Donald Trump’s speech to Congress had all the hallmarks of an address of a despot. Even by his debased standards, this record-breaking, rambling “weave” of an address was striking in its vaulting ambition and naked arrogance.
Trump has half-joked about being a “dictator for a day”, but to see him perform like a tyrant in Congress, in the very heart of American democracy, takes a certain sort of audacity. There were protests from the assembled legislators, sometimes a defiant silence and at other times paddle boards proclaiming “False”, “Musk lies”, and “Save Medicaid”. One outraged congressman was even ejected from the chamber – another Trump era first. Yet there is as yet little sense of the legislative arm of government pushing back against America’s unmistakable and remarkably rapid journey to becoming an elective dictatorship, with an imperial presidency more powerful than any of its predecessors, including those of Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon.
It’s the style as well as the “substance” of Trump’s performance that put one in mind of a modern-day Caesar. He’s not an especially eloquent orator, but there is a certain Mob-style menace in how Trump delivers his threats, and menacing smaller nations is what expansionist dictators tend to do.
Vladimir Putin, who Trump plainly admires, exemplifies the contemporary iteration. He has spent decades preparing the Russians for his incessant attacks on Ukraine by diminishing his weaker neighbour’s culture, its right to exist and its democratic ambitions – run by “Nazis”. Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, emboldened by Trump’s acquiescence towards Russian aggression and bullying of “dictator” Volodymyr Zelensky, calls the Ukrainian leader, who happens to be Jewish, a “pure Nazi” and a “traitor to the Jewish people”.
The echoes of the 1930s are clear. In their day, Mussolini and Hitler ridiculed and denigrated “backward” nations. Il Duce sought to conquer Ethiopia, and the Fuhrer said the Slavic nations of Eastern Europe were populated by sub-humans. Trump is similarly dehumanising and threatening. With not even an acknowledgement of international law and the prohibition of settling disputes by force and aggression, he once again pledged to “reclaim” the Panama Canal and take Greenland into the United States “one way or another”, as he growled oh so theatrically. Special scorn was reserved for Lesotho, a poor nation that had the cheek to receive development assistance from USAID. Uganda, Burma/Myanmar, Serbia, Moldova (a prime target for Putin) and Mozambique were similarly disputed, adding gratuitous injury to the loss of aid.
Once again, the president chose to other the weak, the vulnerable and those most discriminated against in America. The near-sadistic glee with which Trump paraded his dismantling of “DEI” policies and “woke” culture was another source of worry for anyone who wants to see America displaying strength through unity, and continuing its journey to eradicate racism. As a previous president, Abraham Lincoln, once famously declared, “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”
America has rarely been more polarised than it is today, and Trump could have taken the opportunity, in time and in identifying common values, to bring his divided nation together in front of the elected representatives of the people. Lamentably, he instead attacked the Democrats in the chamber – there by the wish of about half the country – in unprecedented fashion and picked on senator Elizabeth Warren with the usual childish jibes.
Trump’s modest democratic mandate is being leveraged into a weapon to delegitimise and destroy independent agencies, disarm Congress, appoint patsies to the cabinet, Supreme Court, and chiefs of staff, and mute criticism in the media. As with any dictatorship truth and language has to be subverted to the quest for absolute power. Trump’s “truth media” has nothing to do with it. His persistent lies are well documented and have been consistently fact-checked and refuted. He takes no notice, and derides those who speak the truth as “fake news”. Lies – big lies – are repeated in traditional dictator style. Proper journalists who seek to challenge this are being taken out of media rooms and press conferences, and supplanted by cronies, most disgracefully the clown who asked President Zelensky why he wasn’t wearing a suit. Elon Musk urges the impeachment of judges who question his unlawful activities, which have nothing to do with efficiency and “scams”, and everything to do with victimising the poor at home and abroad.
Trump, in short, is building his elective dictatorship in plain sight. It is easy to cling to hope and fall back on the assumption that such things cannot happen in America, with its intricate system of democratic checks and balances. Yet such things are indeed happening, and at such a bewildering speed they are hard to restrain. America is currently being ruled by imperial decree – the “executive order”, issued so often in brazenly unconstitutional form, such as the attempt to end citizenship by birthright. It is precisely the system of government that has so often been the precursor to a much more comprehensive system of control.
As in so many civilised nations in the past, some of the institutions, such as Congress, may survive but only in functionally weak and subordinate form. As in Russia, there will be pockets of free media and accountability – but that is not a true democracy. The clear danger is that Trump and the cult-like neo-fascistic Maga movement have made such progress in eroding democratic norms that, in Trumpian terms, the drift to authoritarianism is becoming unstoppable. The state of the union is poor.
