I, Trump
The U.S. will soon have forgotten what freedom means.
This week, Donald Trump announced that the director of the FBI and the United States director of National Intelligence are working to make sure what happened during the 2020 election never happens again. “I know Kash is working on it. Everybody’s working on it. And certainly Tulsi is working on it.” It’s understood that John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, isn’t working on this because he’s still busy purging his office of people capable of proving that Russia intervened in the 2016 U.S. presidential election so that Trump won. The question is this: What is Trump’s strategy not to lose future elections?
As Washington, Seattle and Chicago have proved, Trump has found a recipe for imposing his will upon officials in cities that don’t cooperate with the raids by ICE: declaring a national emergency. But it wasn’t Trump who came up with this. Carl Schmitt, a German theorist and lawyer who joined the Nazis when Adolf Hitler became chancellor, drew up laws that guaranteed and justified the Fuhrer’s power to suspend the law to protect the state, provided that there was a state of emergency and that it was used to protect against internal threats that would prevent the state properly carrying out its duties. The two key details being that the “internal threats” were any group or individual who challenged central authority or state cohesion and that the state of emergency declares the president, “defender and guardian of constitutional unity and the integrity of the nation.”
Hitler burned down his own Reichstag* in order to put the blame on his opposition, get rid of his rivals and suspend freedom of the press, expression and assembly — not because he wanted to win the election, but to save it. Vladimir Putin has been winning elections for 20 years based on his charisma, rhetoric and his love for Mother Russia, bear walks and a little murder, censorship, propaganda, legal reform and electoral manipulation. Aleksandr Lukashenko, too. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made constitutional reforms and taken adequate measures in election supervision to ensure that he can stay as long as he wants. The recipe isn’t a secret. Most of his friends have already tried it.
For the time being, we know that Trump has established a framework of internal threats that includes immigrants, antifascists, rebel governors and Zohran Mamdani, the next mayor of New York. We know that he has dispensed with every secretary, official and party member unable to invalidate results or “find votes” when necessary. We know that he destroyed the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, a committee of prestigious academics, experts in cybersecurity and government officials trained to protect the 2020 election, and that he’s building his own.
But his most significant move could be the crater he has left in the East Wing of the White House, a residence with a four-year contract renewable only once, to build a ballroom for palatial receptions. This is thanks to donations from big tech, the crypto industry, the owners of Manchester United and Benjamin Leon, who is coming as an ambassador from Spain to correct our defense budget. With a neoclassical facade, obviously. Soon Rome will have forgotten what freedom means and will finally fall under such a savage and arbitrary tyranny as those in the East.
* Editor’s note: The Reichstag is the building in which the German Bundestag (the national parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany) resides.
This week, Donald Trump announced that the director of the FBI and the United States director of National Intelligence are working to make sure what happened during the 2020 election never happens again. “I know Kash is working on it. Everybody’s working on it. And certainly Tulsi is working on it.” It’s understood that John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, isn’t working on this because he’s still busy purging his office of people capable of proving that Russia intervened in the 2016 U.S. presidential election so that Trump won. The question is this: What is Trump’s strategy not to lose future elections?
As Washington, Seattle and Chicago have proved, Trump has found a recipe for imposing his will upon officials in cities that don’t cooperate with the raids by ICE: declaring a national emergency. But it wasn’t Trump who came up with this. Carl Schmitt, a German theorist and lawyer who joined the Nazis when Adolf Hitler became chancellor, drew up laws that guaranteed and justified the Fuhrer’s power to suspend the law to protect the state, provided that there was a state of emergency and that it was used to protect against internal threats that would prevent the state properly carrying out its duties. The two key details being that the “internal threats” were any group or individual who challenged central authority or state cohesion and that the state of emergency declares the president, “defender and guardian of constitutional unity and the integrity of the nation.”
Hitler burned down his own Reichstag* in order to put the blame on his opposition, get rid of his rivals and suspend freedom of the press, expression and assembly — not because he wanted to win the election, but to save it. Vladimir Putin has been winning elections for 20 years based on his charisma, rhetoric and his love for Mother Russia, bear walks and a little murder, censorship, propaganda, legal reform and electoral manipulation. Aleksandr Lukashenko, too. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made constitutional reforms and taken adequate measures in election supervision to ensure that he can stay as long as he wants. The recipe isn’t a secret. Most of his friends have already tried it.
For the time being, we know that Trump has established a framework of internal threats that includes immigrants, antifascists, rebel governors and Zohran Mamdani, the next mayor of New York. We know that he has dispensed with every secretary, official and party member unable to invalidate results or “find votes” when necessary. We know that he destroyed the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, a committee of prestigious academics, experts in cybersecurity and government officials trained to protect the 2020 election, and that he’s building his own.
But his most significant move could be the crater he has left in the East Wing of the White House, a residence with a four-year contract renewable only once, to build a ballroom for palatial receptions. This is thanks to donations from big tech, the crypto industry, the owners of Manchester United and Benjamin Leon, who is coming as an ambassador from Spain to correct our defense budget. With a neoclassical facade, obviously. Soon Rome will have forgotten what freedom means and will finally fall under such a savage and arbitrary tyranny as those in the East.
* Editor’s note: The Reichstag is the building in which the German Bundestag (the national parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany) resides.
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