Trump Wants To Seize America And Make Himself Dictator. He's Not Being Subtle About It.

This is one of those 'What's at stake' articles.

It might sound like a broken record at this point, or déjà vu, or somehow a combination of those two things, but the New York Times has a report (gift link) this morning from Maggie and the Rippers (i.e. Haberman and whatever dudes she’s bylining with that day) about Donald Trump’s very real plans to remake the presidency in his own authoritarian image, should he somehow seize power in 2024.

Trump always was obsessed when he was president with the (false) notion that he “[had] an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want.” Seething, he insists now that he has a Presidential Records Act that says he owns all presidential records, when any semi-literate cow could tell him it says the opposite.

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The chances of Trump winning the 2024 election because that’s who the American people chose are slim to none, but if he steals it, or has somebody else steal it for him, here are some things he’d like to do:

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

He reportedly plans to directly control agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). We guess it’s easier to bully and punish the media and corporations for being insufficiently ass-licky to Dear Leader that way.

More:

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

Remember Trump’s first impeachment, when he held back aid Congress had appropriated to defend Ukraine against Trump’s buddies in Russia, so he could extort Ukraine into helping him steal the 2020 election? That was a crime. He wants to be able to commit it freely.

And then of course the thing where he wants to eliminate all the highly qualified and hard-working, patriotic civil servants who swear oaths to the Constitution and not him personally. The Times quotes Trump’s body man/pretty boy dumbfuck Johnny McEntee, who’s had his little boy hands all over it every time Trump has tried to start enforcing loyalty oaths:

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

OK, big overgrown football player guy! Thems is some very large words! Especially when all you’re trying to say is that Donald Trump is a man with excessive Little Man Syndrome whose feelings get hurt very easily.

There is so much more in the article, and it is terrifyingly un-American.

Habes notes that all of this goes WAY beyond his simple threats to order criminal investigations into Joe Biden. And they’re saying it out loud. They’re telling their voters about their new plans to seize power by brute force, which is on brand for a campaign and a candidate who is incapable of winning things by, you know, winning them.

The story of Trump’s reign was one of him finding out at each and every turn that he was not a king or dictator, and him being furious about that. Meanwhile, he would gaze with longing and leave snail trails on the floor every time he met a real dictator, because the only kind of power he’s impressed by is the kind that forces itself upon its victims.

(Dudes like Trump are unable to comprehend real power that doesn’t feel the need to loudly and constantly blab about how wonderfully powerful it is. And he’ll certainly never understand the kind of power that comes with decent, intelligent people giving their respect and admiration freely. You know, the kind of power Barack Obama still has.)

When Trump was president, he tried to do a lot of things. He tried to have Robert Mueller fired, and he tried to buy Greenland, and he tried to extort Ukraine, and he tried to send the military in to go after peaceful, legal protesters, and one million other things that were immoral and/or illegal and/or monumentally stupid.

Hell, he incited a terrorist attack against the homeland as part of his effort to overthrow the government and overturn the election he lost.

But sometimes, there were people present who told him no. Or they ignored him and waited for him to have a bowel movement and forget the last thing he ordered.

This is a plan to make it near impossible to tell the fucking crybaby “no,” and to make sure everybody in a position to take orders from him is enough of a garbage sycophant that they’d never consider disobeying an illegal order for the good of the country.

We should take it very seriously.

[New York Times]

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