Ambition?

"[China’s President Xi Jinping is] now president for life, president for life. And he's great… And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday."

Audio of excerpts of Trump's remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN.

 
For Democrats and others left of center, who believe that Donald Trump’s chaotic turnstile White House chaos is his undoing, there is one particularly harsh reality: According to most recent polls, Donald Trump’s approval ratings are even higher that they were when he was elected… now over 40%. For Trump’s base, there is joy at Washington’s plague of instability, watching government agencies squirm as they are serially defunded unless they have military value.

As much as big business might shudder at the consequences of a trade war, Trump’s base passionately believes that their President’s new steel and aluminum import tariffs will drive foreign steel and aluminum-makers away, allowing blue collar Americans to recapture those once glorious jobs. Screw Europe if they retaliate. Trump will just tax those German cars… making even more jobs for Americans. He promised to do raise protectionist barriers, and he did. OK, he was furious that many of his advisors cautioned him against such a move and was totally enraged that the stock market plunged at the announcement. And he just skips over the “but that makes prices for the rest of us skyrocket” and forgets about the jobs that may have to be cut to accommodate offsetting cost-savings to make up for that expensive steel and aluminum.

Donald Trump is a control freak, driven to demand fierce and unbending loyalty from everyone around him. It is his obsession. His people must follow his orders. For example, when House Speaker Paul Ryan started parroting Donald’s words, their relationship got downright cozy. Trump admires Vladimir Putin’s perpetual term in office as well as his iron hand that crushes all dissent. And clearly, he looks with envy as another “Leader for Life” become ensconced atop another world power. President Xi. That each of these regimes was born of severe totalitarian roots only seems to fascinate him. His own words above are most troublesome, especially when you remember he is the commander-in-chief of our entire military.

But what could possibly go wrong? Just think how his minions in Congress are undermining the FBI, the Department of Justice and most of our intelligence agencies… all towing the Trump party line: nothing these agencies can ever say negative about Trump should ever be believed, they want the public to believe. Trump still rejects the notion that he lost the popular presidential election by about three million votes; despite that the investigation of voter fraud unraveled, Trump is still convinced that those extra votes for Clinton were fraudulent.

Donald Trump is already staffing for a second run at the White House in 2020, but what happens if the mid-terms show voter disillusionment with the blind GOP support for Trump and his rather extreme base? What if the House shifts to the Dems? Maybe even the Senate? And what if the polls approaching 2020 – fractured by internecine dissention within the GOP (a challenge to Trump himself?) and perhaps further challenged by an independent candidate who might siphon off Trump voters – show Donald Trump furiously behind his Democratic opponent?

What if Donald Trump declares that there is so much evidence of voter fraud, hacked voting machines and even uses Russian interference (likely to continue to be pro-Trump) as an excuse… that it would be impossible to have a fair election until all this fraud is sorted out. What if Donald Trump, envious of Putin and Xi, declares that the 2020 elections therefore must be postponed… indefinitely… and uses his power as Commander-in-Chief to enforce his edict? That is way more than a constitutional crisis. That is a coup d’état.

That’s only the stuff of movies? Really? Look at history. Look at how democracies transform into dictatorships with zeal and enough armed and angry constituents. The fragile French democracy was born of blood and violence in 1789, but a decade later, Napoleon Bonaparte was the new French emperor. Germany was basically a struggling Democracy after a horrible World War I that ousted the Kaiser, but soon Adolph Hitler yearned for and finally got total power.

So when a President of the United States, who calls the free press the “enemy,” when his cronies eviscerate the agencies of law and order that form the foundation of our constitutional checks and balances, and when he openly tells his angry and well-armed constituents (there are, according to the NRA, over 15 million AR-15 assault rifles in the US) – only half-jokingly – that we should try a “president for life” model here in the United States, I have to worry. I’m not laughing. I watched as Trump believed that his flurry of executive orders at his term’s inception were tantamount to passing legislation and as he fired anyone with a contrary view anywhere near him, vilifying those he could not fire.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I think we may have just passed the point where Donald Trump may actually like absolute power even more than money.