A Useful Idiot’s Path to Autocracy

In the Fall of 2020 I wrote an article entitled “American Democracy at Risk” which was based largely on the analysis of two Harvard political science professors, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, as set for in their 2018 book entitled “How Democracies Die.” Levitsky and Ziblatt recognized in Donald Trump the characteristics of a would-be dictator. By they time their book was published, however, the leadership of the Republican Party had acquiesced in allowing Trump to represent their party in the 2016 presidential election and he had gone on to surprise everyone (including himself) by winning that election.

  In my article, I characterized Trump as their “useful Idiot”, a term which is frequently used to describe the elevation of political novice to lead a political party who is thought to be willing to follow the guidance of the party’s leadership. Trump easily met that description. He had never held an elective office or had even served as a government employee. Indeed, nothing he had ever done indicated that he had any understanding of the duties of our nation’s president or how our federal government actually operates. It’s also a pretty safe to say that he had never read the U.S. Constitution.

  In Trump’s case, however, he was not simply plucked from obscurity by the leadership of the Republican party. He had achieved public notoriety from his 14-year role as the central figure in the TV “reality” show, “The Apprentice,” in which he was presented as a savvy and successful business executive. In reality, he was anything but a successful businessman, having lost virtually the entire fortune his father had entrusted to him. Nevertheless, his weekly appearances on national TV had enabled him to recover a portion of his lost wealth and, more importantly, to revive his business reputation. That exposure, in turn, enabled him to garner more votes than his more experienced, but lesser known, rivals in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.  Still, going into the 2016 Republican National Convention, the leaders of the Republican Party technically possessed the power to reject the will of their voters, a power which they wisely chose not to exercise.

What they undoubtedly realized at that time was that Trump was essentially a showman who craved public attention. He had even sought newspaper coverage by impersonating his fictitious press agent. He also seemed to care little for the truth, having greatly mischaracterized the immigrants seeking asylum at our Southern border. Contrary to his assertions, they were neither Mexicans nor rapists, murderers and drug dealers. Similarly, he regularly exaggerated his wealth and success in an effort to be included in the Forbes list of the world’s 400 richest men and he had had even claimed that his most important building (which he modestly named “Trump Tower”) was ten stories higher than it actually was.

What was unclear in the summer of 2016 was whether Trump could be trusted to follow the advice of Republican Party leaders and pursue their political agenda.  Clearly, he was something of a loose cannon, doing and saying whatever crossed his mind. Still, he was certainly supportive of the Party’s two principal issues: manipulating the federal income tax code to favor the wealthy and reducing regulations on privately-owned business enterprises. Beyond that, they reasoned that he could be kept in line by the nation’s existing laws and its conservative federal court system. They also reasoned that if he didn’t perform as instructed, he could be impeached and removed from office. Two impeachment proceedings later, this thinking almost seems fanciful.

They also miscalculated with respect to two important considerations. First and foremost, Trump operated under an overriding guiding principle; namely, that it was a sin for him not to use every power at his disposal to get what he wanted even if it meant having to ignore social mores, laws, regulation and even the U.S. Constitution. This made entrusting him with the power of the presidency a very dangerous proposition. Secondly, they underestimated the impact of their Party’s own actions over the preceding 40 years which had left their loyal supporters financially hard-pressed and with an overwhelming desire for a change in the way the federal government was being operated.

Compounding both of these issues, Trump was an accomplished con man who knew how to play on the hates and fears of Republican-leaning voters far better than the seasoned politicians who planned to guide his activities. Similarly, they may not have realized that Trump harbored a deep admiration of Vladimir Putin, a characteristic recognized by Professors Levitsky and Ziblatt.

  Like Trump, Putin was once perceived as a “useful idiot.” His rise to power was recounted in a 2024 Broadway play by Peter Morgan entitled “Patriots” wherein Putin, then a little-known KGB operative, had been chosen by a group of Russian oligarchs to head the Russian government which they controlled following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Just as Putin used the power granted to him to turn on those who had appointed him, Donald Trump has now done the same to those who formerly led the Republican Party. He did this by capturing the hearts and minds of Republican voters by convincing them that he was the only person who could reform the nation’s dysfunctional federal government. Then, using their support, he set out to purge their (now his) party of all legislators and officials who opposed him.

As a political novice with little familiarity of the Party that had helped him win the presidency, he appointed Reince Priebus, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee to serve as his Chief of Staff and to select those who would fill most of the Cabinet posts in his administration as well as other positions of influence. Beginning almost immediately after his inauguration, however, he began removing those Cabinet members and others in his administration who disagreed with his agenda. Within six months he had replaced roughly three dozen such individuals. Trump not only replaced them with individuals that would do his bidding, but in many cases he did not even bother to seek the Senate’s approval for his choices.

His next move was to fill the Party’s Republican caucuses in the House and Senate with individuals who would be loyal to him. In the 2018 election cycle he endorsed almost 200 candidates, over 40 of which lost, handing firm control of the House to the Democrats. Although Trump’s record for choosing winners was a total embarrassment, he was nevertheless successful in making it clear that he was highly popular among Republican voters and those Republican legislators who chose to oppose him did so at their own peril.

This message was tested during the second half of his term when he was impeached for withholding Congressionally-approved military aid for Ukraine. Trump had taken this action in an effort to coerce Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to start an investigation of Joseph Biden whom Trump correctly believed would be his opponent in the 2020 election. Even though the evidence against Trump was strong, the Articles of Impeachment failed to be adopted by the requisite two-thirds majority in the Senate. Trump responded to his “victory” by terminating the Inspector General whose report to the Congress had initiated the impeachment proceeding. To make his message clear he also terminated the employment of four other Inspector Generals of Cabinet Departments.

Trump’s power within the Republican Party, however, remained strong and he was on his way to winning a second term in the While House when the nation was beset with the Covid Pandemic. The pandemic revealed Trump’s inability to guide the nation through a crisis and tarnished his self-proclaimed image as a strong leader. As a result, he lost the 2020 presidential election to “Sleepy Joe” Biden by seven million votes. It wasn’t that Biden was either charming or charismatic. In fact, for many years he had been prone to memory lapses (referred to as “gaffes”) and he had lost the first three primary elections on his way to becoming the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nominee. The problem was that Trump’s general disregard for the interests of the public he had been elected to serve had rendered him too toxic to many voters.

Trump, however, was never one to accept defeat gracefully (or even otherwise). He first insisted that the election had been stolen and that he had won by millions of votes. He next did something that was highly unusual; within a week after the results of the election had become known, he replaced a number of high level members of his administration, including the Secretary of Defense and other top DOD officials. It wasn’t until January 6th that the motivation behind these highly unusual moves became apparent.

Huddling with his advisors, Trump developed a handful of plans to have the Electoral College and/or the Congress declare him the winner of the 2020 election. His ultimate effort to reverse the result of the election was to summon his followers (including the members of three militias groups) to Washington to attend a “Stop the Steal” rally at which he encouraged them to storm the Capitol and cause the Congress not to accept the election result certified by the Electoral College. Although there were multiple calls by members of Congress hiding in the bowels of the Capitol to stop the ensuing melee, there was no response by the local National Guard units for over three hours until Trump, recognizing that even this effort was not going to succeed, relented and called off the siege.

Not only did that effort fail, but Trump was again impeached for inciting the Capitol insurrection. While the vote in the House on the single Article of Impeachment was 232-197, the Senate again failed to muster the two-thirds vote necessary to convict him. Credit for Trump’s escape was largely due to the efforts of Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s Majority Leader. First, he refused to schedule a vote in the Senate on the Article of Impeachment until after Trump had left office on January 20th. Then he argued that there was no reason to convict Trump since he was already out of office and that Trump’s fate should be left to the courts to decide. That, of course, was  total nonsense as a Senate conviction would have precluded Trump from running again in 2024. In addition, McConnell declined to call for Trump’s conviction even though he had condemned Trump’s actions immediately following the attack on the Capitol. This was a clear signal to Republican members of the Senate that they should vote against convicting Trump. The result was that only nine Republican Senators voted to convict, eight short of what was needed for a conviction.

Although Trump’s reputation had been severely damaged, his political career nevertheless remained technically viable. He therefore immediately began plotting his comeback. Among his early actions was to exact revenge on those Republican members of the House that had voted to impeach him. He arranged for Liz Cheney to be challenged in the 2022 primary with a well-funded opponent whom he endorsed. Others, including Adam Kinzinger, who had voted to impeach Trump simply decided not to seek reelection. This gave Trump firm control over those Republicans serving in the Congress.

Although Trump’s involvement in the Capitol insurrection was never disputed, the Biden administration (including Attorney General Merrick Garland) was not anxious to prosecute him largely because he had left the nation in a very precarious position. Thus, the Biden administration’s first priority was to arrest the spread of the Covid pandemic and to restore the nation’s economy. Accordingly, an attack on Trump could have jeopardized those efforts as it was evident that Trump still enjoyed strong support among Congressional Republicans. That, however, did not stop House Democrats from creating a Select Committee to investigate the January 6th insurrection. The Committee’s report detailed Trump’s many efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election and became the impetus for four separate criminal proceedings against him, only two of which grew out of those efforts.

Trump spent the next two years continuing to assert that he had won the 2020 election and complaining that he was the victim of a “weaponized” Biden administration. Aided by an echo chamber consisting of Congressional Republicans and right-wing news organizations, Trump managed to not only maintain the support of his political base, but to actually enhance that support. Fox News, which had parroted Trump’s assertions of voting fraud, did not fare as well, being forced to settle a libel suit for $785 million based on a fictitious claim that a voting machine company had caused voting irregularities in the 2020 election. Newsmax followed with a $40 million settlement of similar claims.

Despite his mishandling of the Covid Pandemic, his two impeachment proceedings, his four criminal indictments (one of which resulted in a conviction), an $87 million adverse judgment in a libel suit and a record of 30,000+ false statements during his term as president, Trump managed to win reelection in 2024. Among the explanations for this astonishing result was a disinformation campaign orchestrated by Russia and over a billion dollars of campaign donations by wealthy individuals enticed by Trump’s vow to extend his 2017 tax cuts.

I would be remiss by not mentioning the role played by the U.S. Supreme Court which issued what may be the worst decision ever rendered in the Court’s its 235 years of existence. In the case of U.S. v. Trump, the Court ruled that U.S. presidents are entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken in their official capacity. Although the Department of Justice had long taken the position that it will not institute a criminal proceeding against a sitting president, no court had ever ruled that a president is immune to criminal prosecution. Indeed, the nation’s founders were adamant that the nation’s presidents were not above the law and Mitch McConnell, who had help Trump avoid conviction in his second impeachment proceeding, reaffirmed that Trump was still criminally vulnerable for his actions in inciting the January 6th Capitol insurrection.

Based on this misguided court decision, Trump was able to have the four criminal cases against him dismissed, including the one in which the jury had found him guilty. Trump then claimed that this decision meant that the cases against him were simply an illegal effort to thwart his reelection. For a more detailed explanation of Trump’s victory see, “What Happened”.

Now, Trump is in the process of converting our federal government into an autocracy, following an authoritarian credo practiced by Putin: “For my friends, anything; for my enemies the law.” Specifically, for his wealthy campaign contributors he is focused on extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 which has disproportionately benefited wealthy individuals. He has also vowed to cut regulations on fossil fuel production as well as a multitude of federal regulations that reduce the profitability of privately-owned businesses. He’s even seeking to take that vow a step further by cutting the budgets and the number of employees of the IRS and federal agencies that regulate businesses so as to prevent them from enforcing those laws and regulations that politically cannot be eliminated.

For his loyal MAGA supporters he has vowed to be “their retribution.” Specifically, he has promised to deport 20 million immigrants (although they only number roughly 11 million) and to bring to an end Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (or DEI) policies both within and outside the federal government. Of course, these undertakings will only feed the hates and fears of his working class supporters and not put food on their dinner tables. To address that concern he has suggested that he will eliminate taxes on tips and social security benefits. Those suggested changes in the tax laws, however, are likely to be soon forgotten just as Trump never sought to make middle class tax cuts permanent following the adoption of the 2017 tax legislation.

Beyond his campaign promises, Trump has been testing the boundaries of his presidential powers. His Cabinet appointments were not only designed to install persons who would unquestionably carry out his agenda but also were intended to be tests to see whether the Senate would reject any of his grossly unfit nominees (such as Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) and to identify which Republican Senators, if any, would oppose his choices. Similarly, he has tested his power to deport individuals without affording deportees due process. This was done by his invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Over this past weekend the Trump administration deported over 200 Venezuelan men to El Salvador. In doing so, his administration violated an order of the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. This matter is destined to remain in the news as it will likely find its way onto the docket of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The wholesale dismissals (without cause) of government workers with a probationary status was yet another effort to test the breadth of Trump’s powers. He's also withholding federal funding approved by Congress for entities he does not like, such as universities and news organizations that voice objections to his actions. In another test of the limits of his authority, this past weekend he announced that the pardons granted by President Biden (including those granted to members of the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6th Capitol insurrection) were null and that he won’t honor them. The underlying premise of this action was that they were signed using an autopen, a technique which Trump himself has apparently used.

Even more troubling have been his efforts that mimic the regimes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. For example, Trump is well on his way to reorganizing his own private militia which he regularly calls upon to intimidate those he considers to be his opponents, including prosecutors, judges and law firms. First, he granted reprieves to all of those serving prison sentences for participating in the January 6th Capitol insurrection and pardons for all others who participated in that event. More recently, he has ordered the DOJ to retore the rights of convicted felons to bear arms, making them likely recruits for his own unregulated militia.

Perhaps even more disconcerting is what Trump has been doing with the Department of Defense. He has appointed Pete Hegseth to be the Secretary of Defense. Although Hegseth is only minimally qualified to serve as the Secretary of Defense (even if you ignore his addiction to alcoholic beverages), some of his expressed views are far more troubling. For example, he believes that it is unrealistic for Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders or for it to be granted membership in NATO. Closer to home, he has advocated halting cyber security operations targeting Russia and anything to do with climate crisis. Also troubling is his effort to replace the leadership of the Judge Advocate General Corp and to make our armed forces less restricted by the Geneva Conventions and international human rights treaties. Stated another way, the U.S. should conduct its military affairs as Russia does.

It's not just Hegseth’s views, but also his actions. He has dismissed without explanations a number of top military officers including the recently appointed Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard and the Air Force’s Vice Chief of Staff. What makes these actions so unsettling is that these personnel changes presage what is likely to be a second effort by Trump to use U.S. military personnel to quell civil protests over his domestic policies as well as protests that would likely erupt were he to disregard the ruling of our courts.

Another stepping stone to converting the U.S. into an aristocracy has been Trump’s effort to “weaponize” (his term) the Department of Justice. Although Trump claims that the Biden administration directed the DOJ to prosecute him, that assertion is, and always has been, pure fiction. Quite to the contrary, the Biden administration was highly reluctant to initiate any criminal action against Trump and there is no evidence of any contact between the White House and the DOJ during the Biden Administration. Indeed, no criminal action was even instituted against Trump for almost two years after Biden took office and that only occurred after the House Select Committee had issued its report. Equally important, the charges made against Trump were serious and were overwhelmingly supported by the evidence.

In sharp contrast, Trump has not only expressly encouraged the DOJ to purge of any of its investigators and prosecutors who pursued him and those who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, but he has also taken the highly unusual step of traveling to the Department of Justice to convey his desires in a long (over an hour) speech. Specifically, he urged the DOJ (as well as state attorney generals) to act on his threats of retribution against investigators, prosecutors and judges involved in any of the criminal proceeding instituted against him and the participants in the January 6th insurrection. Although he characterized those individual with derogatory terms, not surprisingly he neglected to mention any wrongful actions that they may have taken.

It's important to understand that Trump’s second administration is still less than two months old and it has already sowed the seeds for a dozen or more constitutional crises. What makes this particularly troubling is that the Congress (which is under Republican control) has already demonstrated that it is not prepared to halt Trump’s march to autocracy and that the Supreme Court has likewise demonstrated by its U.S. v. Trump decision that it is not willing to place any checks on presidential powers. Equally disturbing is the thought that even if they were to suddenly wake up to the dangers posed by the Trump administration, it’s not at all clear whether Trump would abide by their rulings just as he is brushing aside the pardons granted by his predecessor.