Karl Marx said that when history repeats itself, we're supposed to get tragedy first, then farce. But Donald J. Trump has spent his life flouting all the rules. Why should we expect him to obey the historical dialectic?
In Trump's two presidencies, farce came first. From the jump, his first turn at the helm was a head-spinning spectacle. He talked like a caudillo crossbred with an insult comic and seemed like a strongman auditioning for the part. In practice, however, Trump proved something of a "low energy" authoritarian. Very few of 45's autocratic fancies—from unilaterally revoking birthright citizenship to"hereby order[ing]" American companies out of China—ever made the transition from tweet to law of the land.
