Washington Post Exaggerates Threat of a “Trump Dictatorship” in 2024
In an essay for The Washington Post that went viral last month, Robert Kagan argued that the United States is a “few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship” led by Donald Trump. For instance, Kagan warns that “in a regime where the ruler has declared the news media to be ‘enemies of the state,’ the press will find itself under significant and constant pressure. Media owners will discover that a hostile and unbridled president can make their lives unpleasant in all sorts of ways.”
But Newspaper subscriptions soared under the first Trump presidency, and reporters who went out of their way to antagonize the president became instant celebrities with generous book deals. Even when the Trump White House temporarily suspended the press pass of a reporter who engaged in a lengthy verbal dispute with an administration staffer, the courts ruled that the reporter’s due process rights were violated. Whatever names Trump called the press, there is little evidence that he used his powers as president to suppress their critical coverage of his White House.
Meanwhile, his predecessor, Barack Obama, vigorously pursued whistleblowers with the full force of the federal government. As CNN’s Jake Tapper pointed out, the Obama administration “used the Espionage Act to go after whistleblowers who leaked to journalists . . . more than all previous administrations combined.”
However, election upset isn’t equivalent to domestic terrorism. Following the 2000 election, many Democrats felt that Bush was unfairly made the president. Gallup polling from after that election found that “just 15% said he won fair and square.”
The Post also surveyed a range of Republican candidates in battleground states about whether they’d respect the results of their election. When most of those candidates failed to respond to the paper’s questions, the Post ran the alarming headline: “Republicans in key battleground races refuse to say they will accept results.”
Yet after the election came and went, every candidate except for Lake had accepted the results of their election. It turned out that it was less that the Republican Party had stopped accepting elections and more that they didn’t want to talk to the Post.
As NBC News wrote in an article shortly after the midterm election: “From Maine to Michigan, Senate to state legislature, Republican to Democrat, most high-profile candidates who fell short in the 2022 midterm elections are offering quick concessions and gracious congratulations to their opponents.”
It is true that Trump refused to concede his own defeat, and his rhetoric helped contribute to political chaos around the election and the January 6th riot. Much of the Republican Party, too, has been reticent to admit that Trump lost that election. However, threats of a Trump Dictatorship are more sensational and likely financially lucrative than they are truthful, with election denial emerging from both sides of the political aisle in a climate of hyperpartisanship.
Read More:
https://public.substack.com/p/years-of-planning-behind-democrats
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024-election-robert-kagan/
