Il Duce and Ol' Douchey

On Fox's "The Five" Thursday, the panel was very, very miffed that DNC deputy chair Keith Ellison blasphemed against Donald Trump on the socialist public radio t'other day, when Ellison brazenly compared Donald Trump's use of the Twitterbox to Mad King George the Tyrant, which is ridiculous because everyone knows George III lived in old-timey times when all they had was dial-up. Ellison raised rightwing hackles by suggesting that Donald Trump used social media for evil:

I see [Twitter] in general as a good thing to foster communication from the government, but I think it can be used in a very bad way, because what he’s doing through his Twitter account and in other ways is circumventing the whole system to intimidate people, to pack courts, to intimidate the press, all so that he can just sort of run everything himself.

And we fought a war of independence against somebody, King George, who was trying to do that. This is really why I’m actually kind of concerned about his use of social media, not the fact that he uses it -- that's actually a good thing. The way that he uses it, I think, is damaging to representative democracy.

Filthy lies, said the Foxes, because, POINT: Dana Perino said the constitutional system of checks and balances is actually working really well and Donald Trump is not able to just randomly blow things up with a single Tweet, because apparently she hadn't heard about how he abruptly tried to remake Pentagon policy on transgender people in the military one day before. But hey, checks and balances -- they're ignoring the tweet until they get a real order through proper channels, so Ha-Ha-Herman, Keith Ellison.

Then COUNTERPOINT: Fox "humorist" person Jesse Watters chimed in with a thought about how it would really be a cool thing if only Ellison were right:

A lot of people wish President Trump was a dictator, maybe we could repeal Obamacare. It would be a lot easier that way.

Mind you, this is not a thing Jesse Watters himself believes, just "a lot of people," so he is merely reflecting the popular will for a Trumptatorship, not advocating such a thing himself. Still, wouldn't it be cool if Trump could just wish Obamacare into the cornfield? That'd be cool, and it would really be cool if Trump could just make all the illegals go back to Mexico, wherever they're from. Do we really need unelected judges getting in the way of solving America's problems?

Also, it would really be unfair to suggest that Trump followers in general have some kind of authoritarian tendencies just because some guy on Fox joked about the president having dictatorial powers.

It would, however, be rather more fair to suggest a significant portion of Trump supporters have authoritarian tendencies when you look at an Economist/YouGov poll released earlier this week, which found that 55 percent of Republicans would favor "permitting the courts to fine news media outlets for publishing or broadcasting stories that are biased or inaccurate," and that 45 percent of Republicans like the idea of courts having the power to shut down media outlets for the same offenses. You know it's news when it upsets Ben "Liberals Are Doing 1984" Shapiro, who worries this is bad news for Free Speech. You think?

Probably nothing to worry about here. Now sign your loyalty oath and salute the president, will you?

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[Washington Times / Media Matters / Economist/YouGov poll / Daily Wire]