Could a second presidency of Donald Trump tip into a dictatorship? A sudden wave of dystopian warnings led America to raise the possibility less than a year before the US election.
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Gloomy scenarios about what could happen if the twice-impeached former Republican president prevails in 2024 appeared in the space of a few days in major media outlets. WE media outlets such as the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Atlantic.
Dire predictions also came from Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic of Trump, who said the country was “sleepwalking toward dictatorship” and that she was considering her own presidential bid to try to stop it.
Together, they paint a grim picture of a Trump angrier but more disciplined than during his first stint in the election. White Houseone who would take revenge on his perceived enemies and perhaps attempt to stay in power beyond America’s two-term limit.
President Joe Bidenwho is facing rematch from his bitter 2020 clash with Trump, said the warnings supported his own claims that he was defending American democracy.
“If Trump wasn’t the candidate, I’m not sure I would be. But we can’t let him win,” the 81-year-old Democrat said at a campaign event in Massachusetts.
Biden cited Trump’s increasingly violent language on the campaign trail, saying his rival’s description of his opponents as “vermin” echoed language used in Nazi Germany.
“Trump isn’t even hiding the ball anymore. He’s telling us what he’s going to do.”
“President for life”
Trump, 77, and his allies responded as they usually do, fighting fire with fire. He accused Biden of being a “destroyer of democracy” and even reposted one of the most critical articles on social media.
Conservative Fox News described it as a “media panic,” while pro-Trump Republican senator and author JD Vance said on X that “everyone should take a pill to relax.”
But the sudden rise in warnings — amid Democrats’ angst over polls showing Trump now leading Biden despite multiple criminal trials — was striking.
The most revealing article was published in the Washington Post by conservative commentator Robert Kagan, with the headline: “A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable.” We should stop pretending. »
Comparing him to the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar, who seized power, the lengthy article argues that neither the U.S. Constitution nor the Supreme Court could prevent Trump from being “president for life” if he wanted to be.
Kagan wrote that if Trump survives the trials he faces for trying to overturn the 2020 election and illegally cling to power, and he wins the next election, he will effectively feel above the law and can get away with anything.
The New York Times analyzed how a “second term could unleash a darker President Trump” than his chaotic first presidency from 2017 to 2021.
Trump “has spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades” and would likely follow their lead by filling public office with loyalists and using the Justice Department to suppress opponents, he said.
In scenes reminiscent of a dystopian film, it is said that Trump would also establish migrant detention camps and use the military against protesters under the US Insurrection Act.
The Atlantic magazine, meanwhile, devotes its entire January-February 2024 issue to what a Trump presidency would look like, with an editor’s note titled simply: “A Warning.”
“Dangerous moment”
Some of the most dire forebodings came from Cheney, a former Republican lawmaker and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, whose opposition to Trump made her a party pariah.
“It’s a very dangerous moment,” she said on NBC on Sunday.
There was “no doubt” that Trump would try to stay in power beyond 2028, she said, adding that the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by supporters trying to overturn the election victory of Biden was just “practice.”
For his critics, Trump’s autocratic side has long been clearly visible.
Trump is already on trial for conspiring to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, with prosecutors saying Tuesday that evidence shows he was determined to “remain in power at all costs.”
His language has become more extreme in recent months, during which he has described migrants as “poisoning the blood of our country” and suggested that his former military leader faces death for treason.
But in the mirror world of Trump and his allies, he is still the victim.
“Joe Biden is the real dictator,” Trump said in a photo posted on his conservative network Truth Social.
(AFP)
