Former President Donald Trump returned to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for his first speech in the nation’s capital since he fled office following his unsuccessful coup attempt in the early days of 2021. And despite having spent the past year and a half lounging in his various palatial estates and expecting visitors to kiss the ring to earn his dubiously effective endorsement, Trump’s keynote address to the America First Policy Institute’s summer summit was a clear sign that should he win another stint in the White House, the second Trump administration would not just be a continuation of his previous slide toward fascism, but a full-blown embrace of unadulterated authoritarian rule.
For proof, consider how Trump proposed handling one of the most vulnerable, at-risk populations in the country: the unhoused community, whose mere existence he described as an impediment to making “our cities clean, safe, and beautiful.”
