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A New York Times report noted over the weekend that Donald Trump and his allies have embraced a post-2024 vision “that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regained the White House.” That might sound overdramatic. It is not.
The former president, with little subtlety, has touted an authoritarian-style vision for the United States. Under the Republican’s preferred approach, he would seize control of government departments and agencies that have historically operated with independence, enact radical anti-immigration plans, use government powers to crack down on journalists, and hire right-wing lawyers who will be positioned to help Trump politicize federal law enforcement and exact revenge against his perceived political foes.
He’s also been quite candid about issuing pardons to politically allied criminals and labeling his opponents “vermin,” seemingly indifferent to the word’s 1930s-era antecedents.
With this in mind, Trump is aware of the fact that he’s running for the nation’s highest office effectively as an opponent of democracy. He also realizes that a growing number of observers — journalists, scholars, voters, et al. — have noticed. The Republican’s response to the burgeoning controversy, however, is eerily familiar. The Associated Press reported over the weekend:
Former President Donald Trump on Saturday attempted to turn the tables on his likely rival in November, President Joe Biden, arguing that the man whose election victory Trump tried to overturn is “the destroyer of American democracy.” Trump’s allegations about Biden, a Democrat, echo the ones that Biden has been making for years against his predecessor.
In the same remarks, delivered in Iowa, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination also accused Democrats of having “fascists” among their ranks, adding that Democrats are trying “to crush free speech, censor their critics,” and “criminalize dissent.”
With a straight face, Trump went on to tell his audience, in reference to his opponents, “They’ve been waging an all-out war on American democracy — and becoming more and more extreme and repressive.”
For those with even a passing familiarity with reality, the rhetoric was plainly bonkers. But Trump wasn’t simply trying to deceive, so much as he was trying to confuse.
The point of rhetoric like this is to muddy the political waters. The Republican wants to create conditions in which average voters — who might not keep up on day-to-day developments in the news — grow lost in a cacophony of accusations. One party says Politician X is attacking democracy; the other party says Politician Y is attacking democracy; and many are left to assume that the truth is somewhere in between.
Except, it’s not. Trump’s critics are telling the truth about his authoritarian-style vision, while the former president himself is simply accusing his opponents of doing what he’s doing.
In fact, that’s what he always does.
The I’m-rubber-you’re-glue approach is Trump’s go-to rhetorical tactic. Revisiting our earlier coverage, when Hillary Clinton accused him of being a “puppet” for Vladimir Putin, for example, Trump said she was the actual puppet (“No puppet, no puppet,” he said. “You’re the puppet.”) When Democrats accused him of obstructing justice, Trump said they were obstructing justice. Accused of executing a quid pro quo with Ukraine, Trump said it was his partisan foes who executed a quid pro quo with Ukraine.
Accused of racism, Trump said his critics are racist. When then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said he had a “meltdown” during behind-the-scenes negotiations, Trump said Pelosi had a “meltdown.” Confronted with allegations that his political operation cooperated with Russian operatives, Trump said Democrats colluded with Russia. Told that the Kremlin supported his candidacy, Trump responded by saying Russia supported Democrats.
More recently, after Trump tried to get the Justice Department to go after his political foes, he falsely accused Biden of trying to get the Justice Department to go after his political foes. When prosecutors accused the former president of committing crimes, he accused them of committing crimes.
In May 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz — at the time, Trump’s rival for his party’s nomination — said the future president “is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying. ... Whatever he does, he accuses everyone else of doing.”
More than eight years later, the quote remains highly relevant.