The dictator thing. What to make of it?
I was taken aback last week at the talk among Democrats and establishment media whiners (same thing) concerning Donald Trump allegedly admitting that the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee would become a dictator if he was elected to a second term next year. Again? I wondered. Trump’s enemies within his own party and his political opposition had accused him of wanting to be and then acting as one – a dictator -- literally since he entered politics.
It turns out that the “dictator” insinuations were true, at least to the extent that Trump actually mouthed the words. Trump did mention (to Sean Hannity at an Iowa townhall meeting a week ago) that he intended to be a dictator when he reaches the Oval Office again. But as usual, the quote – and Trump’s wishes – were taken vastly out of context and misreported by the haters. In a story titled, “Raising the specter of Trump dictatorship aims to boost Biden; Democrats, media plan campaign”, Dave Boyer reported at The Washington Times:
“Former President Donald Trump’s commanding lead in the Republican presidential primary is increasing Democratic and media warnings that Mr. Trump would become a dictator who abandons the Constitution in a second term.
“The New York Times and The Washington Post have recently published articles previewing a Trump dictatorship. The Atlantic said this week that it would devote its January/February issue to articles forecasting Mr. Trump’s harmful impact on civil rights, the Justice Department, immigration and more if he is elected to the White House again.
“Asked during a televised town hall event Tuesday whether he plans to become a dictator, Mr. Trump laughed off the suggestion. ‘No, no, no — other than Day One,’ he said. ‘We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”
You be the judge. Did Trump just cop to the notion that he plans to forego restrictions on his legal authority to wholesale boss the entire country around, starting with his vanquished Democrat foes? Some say Democrats are using this “dictator” threat tactic to one, scare their stupid and uninformed voter base into action prior to the election and two, to lay the groundwork for a collective leftist freakout if and when Trump actually wins.
Or could it be that this hubbub is really a dog whistle call for the leftist legions to go all James Hodgkinson and try to assassinate Trump? After the hyper-fit they’ve displayed in the past nearly three years over the January 6 capital riot disturbance (and its over a thousand prisoners), I put nothing past them.
But is Trump a dictator? Emulating who -- Hitler and Mussolini? Vladimir Putin? Xi Jinping? Kim Jong Un? Idi Amin? What’s happening here? Well, I don’t give Democrats a great deal of credit for originality and creativity, and they definitely don’t deserve any (credit, that is) on this. This “dictator” stuff is a reach, an act of desperation, no matter how you slice it. Whenever a political faction finds itself in a situation where a rival faction appears to be gaining an upper hand because of a leader’s (senile Joe Biden’s) unpopularity, it’s fashionable to accuse the others of planning to take away rights on certain topics if a change is made.
Look to the founding of the American republic and there’s lots of accounts of politicians accusing other politicians of visions of autocracy. Heck, one of the biggest struggles the young American nation went through was defining the powers of the executive in the new government. Sing it from School House Rock, if you like, but the story goes something like the colonists had just finished casting off the yoke of the tyrant – King George III – and they didn’t want to have endured all that strife just to establish their own similarly powerful office to replace the monarch.
“Dictatorship” was very real to them. The colonists had spent well over a decade talking about rights and duties and powers of parliament and the king prior to the firing of the first shot in the American Revolution. The early Americans knew what it felt like to be dictated to. “No Taxation Without Representation!” Or, “Don’t Tread on Me.”
George Washington was very cognizant of not wanting to be viewed as an American king, to the extent that he – and others – weren’t sure how the new president should be addressed when speaking to him. At last, the leaders agreed on “Mr. President”. From the National Park Service: “During the war Washington was addressed as ‘General’ or ‘Your Excellency.’ Future second president John Adams even suggested ‘Your Highness’ and ‘Your Most Benign Highness.’ Since the Constitution prohibits titles of nobility, it was finally settled that George Washington be addressed as ‘Mr. President.’ Following his inauguration on April 14th, 1789, George Washington would continue to set important precedents as first president of the United States.”
A second Trump term likely wouldn’t establish any longstanding precedents – at least in terms of titles – but Trump didn’t act as a “dictator” in his first White House go ‘round, and, by declaring that he’d issue a flurry of executive orders on Day One of his new administration, was merely admitting the truth – and it’s precisely the same thing Joe Biden did in the first hours of his own presidency.
Every president is limited by constitutional authority and supremacy, yet every chief executive seems determined to test those limits, probably figuring that one, hardly anyone would even notice, and two, challenges to executive orders take weeks, months or years to wind their way through the glacially slow federal court system to settle upon the limits of a president’s authority.
Joe Biden is a “dictator” all the time. Have Democrats forgotten that, in September of last year, Joe Biden signed an executive order wiping away the college student loan debt of millions of borrowers, delinquent or not? He did so a few months ahead of the 2022 federal midterm elections and labeled it a “crisis” that needed to be dealt with.
Or, more likely, Joe’s was a naked, blatant attempt to buy votes. Did it work? You make the judgment. How else would braindead now-senator John Fetterman have won a statewide race?
Biden also infamously nixed a slew of Trump policies on his first day, including cancelling the Keystone pipeline project that would have, upon completion, allowed midwestern oil and gas producers to vastly increase the supply of fossil fuel products to benefit American consumers as well as American and Canadian manufacturers and businesses.
One fell swoop of Senile Joe’s pen and Keystone was history. Woosh! Thousands of good jobs went up in smoke, just because the dictatorial left and their climate change delusions wanted it that way.
And needless to say, real dictators employ make-believe and real powers to bring the weight of law enforcement down on political opponents. Did Trump put any Democrats in jail during his first term? Seems that he spent most of his time defending himself from dictator-like witch hunts involving the phony “Russian collusion” narrative, the same one the dictatorial deep state and Democrats in Congress used to fabricate “crimes” that never happened.
Democrat dictators are currently using those purported transgressions to advance an argument that Trump should not be voted into the White House if he’s ever convicted of any of these charges, as though a jury in Washington DC should hold sway over “democracy” and the people’s potential choice for president.
As far as Trump “abandoning the Constitution” goes, it’s not even possible for him to do so. A president, even a powerful one, has no spending authority outside of what Congress appropriates. That’s called separation of powers, and it’s the best weapon any legislature possesses against the executive, even if the current or recent congresses hasn’t chosen to use it.
How many times did establishment Republicans promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare if and when the people granted them a majority to do the dismantling themselves? Once in power, however, the RINOs and squishes emerged from the shadows and torpedoed any and all attempts by conservatives to keep their word to the voters. Trump won the presidency and spent most of 2017 urging Congress to work on Obamacare, to no avail.
Trump wasn’t a very effective dictator then, was he? Or perhaps all of today’s “dictator” charges are just overblown hyperbole.
It was also interesting last week when certain Republicans (Chris Christie and Nikki Haley in the Alabama debate) accused Trump of running up trillions in debt during his first term. Technically speaking, that’s true, though Congress appropriated every dime of the largesse, particularly during the final year-plus of Trump’s presidency as “emergency” measures to combat the COVID farce. Trump wanted to end the federal emergency early and have productive Americans go back to work and kids return to the classroom. Congress didn’t cooperate.
His haters also forget that Trump attempted to ban or severely restrict immigration from hotbed terrorist countries overseas to fulfill a campaign promise he’d made, only to be thwarted by Democrat-appointed District Court judges, who labeled the proper executive power a “Muslim ban”. A dictator wouldn’t be subjected to being countered by the judicial branch, would he?
The Constitution can’t be “ignored”. But self-interested Democrats can sure use its provisions to cancel necessary executive authority, including his duty to protect the homeland – and then brand it racism or “xenophobia” or “Islamophobia”.
As with most of what Democrats dwell on these days, the hype over Trump being a “dictator” if he becomes president again is much ado about nothing. All presidents wield power once in office, and one man’s dictates are another man’s legally-employed powers. Hopefully, Trump would use his authority to fix much of what Democrats have screwed up. Is it possible?
Joe Biden economy
inflation
Biden cognitive decline
gas prices,
Nancy Pelosi
Biden senile
January 6 Committee
Liz Cheney
Build Back Better
Joe Manchin
RINOs
Marjorie Taylor Green
Kevin McCarthy
Mitch McConnell
2022 elections
Donald Trump
2024 presidential election
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