Donald Trump and the Authoritarian State

There was a time when some of us used to think that American democracy was unassailable, that it represented the apogee of the liberal democratic ideal. Madisonian democracy reflected in the United States Constitution seemed sound and irrevocable. Not many of us can be sure of that since Donald John Trump won the November 5, 2024 election and is due to return to the White House on January 20, 2025. James Madison himself stated that if all men were angels, government would not be necessary. The reality of the human condition is that men are not angels and we need to be governed. The enduring questions are who should govern and what form of governance is best. Liberal democracy, even with all its imperfections, functioning within the context of a capitalist free enterprise economy, still seems the best order of human organisation. Democracy like any other form of government is only as good as the people who uphold it. Forget all the ideological posturing by petit-bourgeois academics, liberal democracy is still the socio-economic political construct in which I would personally most want to live.

If he is to be taken at his word Trump appears to want to demolish the fundamental architecture of Madisonian democracy which allows for the separation of powers between the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. This is the hitherto much revered notion of ‘checks and balances,’ the dispersal of power between the three branches of American government which the Founding Fathers sought to establish as a bulwark against over-weaning power. The framers of the US Constitution never bargained on the likes of a Donald Trump. One commentator noted that Trump seems prepared to take ‘a wrecking ball’ to the American Constitution as it previously existed. Trump wants to consolidate all power within the Executive branch (himself) over the Legislative branch (the Congress) and the Judiciary. This is the making of an autocratic state, Trump’s autocratic state, cast in his own image.

One way by which Donald Trump is trying to minimise the legislative branch is by his use of recess appointments to secure the confirmation of his Cabinet nominees. Recess appointments are not illegal. There was a time when the Congress was not always in session. The US Constitution allowed for the president to govern when Congress was away. Democratic President Clinton made 139 recess appointments and Republican President George W Bush made 171 such appointments. In 2014 the US Supreme Court put a limit on such but recess appointments remain legal. Trump’s action in this regard is different. He is actually asking the Senate to stay in recess in order to push through his questionable nominees without investigation from the Senate. This, in spite of the fact that the Republicans hold a 53-seat majority in the Senate. This is because he knows that some of the nominations are likely to raise troubling issues concerning proposed candidates’ moral and professional suitability for the positions Trump is seeking to fill.

Donald Trump’s second term is likely to be governed by three principal motivations. The first is to destroy the architecture of the so-called ‘deep state’ along the lines suggested by Steve Bannon. The second is to ensure absolute loyalty to himself and to brook no opposition. The third is to wreak retribution on those he views as having humiliated him in one way or another.

Trump’s nominees to serve in his Cabinet is an open invitation to confrontation. He unquestionably sees his overwhelming victory on November 5 as a bestowing of some form of Divine Right to govern more or less as he pleases. While no one questions his right to select his own Cabinet, his nominees so far indicate an invitation to confrontation not only with Democrats but if necessary with recalcitrant Republican objectors in the Senate. Very few if any of his nominees have not raised serious concerns either about their personal morality or lack thereof or about their suitability for the posts to which they have been nominated. The cartoonist on CNN’s Saturday programme Smerconish (Saturday, November 16, 2024) showed a man, presumably Donald Trump, head and waist deep in a barrel and the caption read ‘Scrape, scrape, scrape’  the bottom of the barrel.

Arguably the most objectionable of Trump’s nominees was Matt Gaetz. Reportedly even Republicans find cause for his rejection. His alleged dalliance with drugs and underage girls would on moral grounds render him unacceptable for the position of attorney general of the United States. There are apparently witnesses to Gaetz’s misconduct.

Robert F Kennedy Jr widely known for peddling corrupt conspiratorial theories of one kind or another is perhaps best known as a vaccine sceptic. The latter would appear to rule him out for the post of  Secretary for Health and Human Services. Vaccines are widely regarded within the medical community as one of the major success stories of modern medicine. Kennedy apparently also wants flouride removed from drinking water. More scepticism about vaccines could see a return to diseases that the world thought it had long eradicated. Another pandemic could render many more persons vulnerable to infection and death. This is the man that Trump would want to replace the internationally respected Dr Anthony Fauci.

Trump has nominated oil executive Chris Wright to be Energy Secretary. Wright was a major contributor to the Trump campaign and is an adamant defender of fossil fuels, oil and gas and fracking. It is possible that under his secretariat there will be less of a drive to alternative sources of energy. He is also a strong opponent of climate change. Tom Horner is expected to be the Border Czar. He was the initiator of policy that separated migrant children from their parents during the first Trump administration. Then there is Kristi Noem’s nomination for Homeland Security and Pete Hegseth for Defence Secretary. Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on November 18, 2024 Washington Post columnist, David Ignatius noted that running the Pentagon is a vast enterprise. He contended that Hegseth, a Fox News moderator lacked the expertise needed for the task. An equally problematic nomination is that of Tulsi Gabbard for the post of National Intelligence. This position would place her in charge of key agencies such as the CentraI Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency  (NSA). The issue with the Gabbard nomination is that she has been known for amplifying Russian propaganda and has actually blamed the United States for causing the war in Ukraine. Go figure.

When asked whether morality still mattered in selecting people to serve,  Republican Speaker Mike Johnson equivocated. He finally stated that Trump’s nominees were chosen ‘to shake up the system.’  He concluded: ‘We need disruptors.’ Retired General McCaffrey noted that: ‘This is a terrible beginning to a new administration.’ The abiding question is, how will it all end? The next four years will be challenging but they will not be boring. Danald J Trump promises you as much.