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

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)

Image: Kristen Solberg.