{"id":747,"date":"2024-02-08T00:08:21","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T00:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/08\/three-quarters-of-republicans-back-trump-being-dictator-for-a-day\/"},"modified":"2024-02-08T00:08:21","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T00:08:21","slug":"three-quarters-of-republicans-back-trump-being-dictator-for-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/08\/three-quarters-of-republicans-back-trump-being-dictator-for-a-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Three-quarters of Republicans back Trump being \u2018dictator for a day\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The irony of Donald Trump\u2019s assertion that he would seek to have dictatorial powers for the first day of his presidency is that he was supposed to be saying he had no authoritarian inclinations at all.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s original formulation of the idea came during a conversation with Fox News host Sean Hannity in December. Hannity aired clips of observers offering warnings about Trump\u2019s embrace of authoritarian rhetoric and offered Trump a chance to tamp down any such concerns. But Trump didn\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love this guy. He says, \u2018You\u2019re not gonna be a dictator, are you?\u2019 I say, \u2018No, no, no \u2014 other than Day One,\u2019\u201d Trump said at the time. \u201cWe\u2019re closing the border. And we\u2019re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that I\u2019m not a dictator, okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

Those two issues, immigration and fossil-fuel production, were simply picked up from a bit earlier in the conversation. But Trump discovered that people liked the line \u2014 dictator for a day! \u2014 and so he has at times sprinkled it into his patter at rallies. That\u2019s how his politics work: He angles for applause and, if the crowd likes something, it\u2019s on the path to potential policy implementation.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, UMass Amherst released the results of a poll conducted by YouGov in which respondents were asked about the concept. The framing of the comment was stark, excluding Trump\u2019s specific plans for using his theoretical dictatorial power. It was just, \u201cTrump recently said that if elected, he would be a dictator only on the first day of his second term. Do you think that this is a good or bad idea for the country?\u201d<\/p>\n

A plurality of respondents said this was \u201cdefinitely bad\u201d with 6 in 10 saying it was \u201cdefinitely\u201d or \u201cprobably\u201d bad. Among Republicans, though, a third said it was \u201cdefinitely good\u201d with three-quarters saying it was at least \u201cprobably\u201d good.<\/p>\n

Again, this isn\u2019t \u201cTrump wants temporary absolute powers to build a wall on the border.\u201d It is \u201cis it good or bad if Trump has absolute powers for a fixed time period.\u201d And three-quarters of Republicans responded that this was probably a good idea.<\/p>\n

This response isn\u2019t surprising as such. It\u2019s been obvious for years that there is a non-insignificant part of the American public, largely on the right, that is supportive of the idea of suborning democracy to absolute executive power. There is unquestionably a gap between \u201csupporting a dictatorship in theory\u201d or \u201cas a way to indicate anger at the system\u201d and \u201capproving of an actual implementation of dictatorship.\u201d But it seems safe to assume that the more people you have in the theoretically accepting group, the larger the literally accepting group would turn out to be.<\/p>\n

Past analyses of acceptance of authoritarianism in the U.S. have found a correlation to hostility to diversity. In the UMass Amherst poll, the groups most supportive of Trump\u2019s \u201cdictator for a day\u201d idea are men (26 points more approving of the idea than women on net), and White Americans. There was not as wide a difference between respondents with and without a college degree.<\/p>\n

Of course, Trump\u2019s formulation also doesn\u2019t really make any sense. He can\u2019t be \u201cdictator for a day\u201d except to issue mandates that could then be challenged in court. He can try to mandate that a wall be built on the border with Mexico, but he tried that when he was president, too, declaring a state of emergency that allowed him to shift funding around to pay for it.<\/p>\n

Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked him what he meant by it in an interview on Sunday, again framing it in the context of the concerns raised by outside observers. Trump said that he\u2019d offered the idea \u201cin jest.\u201d<\/p>\n

But also: \u201cI\u2019m going to close the border and we\u2019re going to drill, baby, drill, that\u2019s all,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then after that, I\u2019m not going to be a dictator.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did he mean executive orders, Bartiromo pressed? In response, Trump praised executive orders in general and suggested that President Biden was the one undercutting democracy.<\/p>\n

In other words, he doesn\u2019t really know. Think of it less as a plan than as an aspiration.<\/p>\n

One that most of his party views positively.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on The Washington Post<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The irony of Donald Trump\u2019s assertion that he would seek to have dictatorial powers for the first day of his presidency is that he was supposed to be saying he had no authoritarian inclinations at all. Trump\u2019s original formulation of the idea came during a conversation with Fox News host Sean Hannity in December. Hannity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":748,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}