Self Proclaimed King Trump from Pinterest.
President* Donald J. Trump has long admired the world’s dictators and often tries to emulate them, but his despotic delusions of grandeur will never come to fruition because he’s too incompetent and corrupt.
Ever in awe of other despots, Trump’s despotic disposition was again made evident during what was supposed to be a private meeting during his 100th golfing vacation stay during his first 406 days in office at his Mar-a-Lago resort when he learned that President Xi Jinping of China could stay in power indefinitely if his Communist Party successfully amended its Constitution to end term limits. A leaked audio recording from a private speech to donors after a Pennsylvania campaign rally revealed Trump acknowledging how great he thought Xi’s power play was and being met with raucous applause from his supporters when he lamented about giving that a shot someday.
The Donald certainly likes to bully and talk tough while trying to act authoritarian but so far – thanks in no part to the GOP-controlled Congress which keeps trying to cover up his repetitive criminal endeavors – he has been unable to actually become dictatorial because the majority that doesn’t support him as well as the states and the courts have resoundingly resisted him and his initiatives.
For Trump, losing the popular vote despite winning the Electoral College nullified the mandate that he erroneously believed he had. Trump’s ‘winning’ the election was totally unexpected for a multitude of reasons, including – but not limited to – lower Democratic voter turnout, disillusionment with America’s corrupt political system and the status quo as well as growing inequality coupled with a foolish minority entrusting a nefarious narcissist who couldn’t care less about them resulted in his victory in the 2016 election being more of a windfall than a mandate.
A HISTORY OF AUTHORITARIAN INCOMPETENCE
Despite his admiration of the world’s authoritarians and his multiple attempts to become one, Trump has repeatedly proved to be a profoundly incompetent one himself. Some have tried to claim that Trump was joking about being president for life but Trump has a history of authoritarian tendencies and traits which reveal otherwise. Trump’s usual bluster and demagogic actions are his inept attempts at being a despot but his ignorance inevitably results in mucking things up royally.
The thought of a Trump for life presidency nightmare is plausible, though not probable. He lost the 2016 election by nearly 3 million votes – 11 million when you factor in third party candidate votes – yet won because of a fatally-flawed Electoral College but his approval rating since taking office has hovered at 35 to 40 percent, which for all intents and purposes is historically low. After losing the popular vote Trump dubiously claimed voter fraud but those claims turned out to be complete fabrications.
Many of his disastrous decisions by Executive Decree – which include his blatantly racist Muslim travel ban, ending DACA, fraudulent tax cuts for the rich, and ending the Paris Climate Agreement, among a multitude of other things – were all made with no one bothering to stop him or telling him how incredibly foolish and devastating those decisions were. The GOP-led U.S. Congress has chosen protecting the criminal that leads their party from all his crimes and corruption rather than holding him accountable while aiding and abetting him as he commits more of them.
From day one Trump has lied repeatedly, and in fact he takes great pride in admitting that he lies and makes things up and he brags that people actually believe him – though not the majority that is capable of actually thinking for themselves, just the minority that still support him. Trump’s narcissist personality makes him thrive on adulation and he has to be the center of attention and it’s never his fault when things go wrong.
TRUMP’S NARCISSISM TRUMPS HIS DESPOTIC DELUSIONS
A few examples of how Trump shares many traits of the world’s dictators he longs to be include his misguided desire for a military parade – despite his dubiously deferring being drafted 5 times – to flame his despotic delusions of grandeur, clamping down on human rights and trying to force his draconian policies down our collective throats. Trump has already started his 2020 campaign but the odds of another 4 years, should he actually survive his first 4, at this point are highly improbable despite the dubious delusions of Republican political pundits.
Trump’s desires to make America a totalitarian regime – illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, brutal police state tactics designed to intimidate the populace, routinely employing censorship, further enriching the corrupt corporations that pull his strings, lying his ass off while embellishing his delusional accomplishments to distract from his imploding presidency, etc. – have been evident for quite a while and would be more dangerous if he wasn’t neutered by his serious mental deficiencies and out of control corruption.
Trump’s rhetoric leaves no room for doubt that he honestly believes that everyone should be subservient to his every whim and he demands unconditional loyalty. He repeatedly attacks the press as an enemy of the American people, tried to label everyone that opposes him as traitors, tried repeatedly to squelch the multitude of investigations over his Russia connections while castigating the FBI, ignorantly obstructed justice numerous times during his ongoing Russia investigation and he constantly tries deflecting attention away from his gross incompetence and corruption with fake news claims while promulgating fake news.
So far Trump’s despotic delusions of grandeur have been kept in check by political opposition, the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law but he has succeeded in removing key officials in the FBI and the DoJ on his way to desperately trying to politicize the Justice Department and killing all the ongoing investigations against him and his multitude of fraudulent misadventures but so far his narcissist tendencies have prevented him from actually succeeding. Despite his inability to instill an authoritarian regime Trump has committed a lot of damage while normalizing incompetency in the White House and his corrosive criminal actions have, so far, gone unchallenged by Congress so it remains up to us to hold him and his enablers accountable by voting them out of office, putting an end to it by getting involved and paying attention.
Cross posted at Medium.
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