- Aug 18, 2012
- 20,919
- 17,317
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Christian
- Marital Status
- Married
Do Americans want an authoritarion government? Just last night, Trump reminded voters again that he admires the likes of Viktor Orban:
During a Saturday night rally, former president Donald Trump reiterated his praise for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has amassed functionally autocratic power by changing his country’s constitution and controlling the media. “It’s nice to have a strong man leading your country,”
The Democracy Project released a report last week summarizing Trump's plans to consolidate power in a 2nd term:
“As damaging as Trump’s first term was to American systems of constitutional government, culminating in his efforts to overturn an election and violently halt the counting of electoral votes by Congress, what he has promised in his own words to do if returned to office would be even more destructive to our Republic.”
Trump has already told us repeatedly what he plans to do, the authors write, but this time, he has the backing of “groups working to support those promises in preparation for a second Trump term.”
read the entire report here:
During a Saturday night rally, former president Donald Trump reiterated his praise for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has amassed functionally autocratic power by changing his country’s constitution and controlling the media. “It’s nice to have a strong man leading your country,”
The Democracy Project released a report last week summarizing Trump's plans to consolidate power in a 2nd term:
“As damaging as Trump’s first term was to American systems of constitutional government, culminating in his efforts to overturn an election and violently halt the counting of electoral votes by Congress, what he has promised in his own words to do if returned to office would be even more destructive to our Republic.”
Trump has already told us repeatedly what he plans to do, the authors write, but this time, he has the backing of “groups working to support those promises in preparation for a second Trump term.”
- Pardons to License Lawbreaking: During Trump’s first term, he discovered that he could leverage the pardon power to induce witnesses against him into silence. In a second term, he has indicated he would further abuse pardons to incite political violence, incentivize lawbreaking for his benefit, and render himself above the law.
- Directing Investigations Against Critics and Rivals: Retribution is the dominant theme of Trump’s 2024 campaign, and his allies are making plans to eliminate the Department of Justice’s traditional prosecutorial independence to give Trump greater personal control to direct law enforcement against his perceived opponents and insulate himself from accountability.
- Regulatory Retaliation: In addition to steering prosecutorial discretion via the Department of Justice, Trump has vowed to consolidate and wield federal regulatory power to reward political loyalty and punish his critics, particularly those associated with the media. There are numerous reports of this regulatory retaliation happening during Trump’s first term, and plans for a second include ways of removing those obstacles that limited opportunities for more.
- Federal Law Enforcement Overreach: Trump’s declaration that immigration is “poisoning the blood of our country” is a grim foreshadowing of how he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime provision dating back to 1798. Once Trump has that power, he has also expressed his will to expand the footprint of federal law enforcement to police cities and shut down lawful protests.
- Domestic Deployment of the Military: A central hallmark of American democracy is that the U.S. military not be used against American citizens. But Trump plans to abuse the Insurrection Act to order military force to quash dissent and target vulnerable communities.
read the entire report here:
The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025
How an authoritarian president will dismantle our democracy and what we can do to protect it
www.authoritarianplaybook2025.org