The Constitutional Crisis Is Here

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David Horsey in Seattle Times 1/31/25

It is a strange thing that the man who is now vice president once described President Donald Trump as an American Hitler, but JD Vance is just one of a great many Republicans who once recognized the man’s dictatorial tendencies, yet now have accommodated themselves to his dominion over their political party and their country.

The same thing happened in Germany in the 1930s when Hitler — once considered an extremist weirdo by the German establishment — won the obeisance of his detractors once he gained power. But that similarity, along with the many other echoes of Hitler’s anti-democratic philosophy in Trump’s policies, rhetoric and political tactics, does not mean Trump is another Hitler.

When describing an autocratic threat, Adolf Hitler is everyone’s immediate equivalent. That is because the Nazi führer is universally familiar, thanks largely to 80 years of movies, television shows and books that have centered on the horrors of Hitler’s regime and the crusade to defeat him. Hitler is the dictator everyone knows, but he is also such an extreme example that it is nearly impossible to make the case that some other political leader is like him.

Trump obviously would like to run the country without having to deal with Congress, interfering judges or the rule of law. Nearly everything he has done during his first days in office is aimed at concentrating power in his own hands. He wants critics to fear him, journalists to praise him and Republican elected officials to bow down to him. He wants to be free to make money off of his high office and govern by whim. And if, after four years in the White House, he decides he wants to stay, he would love to find a way to undermine the Constitution so that he can.

All of that is Hitler-like, but Trump is a long, long way from Hitler, whose reign of terror climaxed in a war that took 50 million lives, including those of 6 million Jews who were systematically annihilated by Hitler’s design.

If given the chance, Trump would be Viktor Orban, the authoritarian president of Hungary, or, in his wildest dreams, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s coldblooded kleptocrat. Comparing Trump to Orban, or even Putin, is not nearly as dramatic as calling him an American Hitler, but it still should be deeply unsettling that we have to search for the most germane autocratic example to describe an American president.