Donald Trump and his cronies are smashing up democratic norms, government institutions and the postwar international order. There are no signs yet that anyone will stop them.
Fearful of divine retribution for slavery, Thomas Jefferson remarked that he trembled for his country when he imagined that God is just. Some observers today are also trembling. They perceive Donald Trump as a type of punishment, a providential comeuppance, a cosmic payback for American political immoralities. The thought arises because the Trump presidency reflects and intensifies a disgraceful repudiation of the United States’ best aspirations, traditions and prospects. It constitutes a stunning and unprecedented defeat, imposed not from abroad but from within.
It is striking that Americans chose this. Trump is awful. Audacious and energetic, he is a charlatan, a demagogue, a megalomaniac, an ignoramus, an abuser, an entrepreneur who profits from bigotry. But it must be acknowledged that he won the White House with electoral backing. The popular vote was close—49.8 per cent to 48.3 per cent—and yet Trump won decisively in the peculiar, malapportioned electoral college, 312 to 226. According to surveys, around 44 per cent of those polled approved of Trump’s conduct during his first month in office.
In neither his campaign nor his early presidential initiatives has Trump hidden his character. To the contrary, he has put his features on full display. Consider, for example, his orders rescinding security details protecting Mark Milley, former chair of the joint chiefs of staff; Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state; John Bolton, former national security adviser; and Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Those orders were pure spite, revenge for what he took to be their disloyalty to him. This pettiness is dangerous. Security details cloaked these figures because their safety is at risk, from various quarters, including foreign enemies. But that seems to be of little moment to Trump. If you cross him, he wants to be seen to hurt you, even if your vulnerability largely stems from service to your country. Worse, Trump disregards the most essential of democratic decencies: conceding electoral defeat. He lied about the outcome of the 2020 presidential contest and declined to restrain the mob that sacked the Capitol on his behalf in an attempt to disrupt congressional ratification of his rival’s election. He wilfully mischaracterised the criminal perpetrators of that mass assault. Perhaps worst of all, in one of the first acts of his new administration—one that may prove to be his most defining exercise of power—Trump granted commutations and a blanket pardon to the January 6th rioters, including those who assaulted police seeking to protect the Capitol and the democratic process.
Of the many dubious decisions made by Trump subsequent to his unpardonable pardons, three bundles are particularly notable.
First, his cabinet and other high-level appointments display a degrading misjudgement in selecting people for leadership posts in public service. Trump’s initial pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, a disgraced former Florida congressman, was so appalling that his candidacy quickly foundered under the weight of its own foolishness. The Gaetz nomination revealed the president’s low-mindedness and contempt for the enterprise he leads. But so, too, do other selections that prevailed. Pete Hegseth was confirmed as secretary of defence despite his obvious dearth of pertinent knowledge and experience, and despite allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking, which Hegseth denies. Robert F Kennedy Jr won confirmation as secretary of health and human services despite an extensive history of irresponsible, injurious and anti-scientific conspiracy-mongering. Kash Patel will be the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), though he is unwilling to admit publicly that Joe Biden defeated Trump in a legitimate election in 2020—but then again, no member of Trump’s cabinet is now permitted to make such a concession.
In small ways and large, Americans will pay exorbitantly for the Trump administration’s signature savagery in gutting the civil service
Second, Trump’s mistreatment of the federal bureaucracy, spearheaded by Elon Musk’s department of governmental efficiency (Doge), has generated unprecedented levels of demoralisation among civil servants. Musk revels in proclaiming the dispensability of federal employees, but the public depends on governmental agencies for all sorts of essential services that often go unrecognised until they are unmet. The loss of competence that is part of the fallout from Trump’s devastation of government agencies will not be fully evident immediately.
In years to come, in small ways and large, Americans will pay exorbitantly for the Trump administration’s signature savagery in gutting the civil service without an iota of courteousness, gratitude or attentiveness to the practical rigours that people face in changing jobs. Crucially, slashing the federal bureaucracy in the Trump-Musk fashion seems designed to make it less capable of providing needed services, and to exacerbate widespread distrust in the very idea of public provision. Cuts to national park staff will make potentially glorious outdoor spaces unsafe. Cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency will make the government less able to respond to disasters. Cuts to the Internal Revenue Service will lessen the government’s ability to collect the taxes that contribute to collective upkeep.
A particularly worrisome feature of the Trump administration’s abuse of the federal workforce and federal funding is its obvious hostility towards medical science, which is perhaps a hangover from battles begun during the coronavirus pandemic. Research laboratories received “stop work” orders after the government froze foreign aid. Massive proposed cuts in funding for scientists at universities and the National Institutes of Health will delay, if not stymie, important discoveries and innovations. Anyone who might one day become a patient—meaning everyone—stands to lose from the vilification of expertise in this moment.
Curtains for America? Since returning to office in January, Donald Trump has upturned US politics and government. Photo: © Win McNamee/Getty Images
Third, Trump has repeatedly leaped at the opportunity to exploit base social prejudices. While fires were raging in Los Angeles, he asserted that “diversity” played a significant part in the seemingly inadequate responses to the catastrophe. When a helicopter collided with an airplane in Washington DC, Trump pointed to “diversity” as the source of the tragedy. In both cases he went on the attack before basic facts had been collected. And in both instances, he indulged in vituperation much more ardently than he engaged in any humane effort to offer condolences. His underlings followed suit, as did theirs in turn, for presidents instruct and inspire through their conduct. Trump teaches that there is advantage to be gained by incessantly attacking efforts to include marginalised groups in the ranks of public servants. Trump sneers at such efforts, as if there is no justifiable basis for countering prejudice against racial minorities, women and queer people.
Trump and his epigones maintain that he is seeking to do no more than roll back “woke” DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies that wrongfully disadvantage white, Christian, heterosexual men. But far from seeking to create a society in which individuals are considered fairly on their own merits, Trump is engaged in a fierce campaign of reclamation fuelled by status anxieties relating to race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. He wants to “make America great again” by undoing progressive reforms that permit people to live in dignity on an equal footing with their neighbours, regardless of traits that ought not be penalised by law. He seeks to subordinate people, ideas and ways of living that affront the sensibilities of the millions of Americans who have rallied to the Maga banner.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the Trump administration recently hired Darren Beattie as acting under-secretary for public diplomacy at the State Department. “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” Beattie wrote on X in October 2024. “Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” That is a candid, succinct exposition of the thinking of many who are being empowered right now by the Trump revolution.
Bad for America, the Trump presidency is also dangerous for the world. The abrupt and wholesale dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has meant withholding from impoverished people food and medicines essential to survival. Trump’s remarks about clearing Gaza of Palestinians make a bit more possible an action that would constitute ethnic cleansing. His threats to take Greenland and the Panama Canal give impetus to imperialism. Offering asylum to defiant Afrikaners from South Africa encourages resistance to efforts to overcome the legacies of apartheid.
Trumpian displays of sympathy for far-right parties in Europe—including the Alternative for Germany (AfD)—further weaken democratic nations even as they encounter a Russian authoritarian adversary that benefits from Trump’s solicitude. JD Vance’s speech in Munich on 14th February augurs what we can expect from the White House in the coming years. In that speech, Vance scolded German politicians for the “firewall” that ostracises the AfD, the ideological descendants of Nazis. Such an attitude was anti-democratic, he claimed. For conservative American commentator Mona Charen, this was “the most shameful address by an American leader… in living memory”. How galling it was, she noted, to watch Trump’s vice president “who supported the attempted violent overthrow of our 2020 election and who has called for the president to defy the Supreme Court and rule as an autocrat to presume to speak as a small-d democrat”.
Vance told the Conservative Political Action Conference in February that immigration was the “greatest threat” to the US and Europe. © Jason C. Andrew/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The US has had a mixed record in foreign policy since the Second World War. On the one hand, it has been involved in reprehensible ventures—the Vietnam War, the overthrow of elected regimes such as Salvador Allende’s government in Chile and support for the South African apartheid regime. On the other hand, it has been a stalwart defender of European autonomy and security against the Soviet and now Russian menace. The US’s support of freedom in Europe has been admirable, but now Trump seems determined to abandon that legacy. The worst manifestation thus far of the president’s alignment with authoritarians is his betrayal of Ukraine. His lie that Ukraine started the war with Russia is yet another instance of his penchant for Orwellian double speak.
Many believe that Trump’s most radical and far-reaching initiatives will fail. The US, after all, is huge, sprawling and multifarious. Any would-be dictator encounters a division between the federal government and the states, and a separation of powers in which the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government are supposed to check one another. Any aspiring American tyrant also faces a citizenry that has in certain respects been steeped in cherished notions of individual liberty.
In addition to background conditions that militate against the accrual of dictatorial power in America, anti-alarmists also warn of a self-fulfilling prophecy: that exaggerating the danger of Trump could enhance it.
A realistic assessment of the threat must also take into account, however, two other, related, considerations that affect perceptions and judgements. One is the pervasive influence of American exceptionalism. Even sophisticated American thinkers fall prey to the sentimental notion that the US is somehow different, better, a more well-intentioned and virtuous society than those found in other nations. The other confounding tendency is an ethic of mandatory optimism. Pessimism is often seen as a moral deficiency, no matter the empirical reality of the situation.
Against that backdrop, it is difficult to grapple with the question of whether the vaunted guardrails of American democracy will withstand the Trumpian challenge. Let us try.
The first potential guardrail is Congress, which can hold the executive to account through impeachment. Congress twice impeached Trump—once in 2019 and again in 2021—when Democrats held a majority in the House of Representatives. The charge in 2021 was for “incitement of insurrection”. Although 57 senators voted guilty, Trump escaped conviction, for which 67 votes were required. The chances of another impeachment are slim: the Republicans dominate Congress—both the House of Representatives (albeit narrowly) and the Senate—just as they control the executive branch and the Supreme Court and predominate in state governorships.
Congress is in the grip of a Republican party that continues to be either entranced or intimidated by Trump. When the Senate considered for confirmation the glaringly unqualified Hegseth, only three Republican senators summoned the gumption to vote no: Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Mitch McConnell. When the Senate considered for confirmation the patently unqualified Kennedy, only one Republican senator, McConnell, objected. Only McConnell objected to Gabbard, and only Murkowski and Collins voted against Patel. Congress has offered no indication of a willingness or capacity to restrain Trumpian excessiveness. Trump, abetted by Musk and Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and the Budget, has asserted authority over budgeting and other congressional prerogatives but has thus far received little pushback.
Some observers place a lot of faith in the federal supreme court. In theory it can check Trumpian overreach, but the current court’s jurisprudential tendencies buttress executive power.
In the aptly titled case Trump v United States, the court considered the legality of certain features of the first criminal prosecution of a former president for actions taken during his presidency. The well substantiated charge was that after losing the 2020 election to Biden, Trump conspired to overturn it by spreading knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct certification of the election results. In an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court granted the president immunity from prosecution for his official acts. In the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the ruling made “a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law”.
The court will undoubtedly face novel questions in the months and years to come. Its makeup offers little in the way of reassurance. Its dominant faction consists of highly partisan apparatchiks who generate no confidence that they would stand firm against Trump.
The press, of course, is a potentially formidable counterweight to Trump. But the ecosystem that facilitates the reporting and dissemination of information crucial to a well-educated citizenry is under severe strain.
Fox News acts as if it were Trump’s propaganda arm, and the “mainstream press” is either struggling or scared. Last December, ABC News settled a libel case with Trump for $15m. The settlement surprised many knowledgeable observers who believe that the network could have prevailed, and who assumed that it would have extended itself to avoid emboldening Trump.
In earlier times those expectations might have been fulfilled. In the past, wealthy media owners have acted as public guardians on behalf of transparency and good government. Think of Katharine Graham and the Washington Post during the 1972 Watergate scandal, or the Sulzberger family and the New York Times, which began publishing the Pentagon papers in June 1971.
Moguls and corporations that own media outlets now appear allergic to “trouble” and poised to restrict journalists who attract Trump’s ire. The multibillionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and the multibillionaire owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, both intervened editorially to prevent endorsements of Trump’s democratic rival, Kamala Harris, during the election campaign. This hints that fearfulness even among the most privileged will further erode the capacity of American democracy to survive the insidious threat that it faces.
There are millions who would like to resist. But they are bewildered about what, precisely, they can and should do
The Republican party has always been hostile to public news media, but under Trump’s head of the Federal Communication Commission, Brendan Carr, the animus will likely be unleashed with a new ferocity. He has already opened investigations into the sponsorship practices of National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), echoing calls to end their federal funding.
There are millions in the US who would like to resist. But they are bewildered about what, precisely, they can and should do. Take higher education, which the Trump administration loudly and contemptuously disparages, denouncing the professoriate as enemies of normal people and intellectuality as pathological. With few exceptions—for instance, the incisive and forthright president of Wesleyan University, Michael S Roth— the heads of colleges and universities stand mute.
Such people are not cowards, and they are not stupidly evasive. They are, for the most part, accomplished, responsible individuals who seek to enable their institutions to survive the storm of this current administration. They are afraid of incurring disapproval that might make their institutions subjects of investigation, or denials of federal funding. And they see no better way of survival than quiet lobbying or acquiescence. That grumbling obeisance is widespread. Bereft of plans and without effective leadership, many Americans watch nervously and despondently as reciprocity, pluralism, collaboration and truthfulness sink as esteemed virtues on the American scene.
Increasingly, you hear elegiac talk about how everything, including republics, has an end. Increasingly, you sense desperation that the American dream is faltering and there is no apparent means of saving it. The incumbent president promises to make America great again, but his well-documented mendacity suggests that his real promise is to destroy it.