In the spring of 1989, the Chinese Communist Party used tanks and soldiers to suppress a pro-democracy protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Most of the Western world, beyond traditional party lines, was horrified by the repression that killed hundreds of student activists. But one well-known American was impressed.
“When the students gathered in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost ruined it,” Donald Trump said in an interview with Playboy magazine the year after the massacre. “Afterwards, they were ruthless, they were horrible, but they suppressed them with force. That demonstrates the power of force. Right now, our country is perceived as weak.”
It was an insignificant phrase in a wide-ranging interview, given to a journalist profiling a famous 43-year-old businessman who was not yet a player in national or global politics. But in light of what Trump has become, his apology for the ruthless repression of democratic protesters is imbued with omens.
Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric in his 2024 campaign has caused growing alarm and comparisons to fascist dictators of history as well as contemporary populist leaders. In recent weeks, he has dehumanized his opponents by calling them “plagues” that must be “eradicated,” declared that immigrants “poison the blood of our country,” encouraged shooting thieves, and insinuated that former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley deserved to be executed for treason.
Now running for the presidency again while facing four criminal proceedings, Trump may seem angrier, more desperate, and more dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the direct line that emerges is earlier: he has been glorifying political violence and praising autocrats for decades.
As a presidential candidate in July 2016, he praised former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for being “so good” at killing terrorists. Months after his inauguration, he told autocratic leader Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines that his brutal campaign of thousands of extrajudicial killings in the name of the war on drugs was “an incredible job.” And throughout his four years in the Oval Office, Trump crossed boundaries and violated democratic norms.
A second Trump term would be different not so much in character but in its environment. All the forces that in some way contained his autocratic tendencies in his first presidency (staff members who considered their job to sometimes contain him, the few Republicans in Congress willing at times to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that sometimes failed him) would be weaker.
As a result, Trump’s political plans and extreme ideas for a second term would have a greater chance of becoming reality.
A radical agenda
Undoubtedly, part of what Trump and his allies are planning is in line with what any Republican president could do. For example, it is very likely that Trump will reverse many of President Joe Biden’s policies designed to curb carbon emissions and accelerate the transition to electric vehicles. Such rollbacks of various regulations and policies would significantly weaken environmental protections, but many of the changes reflect the usual and long-standing conservative skepticism about environmental regulations.
However, there are other aspects of Trump’s agenda that tend towards aberration. No other American president had contemplated the possibility of withdrawing from NATO, the US military alliance with Western democracies. Trump said he would thoroughly reevaluate “the purpose and mission of NATO” in a second term.
He also said he would order the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, something that would violate international law unless the Mexican government gave its consent. It is most likely that they won’t.
Similarly, he claimed he would deploy the military on US soil. Although it is generally illegal to use soldiers to enforce domestic laws, the Insurrection Act allows for exceptions. After some demonstrations against police violence in 2020 turned into riots, Trump drafted an order to deploy troops to suppress protesters in Washington, D.C., but did not sign it. This year, at a rally in Iowa, he implied that he intends to unilaterally send troops to Democrat-run cities to ensure law and order.
“You look at any state run by Democrats, and it’s just not the same, it doesn’t work,” Trump told the crowd, referring to cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco as crime dens. “We can’t allow it any longer. And one of the other things I’m going to do — because you’re not supposed to do it, only the governor or the mayor can request it — next time, I’m not going to wait.”
Trump’s plans to deport immigrants in the country illegally include conducting mass raids, setting up massive detention camps, deporting millions of people each year, ending asylum, ending birthright citizenship for babies born on American soil to parents living in the country illegally, and invoking the Insurrection Act near the southern border so that soldiers also act as immigration agents.
Trump would seek to expand presidential powers in many ways, including by concentrating greater executive power authority in the White House, ending the independence of agencies created by Congress to operate outside of presidential control, and reducing protections for public servants to facilitate the firing and hiring of tens of thousands of government employees.
More than anything else, Trump’s promise to use the Department of Justice to seek revenge against his adversaries is a blatant challenge to democratic values. Considering how he tried to get prosecutors to go after his enemies when he was in office, he would end the norm of investigative independence from political control of the White House that emerged after Watergate.
In all these efforts, Trump would be supported in a second term by a well-funded external infrastructure. In 2016, conservative think tanks were bastions of George W. Bush-style Republicanism. But new ones led by Trump government veterans have emerged, and the revered Heritage Foundation has been remodeled to stay in tune with Trumpism.
A coalition has been developing “America First” style political plans nicknamed Project 2025. (The Trump campaign has expressed appreciation, but has said that only plans announced by him or his campaign count). While some of the proposals being developed in these places would advance traditional goals of Republican mega-donors, such as curbing regulations on businesses, others are more in line with Trump’s personal interests.
The Center for Renewing America, for example, has published a document titled “The United States Department of Justice is Not Independent.” The document was written by Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump nearly appointed acting attorney general to aid his attempt to subvert the elections and who faces criminal charges in Georgia related to that effort.
When asked for comment on this, a Trump spokesperson did not go into details but did criticize The New York Times and claimed that Trump was “tough on crime.”
Weakened protections
Since he ran in 2016, Trump has violated democratic norms.
He called his loss in the Iowa caucuses a fraud without evidence and hinted that he would only consider the results of the general election legitimate if he won. He threatened to imprison Hillary Rodham Clinton, labeled Mexican immigrants as rapists, and promised to ban Muslims from entering the United States. He offered to pay for defense lawyers for supporters who would hit protesters at his rallies and incited hatred against journalists who…