What the Republican Party Now Stands For

What matters to Donald Trump is total loyalty. If you want to create a dictatorship in the United States, there are two things Donald has to do to fulfill his statement that he’s going to be dictator, though he claims for one day. You have to control the enforcement of the laws. And there are more than 100,000 people at the Justice Department. The FBI is under the attorney general, for example. And then, secondly, you have to fire those general officers, admirals and generals, who will not do your bidding and ignore their oath of office, and replace them with craven junior officers who will do your bidding, politicizing the American military. Those are the two key levers to creating a Trump dictatorship.

The Republican Party used this say that it stood for freedom, for individual freedom. It’s very clear that it now stands for authoritarian control. And the [Department of Justice] is part of that. You will behave the way we want you to do in the Trump administration, or we will find ways to punish you; we will find ways to take away money, to shut down your non-profit organization on a whim, a mere accusation with no proof. And remember that under the U.S. Supreme Court’s immunity decision, anything Donald Trump does in his official capacity is beyond review by anyone anywhere. The Supreme Court majority has effectively set up a dictatorship for Trump. The question is: Does he have the competence to execute it? No. Does he have people around him who are competent to execute it? Absolutely.

– David Cay Johnston
Excerpted from “Trump Loyalist Pam Bondi
Tapped for Attorney General”
Democracy Now!
November 22, 2024

Related Off-site Links:
A Time for Bodhisattvas – Lion’s Roar (November 6, 2024).
A Lighthouse for Dark Times – Maria Popova (The Marginalian, November 6, 2024).
Grassroots Organizing Wisdom Will Be Crucial With a Fascist in the White House – Schuyler Mitchell (TruthOut, November 6, 2024).
How Trump Won the Popular and Electoral College Vote: An Interview with Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin – GBH News (November 7, 2024).
Evangelicals View Trump Victory as a “New Mandate from God” for Christian Nationalist Rule – Alex Henderson (AlterNet, November 8, 2024).
A Modest Proposal: Let Trump Be Trump – Jonathan V. Last (The Bulwark, November 8, 2024).
Why Working Class Americans of All Races Voted for Trump – Michael Tracey (Scheer Post, November 8, 2024).
Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won? – Jonathan V. Last (The New Republic via Yahoo! News, November 8, 2024).
Let’s Move Beyond Blame to Fight for Each Other in the Face of Fascism – Kelly Hayes (TruthOut, November 8, 2024).
Trump Is Planning a Presidency Of, By, and For the Rich – Branko Marcetic (Jacobin, November 10, 2024).
What I Won’t Get Over and (Some of) What to Do Now – Steven Beschloss (America, America, November 11, 2024).
How Democrats Can Rise – Marianne Williamson (Transform, November 12, 2024).
It’s Time to Consider the Worst-Case Scenario – Jonathan V. Last (The Bulwark, November 18, 2024).
Trump Taps Project 2025 Architect Russ Vought for the Office of Management and Budget: Wants to Fire Civil Servants and Deploy the Military – Democracy Now! (November 22, 2024).


UPDATES: I Watched Orbán Destroy Hungary’s Democracy. Here’s My Advice for the Trump Era – Gábor Scheiring (Politico, November 23, 2024).
Donald Trump and the Intellectuals: How Do We Navigate the Darkness Ahead? – Gregory D. Foster (Salon, November 24, 2024).
Jack Smith Throws in the Towel on Prosecution of Trump – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, November 25, 2024).
What Ails America – and How to Fix It – Jeffrey D. Sachs (Scheer Post, November 25, 2024).
How to Survive Trump – America’s Nero – Liz Theoharis and Shailly Gupta Barnes (Common Dreams, November 25, 2024).
“By and For the Ultra-Wealthy”: Here Are the Billionaires Set to Run Trump’s Administration – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, November 26, 2024).
A “Roadmap” for “Hope, Resistance and Reconstruction” in a Second Trump Presidency – Chauncey DeVega (Salon, November 26, 2024).
Defeating Trumpism With a People’s Agenda – C.J. Polychroniou (Common Dreams, November 27, 2024).
Just How Fully Will Trump Embrace Hitler’s Fascist Playbook? – Chuck Idelson (Common Dreams, November 30, 2024).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Venice Williams on How We Get Through the Next Four Years
• Phil Wilson Remembers “American Fascism’s First Casualty” and Warns That Donald Trump’s “MAGA Death Cult Is Coming for Us All”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Living in Very Serious Times and We Need to Be Very Serious People”
• Will We Let Fascism Come to America?
• Bernie Sanders: Quote of the Day – July 1, 2024
• The Ongoing Danger of the Trump Cult and the Wider Specter of American Fascism
• Dan Rather on America’s “Moment of Reckoning”
• The Republican Party in a Nutshell
• Donald Trump’s Open and Shameless Criminality
• Insurrection at the United States Capitol
• Trump’s Legacy
• Republicans Don’t Care About American Democracy
• “The Republican Party Has Now Made It Official: They Are a Cult”
• “We Have an Emergency On Our Hands”: Marianne Williamson On the “Freefall” of American Democracy
• “Fascism Is Upon Us”
• Adam Serwer: Quote of the Day – May 23, 2018
• On International Human Rights Day, Saying “No” to Donald Trump and His Fascist Agenda (2016)
• Progressive Perspectives on the Election of Donald Trump as President of the United States (2016)
• Progressive Perspectives on the Rise of Donald Trump (2016)
• Trump’s Playbook

Image: Kristen Solberg.