Washington Post contributing editor Robert Kagan has written a new column warning of the possibility that former President Donald Trump could make himself a dictator.
Kagan spends the first part of his column lambasting conservatives for wishful thinking about Trump simply disappearing from the stage after his litany of alleged crimes and offenses.
He then says that Americans need to confront the reality that Trump will likely soon be the Republican Party's presidential nominee again and that he will even use his upcoming criminal trials to his advantage as a rallying cry to his supporters.
"Trump will not be contained by the courts or the rule of law," he writes. "On the contrary, he is going to use the trials to display his power. That’s why he wants them televised. Trump’s power comes from his following, not from the institutions of American government, and his devoted voters love him precisely because he crosses lines and ignores the old boundaries. They feel empowered by it, and that in turn empowers him."
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All of this leaves Trump with a "clear path to dictatorship" should he win the 2024 election, Kagan argues.
"If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold that office," he warns. "Not only will he wield the awesome powers of the American executive — powers that, as conservatives used to complain, have grown over the decades — but he will do so with the fewest constraints of any president, fewer even than in his own first term."
