MAD and MAC. Trumps wants to make America a Cleptocracy and a Dictatorship.
MAD MAC.
Spoiler: It has begun. Trump is attacking democracy and civil rights in the USA. He has already violated the Constitution by signing an executive order that ends birthright citizenship in the USA. His pardon of the thugs that stormed the Capitolium on January 6th is an attack on the Rule of Law. The attack on transgender rights and mass deportation order are attacks on human rights. And this was only the beginning. The media, that he hates so much that he wants to censor it, are having a hard time to track his dismantling of the democracy in the USA.
Trump cares less about democracy than anyone else in the USA. He aims to make USA an autocracy. To achieve that he will abolish Rule of Law and the Judiciary’s independence so that he can’t be challenged by the courts. He will also try to silence the media and the Civil Society Organisations that care about civil liberties. And he is going to try to rig the midterm elections to keep the republican majority in the Congress.
In the next four years we will see if the US Constitution is so resilient as it is said to be. Are the institutions strong enough to perform the checks and balances on the madman in the White House? In a year’s time is should be possible to compare the situation of democracy in the USA by the situation pre-Trump II. We can already compare Trump I by his predecessors and Biden.
Below, I will use the Varities of Democracy’s indicators that can be used to show developments of different aspects of democracy over time.
A high-level indicator in the V-Dem dataset is the Liberal Democracy Index. The index gauges how well individuals’ rights are protected against the state’s and majority groups’ attempts to abolish those rights. Here is the definition from the V-Dem web site:
The liberal principle of democracy emphasizes the importance of protecting individual and minority rights against the tyranny of the state and the tyranny of the majority. The liberal model takes a “negative” view of political power insofar as it judges the quality of democracy by the limits placed on government. This is achieved by constitutionally protected civil liberties, strong rule of law, an independent judiciary, and effective checks and balances that, together, limit the exercise of executive power. To make this a measure of liberal democracy, the index also takes the level of electoral democracy into account.
Trump attacked the US democracy already during his first period.
Source: Varieties of Democracy.
Let’s have a look on the situation for civil liberties, rule of law, and the judiciary’s independence now before Trump II and during Trump I. There will be a lot of graphs in this post.
Make America a Dictatorship.
Trump’s first period began in 2017 and was reflected in a detoriation of democracy in the USA. It recovered slightly during Biden but did not reach the previous state it hade during Obama.
No one cares less about civil liberties than Trump.
Trump is on the hunt for sexual minorities and immigrants. Sexual minorites are to be purged from the military to begin with, but he wont’ stop there. Abolishing civil rights for LGBTQ patriots in the US Armed forces is not despicable, it is also stupid. And hypocritically by someone who dodged the military service.
His order of mass deportation of immigrants irrespective of their immigration status is of course also illegal. And a clear violation of human rights. The situation for civil liberties deteriorated slightly during Trump’s first period. It is already worse now only a few days in his second period.
Trump attacked civil liberties last time and he’s doing it again.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note. Civil liberty is understood as liberal freedom, where freedom is a property of individuals. Civil liberty is constituted by the absence of physical violence committed by government agents and the absence of constraints of private liberties and political liberties by the government. The higher the index, the stronger is the protection of individual rights.
No one cares less about the Rule of Law than Trump.
My knowledge of the division of power between the federal level and states is full of gaps. Some of the developments that I show may be due to variations of developments in different states. There are differences in respect of civil rights for minorites in California and Florida or between New York and Alabama. I am not sure how such differences show up in the graphs.
Anyway. To make the country an autocracy, one needs to take control of the judiciary system and destroy the Rule of Law. Trump tried the last time but failed. Every time he has appeared in the courts now, he has come out of them accusing the prosecutors and judges to be corrupt. As a consequence of his victory in the election, cases against him have now been dismissed. As the graph below shows, the state of Rule of Law deteriorated only during Trumps presidency in the period 2001-2023. It will be worse.
Trump attacks judges and prosecutors who do their job investigating him.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note. The index aims to show the extent to which laws are transparently, independently, predictably, impartially, and equally enforced, and to what extent the actions of government officials comply with the law. The higher the index, the stronger is the rule of law.
You can attack the Rule of Law in many ways. Trump also violate the laws in his executive orders. For example, freezing all federal grants and loans approved by the Congress is illegal. And allowing someone outside of the government, Elon Mussolini, access to access to the federal payments system that controls the flow of trillions of dollars in government funds every year, must be illegal, if not only due to the fact that that system controls the flow of funds and grants to agencies, organisations, states, local authorites and more that are decided by the Congress.
Apparently, Trump has given Muskolini the “authority” to shut down USAID. It’s web site is down so I guess it is done.
Elon Muskolini just made Xi Jinping a favour.
Xi Jinping is happy. Now China will step in where USAID left and pretend to be good samaritans. putin is happy. A lot of USAID funds was allocated Ukraine.
No one hates independent courts more than Trump.
American presidents have some leverage over the Supreme court when there’s a vacancy that needs to be filled. Trump used that the last time he was in president and also against the lower courts. Note that none of the indicators show a deterioration outside Trump’s presidency since 2001.
Trump has no use of independent courts.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note. The indicators range from 0 to 4 and indicates whether the courts make the decisions independently of what the government wants or make their decisions according to the government’s wished. A 0 indicates that the courts are rubber stamps and a 4 that the courts are independent. The higher the value of the indices, the more indendent are the courts.
No one hates free and independent media as Trump.
Trump’s attacks on civil liberties and the judiciary don’t go unnoticed. They are reported by the press and commented by legal experts on TV. Trump does not take these reports and comments kindly. A free and independent media and strong civil society organisations are among the annoyances for a wannabe dictator. Trump’s constant bashing of the media calling them “fake news” shows his contempt of free and independent media.
Shortly after assuming office in 2017, Trump accused the free and independent media of being enemy of the people. And he is at it again. He is throwing out media he does not like from the Pentagon offices and letting the fascists from Breitbart in.
Sometimes governments do not need to take actions. Some tech millionaires are spineless. Jeff Bezos caved in to Trump during the campaing and stopped his newspaper Washington Post from supporting Biden. He is not the only one. Mark Zuckerberg who runs Facebook has also yielded to Trump.
Trump tried to silence the media and the CSOs.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: Both indicies range from 0 to 4. A 0 for the CSO repression index shows that the government attacks CSOs regularly while a 4 shows the absence of such activities. A 0 for the censorship effort indicates that the government’s attempts are systematically and a 4 that it raraly happens. The higher the values of the indices, the less attempts by the government to silence the media and the CSOs.
Before he won this election, Trump stated more than once that he would go after journalists and media that he disliked.
On the campaign trail and in interviews, Trump has suggested that if he regains the White House, he will exact vengeance on news outlets that anger him.
More specifically, Trump has pledged to toss reporters in jail and strip major television networks of their broadcast licenses as retribution for coverage he didn't like.
Make no mistake, he will try to shut down the free press in USA.
Make America a Cleptocracy
It is clear that Trump aims to use the administration to make himself even richer. He did it the last time and will do it again unless it becomes so obvious that even the spineless republicans in the Senate and the House protest.
No other president, besides Trump, has abused his office so much for his own benefit.
During his first period Trumps organised government meetings and conferences in Mar-A-Lago, the Trump Tower and other places he owned in order to make money on the presidency. He also gave his useless children high paid “jobs” to make sure that more money flowed in to the Trump family. Since January we have alredy seen how tech millionaries have donated millions of dollars to him hoping that their “investments” will return in lower taxes, more grants and subsidies like those the fascist Musk receives. No matter which shapes these nefarious activites take, they will strengthen corruption in the USA and pour money into Trump’s pockets. That began already during Trump’s first period as the Regime Corruption Index shows. When Biden came to office, such activites were stopped immediately.
The Steal is about to begin again.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: The index shows how routinely members of the executive, or their agents grant favors in exchange for bribes, kickbacks, or other material inducements, and how often do they steal, embezzle, or misappropriate public funds or other state resources for personal or family use. The higher value of the index, the stronger is the corruption.
In two years’ time elections might not be free and fair.
Trump hates democrats and republicans who don’t agree with him. To make sure that the mid-term elections won’t change the republican majority in the Congress, he is going to do all he can to rig the elections in his favour. He does not want to make another phone call asking for 11,000 votes to be found. He will intimidate election workers and officials beforehand. Last time it was too obvious.
Trump’s harassments and intimidations of election officals.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: The indicator aims to measure whether opposition candidates/parties/campaign workers were subjected to repression, intimidation, violence, or harassment by the government, the ruling party, or their agents. The indicator ranges from 0 to 4 where 0 indicates total oppresion and 4 an ideal situation where it does not occur. The higher value of the index, the less harassments.
If Trump succeeds in his endavour to rig the elections, they won’t be clean, they will be dirty, or Trumpy.
Will Trump succeed in rigging the future elections.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: The indicator shows the extent to which there is absence of registration fraud, systematic irregularities, government intimidation of the opposition, vote buying, and election violence. The higher value of the index, the cleaner elections.