Governing as an Authoritarian
Trump starts undermining the Constitution on Day One.
Donald Trump’s biggest campaign promise was to govern as a lawless authoritarian, and on his first day of office he showed everyone that he intends to keep that promise.
We don’t know yet – we won’t know for a while – the extent to which he will succeed. When it comes to specific policies, I want to echo what I’ve heard a bunch of other people say: Just because Trump and his people say that something is happening through executive action doesn’t mean it’s really going to happen. Some of it will happen, but some will be challenged inside and outside of the administration, and some of it will turn out to be little more than hand-waving to begin with. Lots of steps exist between saying that there will be an action and eventually enacting new policy.
Trump’s pardons of insurrectionists, however, are unfortunately as close to self-enforcing as anything a president ever does. And it’s really the hallmark decision he made on Day One, putting him solidly on the side of treason to the Constitution that he had just sworn an oath to uphold. But it’s not just the pardons; many of his executive actions are simply lawless, from citizenship to TikTok and more.
Some of it will be terrible policy. Some of it may be reasonable policy on which people will disagree. But undermining the rule of law is what it is even in the pursuit of perfectly successful and popular policy choices.
All of it, whether he succeeds or is defeated, is massively corrosive to the Constitutional order.
That said: We know Trump’s intentions; we don’t know outcomes. A lot of what Trump did, and purported to do, in his blizzard of actions on Monday has polled very badly in the past. We’ll have to see how a president coming in doing unpopular things plays out. There’s really not much precedent for it. Most presidents start off with their most popular proposals. Yes, there are some reasonably popular items here, but overall not so much.
Trump himself comes into his presidency moderately unpopular, so it’s not as if he has a deep pool of support to fall back on if he alienates some the people who were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.1
What’s more, the Constitutional order and the rule of law are deeply embedded in the United States. That doesn’t prevent real and consequential democratic backsliding, but it does make consolidating authoritarian rule more difficult. And yes, I’m aware of many of the ways that the nation has failed to live up to its aspirations, sometimes grievously so. That’s an important topic, and it helps inform what’s happening now – but it doesn’t guarantee disaster.
And while Trump and his people may be better organized than they were last time – thus all the immediate activity – they have yet to prove themselves more competent.2 Trump himself remains as ignorant about policy and about how the government works as ever. It’s not just personal: There are structural reasons to expect incompetence. I have a lot more to say about that topic, but I’ll save it for another day.
For now, the important point is that Trump fancies himself above the law, and he intends to act is if it were true. Those who want to preserve the republic will need to fight him and his allies. The Constitution won’t defend itself.
For whatever it’s worth, it turns out that when I wrote about his post-election bounce a few days ago he was right at his peak as president-elect, and his favorable rating fell back from net -0.2 percentage points to -1.6 points as of Monday. That could easily be random variation, but most presidents-elect gain ground going into January 20. Trump doesn’t seem to have.
Unfortunately most of these actions are, in fact, popular and appear "common sense" to the electorate in large part because Biden had swung so far left (including up to the last day of his Presidency with performative executive actions that will provide no real benefit to anyone).