A frustrating aspect of this last decade of Donald Trump is that the former president and three-time Republican candidate is not subtle, even as supporters and apologists act as if his increasingly rambling speeches contain hidden meanings that can only be fairly interpreted by select MAGA scholars. When liberal critics argue that he wants to tear up the Constitution, they can point to him straight-up calling for its “termination”; when they say he wants to be a dictator, they can point to him saying, well, he wants to be a dictator, at least on “day one.”
For those alarmed by the state of American democracy, the frustration is that it doesn’t seem matter: Trump could say anything and the usual people would say he doesn’t mean it. And when he makes clear that he does, in fact, mean it? Partisans shift to explaining why that’s good, the GOP and associated media reduced to a cult of personality, forced to defend whatever a 78-year-old man has said or done, and consequently degraded, traditional conservatism, for all its faults, replaced by an increasingly fascistic vision of power.
