– We promise to eradicate communists, Marxists, fascists and radical left-wing thugs who live like cancer in our country.
Thus Donald Trump announced to supporters on US National Veterans Day in November.
Trump’s speech has changed during the past autumn. It seems that it is no longer enough for him to win the elections. He promises to destroy his political opponents.
In recent weeks, American experts familiar with the history of fascism have pointed out that Trump’s speeches increasingly resemble the speeches of the dictators who overthrew democracy in Europe in the 1930s. The cancer parable is like an echo straight from Nazi Germany.
Dehumanizing opponents is essential in Trump’s speeches.
– They will do anything legal or illegal to destroy America and the American dream, Trump continued in his speech on Veterans Day.
Could Trump’s second term really lead the country towards a dictatorship? It is being talked about more and more in the United States. The reason is Trump’s own speeches and detailed information about the preparation of a possible second term.
Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency again is very possible at the moment. He leads the race for his party’s presidential nomination by an overwhelming margin, and in many opinion polls he seems to win the presidency as well Joe Biden.
It can already be said with almost certainty that Trump’s second term would be much more violent than the first, from 2017 to 2021.
First, Trump is openly talking about revenge.
– I am the executor of your revenge, he declared to his supporters already last March.
Trump has made it clear that he wants to harness the Department of Justice and its subordinate federal police, the FBI, as his political weapon. He has said he will attack prosecutors, journalists and other opponents who investigated him.
According to The Washington Post, Trump is also planning to attack members of his own former administration who criticized him afterwards.
Trump has also proposed that the former commander of the US Armed Forces Mark Milley should be executed.
Milley’s crime in Trump’s eyes was that he had called his Chinese official brother during the Epiphany 2021 takeover of Congress to ensure that the Chinese did not make hasty decisions as a result of the event. The general had permission from the White House for his call.
Brake men are no longer allowed
In his first term, Trump became frustrated with the leadership of both the Ministry of Justice and the Defense Administration, when they had to explain to Trump the legal limits of the president’s power.
In the second term, such brake men are not going to be allowed into the administration.
Trump’s first election victory in 2016 was ultimately a surprise even for Trump himself. He was not much prepared for the presidency.
Now the preparation for the presidential term and the recruitment of genuinely Trumpian officials is already in full swing. In support of Trump, think tanks have now sprung up that prepare precise war plans.
According to The Guardian, the head of a group called America First Legal and a former aide to Trump Stephen Miller plays a central role in finding lawyers for the administration who are ready to implement Trump’s radical program.
– Trump wants Miller to find people who are more loyal to Trump than to the rule of law, former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb warns in the paper.
– Trump is not interested in the rule of law, he is only interested in loyalty to himself, Cobb says.
Centralization of power to the president
Trump’s campaign machinery does not hide the fact that the goal is a complete political revolution. The purpose is to bring the entire US federal machinery under the president’s uniquely strict command.
In the United States, the independence of the Ministry of Justice and the federal police under it, or the FBI, from the guidance of the president is traditionally considered particularly important. Trump’s credit lawyer Jeffrey B. Clark published last May constitutional researchin which he proved that the Ministry of Justice is not independent, but completely under the control of the president.
It is the core idea of Trump’s administration plan, and Clark can expect to take a central position in the administration.
Trump would need congressional approval to appoint top officials. But already towards the end of his previous term, he figured out that by appointing an “acting” leader to, say, a federal agency, the president can bypass Congress. Acting leaders do not require congressional confirmation.
One of Trump’s confidants Kash Patel assured Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon’s in a recent podcast interview, that Trump’s new administration would also attack the media through the courts.
According to The Guardian, Patel has been considered as possibly the head of the FBI or CIA in the Trump administration. Bannon is also expected to make a return to the top of power.
Both were conspicuously present when Trump gave a heavily revenge-themed speech in New York to an audience of Republican guests last weekend.
Loyalty above all else
This time there is a huge machine behind Trump. Even historically the most important Republican ideological stronghold, the influential Heritage Foundation, has become completely permeated by Trumpian populism.
Until a few years ago, the Heritage Foundation represented traditional Reaganite conservatism. That’s not the case anymore.
A huge Project 2025 program has been started at the institute. The program aims to ensure that when the new Republican president takes office, the entire machinery and plans will be ready “on the first day”.
In the draft program let’s make it clear that the goal is to take the United States, down to the armed forces, under a new kind of completely presidential control.
Trump’s election campaign denies that it has a direct connection to Project 2025, and Trump is not mentioned in it by name. But the authors of the Heritage Foundation program are strong supporters of the Trumpian ideology.
Several leaders representing traditional republicanism have left or been fired from the prestigious think tank.
Trump would cancel the regulations protecting the dismissal of civil servants by presidential decree. In practice, the project would enable the replacement of tens of thousands of civil servants.
– We are carrying out a critical reform that will make it possible for every civil servant to be fired by the President of the United States, Trump thundered already last year.
There is also an intensive campaign coordinated by the Heritage Foundation to find new officials. Acquired by Axios online media, used in recruitment questionnaire shows that the purpose is to ensure that the people being complained about are staunch Trumpites, not traditional Reaganite conservatives.
The judiciary can be powerless
Trump and his supporters have had time to think for years about how to overcome other barriers to an authoritarian presidency.
Trump is accused both in federal court and in the state of Georgia of trying to illegally influence the 2020 election outcome.
But Trump has turned the accusations into weapons. With the accusations, he justifies to his supporters why he intends to use the Ministry of Justice as his own political weapon when he comes to power.
– This is a third world thing to arrest a political opponent. That’s why I can do it too, Trump declared at a campaign event in October.
It is important for Trump to deny the independence of the courts and, in general, the power to decide on matters concerning him.
Last week, Trump’s lawyers filed a complaint with the court, according to which Trump would be immune from criminal charges as a former president. The processing of the complaint can suitably extend the start of the actual court cases beyond the election.
In any case, the courts are unlikely to be as much of a drag on Trump’s second term as they were in his first.
In the US Supreme Court, conservatives have a solid 6-3 majority, three of the judges are appointed by Trump himself.
Foreign policy would be radical, but not the worst threat
There is great concern in Europe about where Trump’s second term could lead.
Trump could significantly weaken the US commitment to NATO and European defense. Supporting Ukraine would almost certainly end. Trade policy would become even more closed. Climate policy would be turned on its head.
However, the biggest threat relates to the future of American democracy.
In Trump’s first term, American democracy was put to the test, but its institutions endured. This may not be the case in the second season.
Trump was his credit editor Sean Hannity being interviewed on the Fox News news channel last week Tuesday. When Hannity asked if Trump, as president, would use presidential powers illegally to persecute his opponents, Trump dodged the question several times.
Hannity returned to the subject for a third time, asking: “Will you promise the American people tonight that you would not abuse your powers to retaliate against anyone?”
Then Trump replied: “Yes. Except on the first day of work”.
Moments later, Trump said he wasn’t going to be a dictator — except on his first day in office.
In addition to those mentioned in the text, the following sources have been used in the article: Atlantic, Economist, NYTimes, WP, Guardian, CNN, Axios, Reuters, Project 2025, Steve Bannon’s podcast.