Trump Wants To Be Dictator

Prior to the election, I had concerns for democracy. Now, I have fears for democracy.

Trump has such a fragile ego, that I can’t fathom why he wanted to run for president. He can’t stand criticisms. Just look at the shit that spewed out his mouth towards Obama. Presidents live under a microscope. Every action, or inaction, will be praised or condemned. Rarely, will the praise or condemnation be unanimous.

The First Amendment will be the first to disappear under Trump.

  • Freedom of Speech
  • Freedom of the Press1

The closest thing to state-media is Faux News.

  • Martial Law Concerns: The article discusses the potential for Donald Trump to declare martial law, drawing parallels to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s actions.
  • Senate Challenges: Trump may face obstacles in the Senate, particularly with recess appointments and hearings.
  • Military’s Role: The article highlights the importance of the military’s allegiance to the legislature and the people, not the executive.
  • Impeachment and Dictatorship: It explores the possibility of Trump facing impeachment again and his ambitions for controlling all branches of government.

Opinion: The Terrifying Lesson Trump May Learn From South Korea’s Near-Coup

Story by Donald Kirk. November 5, 2024.

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol may give Donald Trump some bright ideas.

Why not shut up the critics, in Congress and the media, by declaring martial law when the going gets tough?

Trump is making so many zany appointments that he’s likely to bump into his first real obstacles when a few Republicans in the Senate have the guts to defy him and insist on full-dress hearings before approving all his picks. Trump, of course, would prefer the gimmick of “recess appointments,” enabling him to sneak his favorites into top jobs while the Senate is in recess. Thus, he would avoid the embarrassing, agonizing process of hearings by a Senate committee eager to show why many of them are thoroughly unqualified.

But with a bare majority in the House and not much of one in the Senate, Trump should not have a lot to worry about until the next mid-terms, in 2026, when he faces the prospect of losing his hold over both houses of Congress.

This is when things could turn south—he could channel Yoon in declaring the equivalent of martial law if Congress refuses to do his bidding.

“The US Constitution allows for the suspension of habeas corpus which is in effect martial law,” David Maxwell, a retired U.S. army special forces colonel, reminds the Daily Beast. “That is a presidential decision and one which he will make based on his assessment of the threat to the constitution and the nation.”

Having shown zero tolerance for the most well-meaning of critics, Trump would no doubt be more than happy to resort to that stratagy if the next Congress were dominated by Democrats.

Trump, though, might face one seemingly intractable problem—the armed forces over which the president is commander-in-chief. In South Korea, after the National Assembly voted down Yoon’s martial law decree, the armed forces withdrew.

“When the people’s representatives spoke, the military sided with the legislature and the people, not with the executive,” Maxwell notes. “The Korean and U.S. constitutions are constructed with the express purpose of preventing a dictator. That is what republican government is all about”—that is, republican with a small “r.”

Not to worry, though. Trump is not burdened by such atavistic precepts. He did not hesitate to fire his first defense secretary, the retired marine general Jim Mattis, and pillory the chairman of the armed forces chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, one of his strongest critics. We can be sure he will name friends and allies to those posts despite the embarrassment of his first choice for defense secretary, the alleged womanizer and Fox News talking head, Pete Hegseth.

Trump has long since shown his disrespect for the principles of balance of power, much less “republican” government. He survived two impeachments at the close of his first term, confident his foes would never summon the two-thirds vote needed in the Senate for a conviction. He would not hesitate to risk another impeachment by a Democratic-controlled lower house, confident the Senate would again not convict him, regardless of which party had the majority.

Trump’s offenses, moreover, are sure to be far more serious than anything Yoon imagined before incurring the wrath of the Korean assembly, where 200 of its 300 members must vote to impeach him. The vote then goes to the country’s constitutional court, six of whose nine members need to uphold the impeachment motion before he loses his job.

Trump, having weathered most of the felony charges that might have jailed him, is sure as president to betray America’s commitments to its allies while sucking up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and even North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, with whom he kindled a bromance when they met in 2018 and 2019. Could he not face charges of treason, of betrayal of trust, of yielding to America’s worst enemies undermining, betraying, American commitments from Ukraine to Taiwan to Korea?

For Trump, a coup against subordinate elements in the American government, and the American system, would fulfil a dream on the way to de facto dictatorship. Yoon set an example by suddenly imposing martial law, without discussing the idea with his closest associates, but he failed by withdrawing the decree six hours later after the National Assembly rejected it. Had he had truly dictatorial instincts, he would have made sure the soldiers surrounding the assembly building captured the dissident legislators and stopped the voting.

Trump might learn from Yoon’s mistakes.

“I’d guess the disastrous blowback from Yoon’s unwise impulsive move will be a pretty strong cautionary,” Nicholas Eberstadt, long-time author and expert on Asian issues at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Daily Beast. That is, he adds, “if Trump were tempted to do something like this in the first place.”

For Trump, the temptation will be overwhelming. He has already broken laws by attempting to subvert the “stolen” 2000 election with false claims of corruption. The next step would be to control all three branches of government, staging a coup d’etat against Congress as needed to rule as the first true U.S. dictator.

  1. @RalphHightower: Our Founding Fathers could not have envisioned radio or television, so media should be substituted for the press. ↩