to undocumented migrants.
There’s no guarantee that Dimon, Thiel, and Musk won’t also be swallowed up by the revolution that they helped foment. Musk and Thiel actively backed Trump, whereas Dimon, a Wall Street tycoon, played a supporting role by not resisting the rise of fascism.
Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy also needs to be mindful of history if he wants to avoid the fate of Ernst Röhm, who felt that Hitler wasn’t moving quickly enough.
However, I’m most concerned about brave voices who tried to stem the Trump tide when there was still a chance to stop him. They include MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell, New York attorney general Letitia James, Rep. Eric Swalwell, and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. They’ve all proven to be true American patriots, which will make them popular targets for the MAGA die-hards.
The bottom line is that Trump—like Putin and so many other dictators—knows that as soon as he leaves office, he’ll likely spend the rest of his days in court or in jail. As a result, he’ll take whatever actions are necessary to avoid that fate. So we shouldn’t be surprised if Trump tries to dispense with constitutional norms so that he can remain president for life.