These days, I find myself wondering what it would take for congressional Republicans to recognize and resist Trump’s dictatorial ambitions to be an unaccountable king.
Would he have to wear an actual crown in the White House rose garden he is paving over? Install a throne in the flying palace he procured from the Qataris?
I wonder what it would take to stop hearing from pundits that we’re overreacting to Trump and his happy-birthday-to-me military parade — the same week he deployed the National Guard and U.S. Marines against Americans on American soil — in a confrontation manufactured by his administration’s assault on peaceful, law-abiding immigrants.
This week, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was shoved to the floor and handcuffed when he tried to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question at a press conference where she declared that she and her federal agents would “liberate” Los Angeles from its elected leadership. That’s not democracy. It’s fascism.
I wonder whether the president’s defenders are lying to themselves, or just to us.
Probably some of both.
For the brutally cynical power players, the administration’s cruelty and criminality are part of the plan.
Project 2025 architects, like White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, have been clear from the start that the president wouldn’t let the law get in the way of asserting and abusing his power.
Trump claimed ignorance when it appeared Americans didn’t like what Project 2025 was selling, but now Trump is aggressively implementing Project 2025’s agenda, laws and Constitution be damned.
It’s good to remember that Trump did not win more than 50 percent of the popular vote in his narrow victory. And since he took power, Trump and Trumpism have become increasingly unpopular with the American public.
That’s probably why Trump and Stephen Miller have been accelerating the brutal abductions and cruel detentions of immigrants. They are convinced that Americans, like the MAGA base, can be mobilized with anti-immigrant rhetoric. They are convinced that Americans will rally around his decision to send military troops against protesters.
I think Trump and Miller are wrong.
A lot of Trump voters accepted the campaign’s claims that the administration’s anti-immigrant hammer would fall primarily on violent gang members. Now they know the truth.
To look tough and to satisfy Miller’s desire for big numbers, the administration is kidnapping and disappearing hard-working people who are supporting their families and contributing to their communities, people who have tried to do everything right and are snatched as they show up for appointments.
Even Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia (R), the founder of Latinas for Trump, knows she was had: “This is not what we voted for,” she said.
She acknowledged the importance of removing any “criminal” in the country illegally. However, she called the current efforts “arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings — in many cases, with credible fear of persecution claims.”
“This undermines the sense of fairness and justice that the American people value,” Garcia said.
Meanwhile, Trump’s record of corrupting everything he touches is extending more deeply into the American military. He turned West Point’s graduation into a chance to air his personal grievances and launch partisan attacks on his enemies.
And last week, after he had ordered the National Guard and Marines into the streets of Los Angeles and just days before his self-glorifying military parade, Trump talked to soldiers at Ft. Bragg as if they were his personal army devoted to enforcing his will rather than defending the country and its Constitution. Many veterans were alarmed by Trump’s speech and the hawking of partisan MAGA merch on the base violated both tradition and Pentagon rules.
All this makes it hard to take when a think-tank scholar tells us that “sometimes a parade is just a parade.”
Sometimes, sure. But not this time. Nothing about Trump’s second term suggests that there’s a reason for giving him the benefit of the doubt.
He has defied federal judges and attacked Supreme Court justices who don’t fall in line 100 percent. He has nominated his former criminal lawyer and current ideological enforcer to a federal appeals court — the level just below the Supreme Court.
He has taken action to undermine checks and balances, unilaterally rewrite the Constitution and force media companies, law firms and universities to submit to his extortion and control.
He has turned the pardon process into a brazenly corrupt auction.
He has abused his presidential powers in untold ways and even tried to assert power he doesn’t have.
All the while, Republicans in Congress abandon their oversight responsibilities, hand over their constitutional authority and cheer on the dismantling of democracy.
Polls suggest, and the nationwide No Kings protests affirm, that the American people are more willing to resist Trump’s desire to rule like a king than many elected leaders who swore an oath to protect the Constitution.
Congressional Republicans may be willing to act like Trump’s royal subjects, but most Americans are not.
We’ll see you in the streets — and in the voting booth.
Svante Myrick is president of People For the American Way.
