The domestic political Signal this week is an unfettered presidency—a would-be dictator given carte blanche by the Senate to break the law however he chooses.
Students of history may recall Germany’s 1933 Enabling Act, when the country’s parliamentarians neutered themselves in the face of Adolf Hitler’s demands for unfettered power, allowing the new chancellor to bypass the legislative body in drawing up laws. In so doing, they signed the death warrant for the Weimar Republic and ushered in dictatorship.
This week Trump has shown every sign of wanting unlimited powers. His State of the Union speech was a foul smorgasbord of authoritarian promises and rhetoric; and his response to the Senate’s entirely predictable vote to acquit him has been not humility but an assertion of raw power. Within minutes of the vote, he was tweeting out a videodepicting him winning not just in 2020 but every election for the next several thousand years. It ended with the logo “Trump 4EVA.” There’s a terrifying message here: Trump wants lifelong power, and for him it’s no longer simply a joke, a way to gin up his crowd. Continue reading.