Donald Trump has promoted a Washington Post column that warned of an inevitable ‘Trump dictatorship,’ should he be reelected in 2024.
Trump, who remains some 30-40 points ahead of the rest of the GOP primary field, ‘retruthed’ a post from Republican congressman Cory Mills that included the link to Robert Kagan’s essay.
Mills, a representative from Trump’s adoptive home state of Florida wrote: ‘For months, the radical left and never Trumpers tried to claim Pres. Trump could not win a general election. They tried to launch countless indictments & false allegations to get him off the ballot.
‘Now, it’s obvious the Americans from all walks of life, not from any singular socioeconomic background, are in staunch support of Donald J. Trump.’
The post by Mills went on to say that Americans are tired of the results of the ‘failed Biden Admin,’ and want back the ‘economy Trump created, affordable living conditions, safety back in our communities, peace through strength foreign policies that prevented all out war, and an America first driven agenda.’
The presumptive GOP nominee’s promotion of the article appears to be the most recent signal he is sending that this campaign is being run well outside the confines of establishment DC opinions and beliefs.
Trump, on Monday, ‘retruthed’ a post sharing a Washington Post article that dubbed him a dictator
In the lengthy Washington Post piece, Robert Kagan lays out his argument that Trump is well on his way to becoming the GOP nominee for president and stands a good chance of defeating Joe Biden in November.
He says Trump’s second term would see him become the most powerful president in US history, after defeating two impeachments and coming through four indictments, which have only served to turbocharge GOP support.
Kagan also believes Trump – who can only serve one further term, having previously been president from 2017 to 2021 – could defy that convention too and stay on as long as he sees fit.
‘The idea that he is unelectable in the general election is nonsense – he is tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls – stripping other Republican challengers of their own stated reasons for existence,’ he writes.
At present, Trump remains some 30-40 points ahead of his nearest GOP competitor in the polls, and is several points up over Biden in many general election match ups.
If that happens, Kagan writes, Trump will be in a comfortable position to thwart each of the checks and balances built into the US government and potentially install himself as a supreme leader.
‘Like Caesar, Trump wields a clout that transcends the laws and institutions of government, based on the unswerving personal loyalty of his army of followers,’ Kagan writes about Trump as he argues that the former president’s plethora of legal woes will not be effective blockades against his political ascension.
Robert Kagan makes a case for the potency of Trump’s power and what could happen if he finds himself back in the White House
He continues: ‘The likeliest outcome of the trials will be to demonstrate our judicial system’s inability to contain someone like Trump and, incidentally, to reveal its impotence as a check should he become president.’
He then argues that, should Trump find himself inhabiting the White House for a second term, he may very well decide he’d like a third.
He writes: ‘Trump might not want or need a third term, but were he to decide he wanted one, as he has sometimes indicated, would the 22nd Amendment block him any more effectively from being president for life than the Supreme Court, if he refused to be blocked?’
‘Why should anyone think that amendment would be more sacrosanct than any other part of the Constitution for a man like Trump, or perhaps more importantly, for his devoted supporters?’ asks Kagan.
The author bolsters his argument all the way through by gesturing to Trump’s ferociously loyal base, who did not abandon him during either impeachment attempt, January 6, or the aftermath of the 2020 election.
That support is immovable, Kagan argues, and so will inevitably be followed by the donor class of the GOP, even if many of them would have prefered a different candidate this time around.
‘All this will end once Trump wins Super Tuesday. Votes are the currency of power in our system, and money follows, and by those measures, Trump is about to become far more powerful than he already is,’ he writes.
‘The next phase is about people falling into line … Will corporate executives endanger the interests of their shareholders just because they or their spouses hate Trump?’
Furthermore, he suggests that any sort of unified opposition to Trump will falter if he wins again.
‘In evolving dictatorships, the opposition is always weak and divided. That’s what makes dictatorship possible in the first place,’ he says.
There is no ‘sufficient reason to hope that the disordered and dysfunctional opposition to Trump today will suddenly become more unified and effective once Trump takes power. That is not how things work.’
And by the author’s own admission Trump has a track record to run on that does not include a full scale invasion of Ukraine, major terror attack on Israel, runaway inflation, and the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan.
With that kind of record for Biden to defend, Kagan writes: ‘It is hard to make the case for Trump’s unfitness to anyone who does not already believe it.’
Ron DeSantis, who fared well in a highly publicized debate against California Governor Gavin Newsom last week, remains some 30 points behind Trump in virtually all polls
Nikki Haley, whose campaign has massively surged in recent weeks, is still competing for a distant second place in the polls behind Trump
Trump’s die-hard fan base will guide the Republican party’s donor class to a Trump nomination, says Kagan, and will eventually embolden him in the White House
It is hard to make the case for Trump’s unfitness to anyone who does not already believe it,’ writes the author
For his part, Trump is chugging along in full campaign mode, having recently released his Agenda47 plan for the federal government.
In the plan, released to social media, Trump lays out his vision for flying cars, renewed American cities, crackdowns on teachers and the liberal media, as well as his usual refrain in which he targets crime, immigration, and the wars on drugs and traditional culture.
The upcoming Iowa caucus will be the first time the former president will compete head-to-head against any of the other GOP politicians in the race. He is again refusing to show up at the upcoming fourth Republican presidential debate.