Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.
In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power — a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities — and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.
But early in the pandemic, Trump was criticized, especially by Democrats, for failing to assert the draconian powers he had, such as commandeering the means of industrial production under the Defense Production Act of 1950, invoked by Truman to force industry to produce materials needed for the Korean War. In March, The Washington Post reported that “Governors, Democrats in Congress and some Senate Republicans have been urging Trump for at least a week to invoke the act, and his potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, came out in favor of it, too,” yet “Trump [gave] a variety of reasons for not doing so.” Rejecting demands to exploit a public health pandemic to assert extraordinary powers is not exactly what one expects from a striving dictator...
To read more visit Glenn Greenwald.
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To CD Staff.
Do you really think there is any democracy in the EU?
Western Europe is trying to commit cultural and national suicide with their migrant policy.
They will finally employ all manner of coercion when they get tired Orban's BS.
Queen 👑 Angela means to end Hungary and Orban.
Orban is Hungary's Trump.
He must secure total power to unit Hungary to withstand the Toxic Queen.
If he had the effete system we all have now he would have been long gone.
Soon the Islamic Threat will crystallize and million will die before the Caliphates emerge from the bloodbath.
Democracy is dead in the White World.
Feminism and Globalism are it's DEUS EX MACHINA.
The link you gave was to the Guardian and I almost threw-up when I saw it.
The only way for America and the rest can survive is through Authoritarianism , Christian Fundamentalism, Patriotism, and Extreme Nationalism. Does that make you queasy ?
Orban must steel his people for the coming apocalypse.
America is dead if Trump does not return to office.
You cite fake news Washington Post---there you go again.
Why would Trump take advise from Schumer, some Demorats in Congress and what has to be RINOs and invoke the Defense production Act.?
It was an obvious political trap. I don't know how it would have gone down but Trump did.
This whole covid pandemic has been overblown from the start.
Nobody talks about ventalators anymore. Don't they kill you?
Masks are for pu$$ies because they are mostly useless.
The cure has been a catastrophe and is worse than the disease.
The test for covid is useless according to the inventor.---too many false positives.
The covid case count is a joke and the death count has been massively padded.
TRUMP KNEW BETTER than you---MORON.
Trump did the right thing.
You are 8th grade!!
Go to CNN and analyze your bellybutton.
When did you graduate from your over rated Ivy League school?
I smell fresh PC all over this article.