Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Donald Trump’s “Dictator” Promise Is No Joke

The MAGA base is cheering on Trump’s antidemocratic rhetoric, which the media should take very seriously.
By Molly Jong-Fast December 11, 2023

Over the past week, Donald Trump promised to be a “dictator” on two different occasions. Sadly, that’s not a completely unexpected sentence to write given that he and his allies haven’t been shy about planning an authoritarian second term, from installing MAGA loyalists throughout the government to using the Department of Justice to target political enemies.

Fox News host Sean Hannity, who first blamed “the media” for focusing on this scary second-term agenda, asked, “Under no circumstances—you are promising America tonight—you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Trump responded, “Except for day one.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/donald-trumps-dictator-promise-is-no-joke

Trump’s vows of ‘revenge’ against his opponents gain volume
June 10, 2024 6:54 PM
By Rob Garver

https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-s-vows-of-revenge-against-his-opponents-gain-volume-/7650528.html

Former President Donald Trump has been increasingly clear about his intention to use the power of the presidency to seek revenge on those he considers his political enemies if his bid to retake the White House is successful in the November elections.

Trump’s promises of retaliation are not new. Since entering the political arena in 2015, he has used the politics of grievance to motivate many of his supporters. While addressing a crowd last year at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump declared, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

However, in the days after he was found guilty of 34 felony counts in a New York state court last month, a case in which he has not yet been sentenced, Trump’s promises of revenge have not been made on behalf of his supporters, but as a reaction to his own personal legal difficulties.

Claims of persecution

The former president has claimed that multiple criminal indictments against him in various jurisdictions across the country are the product of a wide-ranging conspiracy to prevent him from winning the presidency again.

He places the responsibility for those prosecutions on President Joe Biden or sometimes on a shadowy cabal of people he insists are influencing Biden behind the scenes. That, he has claimed, would justify his own use of federal power to persecute them if he is given the chance.

Political scientist James A. Morone, a professor at Brown University, told VOA that Trump’s explicit pledge to use the power of the federal government to persecute his political enemies has no clear parallel in the country’s history.

“This is really unprecedented for a president to be doing this,” Morone said. “And really, the historical precedents are quite the contrary.”

Even after the Civil War, Morone said, there were no prosecutions of prominent former Confederate officials and military officers. Former Confederate President Jefferson Davis was arrested and charged with treason, but he was never prosecuted, and the charges against him were eventually dropped, allowing him to return to private life as a U.S. citizen.

Morone said that Trump’s rhetoric is particularly worrisome because it sends a message to current and future public officials who may feel they need to demonstrate their loyalty to him.

“Every time he gives a speech or an interview that says, 'Revenge is coming. Revenge can be good,’ they'll be sitting around thinking, ‘OK … let's think of what we can do to put ourselves in good standing as Trump warriors,’ ” Morone said.

“You could easily imagine it leading to real harm,” he said.