Most everyone other than apologists and professional contrarians would agree at this point that President Trump aims to make the United States a personalist autocracy, where his whims are policy and his will is law.
But the execution has been haphazard. Trump tried to overwhelm the public with a campaign of shock and awe. His executive orders targeted a broad swath of civil society, forcing states, localities, colleges, universities and law firms into a defensive crouch. His so-called Department of Government Efficiency — run, until recently, by Elon Musk, his billionaire ally — ransacked the federal government, fired thousands of civil servants, obliterated critical state capacity and destroyed entire agencies: including U.S.A.I.D., a move that may kill countless thousands of people worldwide.
The president’s most recent effort is an immigration crackdown in Democratic-led cities. In Los Angeles, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been conducting roundups of anyone who might lack legal status, Trump deployed National Guard troops and Marines, citing riots and violence from protesters. He has threatened to do the same in Chicago and New York.
Interestingly, the two states with the next largest populations of undocumented immigrants after California are Texas and Florida. But under the operating philosophy of the administration — a version of “For my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law” — both states have received something of an exception from the White House deportation program on account of their Republican governors.
Both the crackdown by ICE and the calling up of the military to suppress protests were supposed to rally the public to the administration, in opposition to alleged crime and disorder. The president’s military parade — meant to mimic the ornate processions seen in Russia, North Korea and other dictatorships — was similarly meant to be a show of Trump’s popularity: a demonstration of the almost-spiritual connection he is supposed to have with the American people.
Except it’s the opposite. Far from galvanizing the public to his side, Trump’s ambitious effort to impose his will on the country has only generated discontent and backlash.
