Donald Trump’s threats to use the presidency as a vindictive weapon to punish his enemies have grown so naked that his allies now find it inconvenient. They are irritated — not with Trump, but with the news media for reporting on his undisguised plans. They recognize “I am your retribution” is comic-book-villain dialogue, not an effective message for swing voters. Their goal is to give the party some plausible deniability that the man they are planning to install atop the executive branch will not attack the foundations of the republic.
Trump, however, is refusing to cooperate with the charade.
Sean Hannity, who frequently tries to nudge Trump toward more effective messaging choices, beseeched Trump Tuesday night to say he had no plans to make himself a “dictator” and asked if he would “abuse power.”
Before considering the response, it is worth noting how pathetically low a bar this is to clear. “Dictator” is an epithet, not a title. The world has many dictators, but none of them claim this as a title. Recall how it created a diplomatic stir recently when President Biden called Xi Jinping a “dictator,” which he certainly is. Xi doesn’t wish to be called a dictator, but this hardly means he doesn’t wish to exert dictatorial control over the country he rules.
Likewise, nobody admits to “abusing power.” Every government, however authoritarian it may be, portrays its administration of power as legitimate. Abusing power is something any leader, democratic or otherwise, would axiomatically deny. Kash Patel, a Trump adviser, explained this week that the Trump administration will harass independent media through what he portrays as legal means:
“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out … We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”
That is an abuse of power, but he is not calling it an abuse of power. A legitimate question about Trump’s intentions would ask if he would respect the independence of the Justice Department (something, of course, he consistently refused to acknowledge during his term as president).
Instead, here is the softball question Hannity tossed to Trump:
“They want to call you a dictator. You used the words, ‘I am your retribution.’ And before that, you said if you had been ‘wronged,’ and you used other words as well. But I want to be very, very clear on this,” Hannity said. “To be clear, do you in any way have any plans whatsoever if reelected president to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?”
Even though Hannity was, characteristically, handing Trump the answer to the quiz, he refused to follow his directions:
“You mean like they’re using right now? In the history of our country, what’s happened to us, again, has never happened before. Over nonsense, over nothing — made-up charges. I often say Al Capone — he was one of the greatest of all time, if you like criminals — he was a mob boss the likes of which — ‘Scarface,’ they called him — and he got indicted once. I got indicted four times.”
This, of course, is not even close to a denial.
Apparently dissatisfied, Hannity gave another chance to offer a fig-leaf denial. “I want to go back to this one issue because the media has been focused on this and attacking you,” he began. “Under no circumstances — you are promising America, tonight — you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?”
Trump again refused to follow Hannity’s lead. “Except for day one. I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill,” he said. Hannity tried to explain to the audience that Trump was not saying he would be a dictator. Trump turned his host’s discomfort into a joke. “We love this guy,” Trump remarked. “He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said, ‘No, no, no. Other than day one.’ We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.”
This exchange is best understood as Trump enjoying the idea of himself as dictator. Trump has always admired dictators and has longed to be granted the obsequious deference they are afforded. As president, his favorite moments were trips to places like North Korea, where he spoke admiringly about the way his counterparties were treated. (“He’s the head of the country,” Trump said of Kim Jong-un. “And I mean, he’s the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. … He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”)
His allies have always found this trait embarrassing and wished to deny it. Republicans are angrily attacking media coverage of Trump’s promises to turn the government into a weapon of vengeance as a smear campaign.
“There is no longer any pretense. Not even a fig leaf about fairness,” complains Fox News self-style media reporter Howard Kurtz. “It’s not that [Trump] shouldn’t be held accountable for his own rhetoric and social-media posts, but I have never seen anything like this in my professional lifetime.”
Could the reason that Trump’s authoritarian threat is being covered in a different way than any previous candidate be that no previous presidential candidate has explicitly promised to use his power to crush his enemies as vermin? Kurtz does not consider this possibility. Media bias is the only explanation.
Trump’s allies likewise insist that coverage of his plans is actually a scheme to seed violence against Trump. “All of these articles calling Trump a dictator are about one thing: legitimizing illegal and violent conduct as we get closer to the election,” proclaims Senator J.D. Vance. “This extreme and dangerous genre — of claiming Trump is Hitler (because, they say, he might do what Democrats are doing right now) — should probably be given the name ‘Assassination Prep,’” warns the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway.
The whole pretense of these complaints is that Trump has done or said nothing dangerous or unusual, and that reporting on his plans and public statements is a form of dangerous incitement. They are all but begging Trump to give them a shred of deniability. He can simply say, even with a wink, that he doesn’t wish to become America’s Putin. He won’t give them even that — because, to Trump, being called “dictator” is a compliment his ego won’t permit him to deny.
