CNN and MSNBC with a constant “The Trump Dictatorship” chyron on-screen. How Democracies Die authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt writing weekly columns in The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Wall Street Journal. Reporters at major news outlets specifically assigned to cover authoritarianism, occasionally traveling abroad to study other autocrats and compare their moves to Trump’s. A special committee of congressional Democrats doing daily hearings and press conferences on Trump’s antidemocratic actions. Anti-authoritarianism events held constantly across the country, including in pro-Trump areas.
That’s what should be happening in the United States today. There is plenty of coverage of the various Trump outrages, from the deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., to his aides pushing the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History and Culture to focus less on slavery. What’s missing and desperately needed is these events being connected to one another and presented collectively and aggressively by the media, the Democratic Party, and other prominent institutions as one megastory: Trump’s attempt to become America’s dictator.
I find myself at times struggling to remember important things that Trump did even a few weeks ago, such as firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s in part because Trump is attacking so many American institutions and values at once. But that’s also because the mainstream media and even Democratic politicians and other Trump critics don’t do a great job tying his moves together. Firing the person who manages the collection of employment data obviously isn’t the same as micromanaging how museum historians explain slavery. But it’s the same broader story of one man trying to put all independent authorities and decision-making under his rule.
The liberal group Indivisible has come the closest to consistently telling this story. They helped put together the “No Kings” protests over the summer and have continued to use that term. (I prefer casting Trump as dictator to king, because I think of kings as being part of hereditary monarchies.) But the media, nonpartisan experts, and most Democratic Party officials haven’t consistently adopted the king rhetoric, either.
Why does it matter if Trump is constantly described as a dictator? Because storytelling and narrative help change events. It was easier for George W. Bush to build support for the war in Iraq in the fall of 2002 because essentially every news event for the previous year was connected to the September 11 attacks and fighting terrorism. The intense focus on George Floyd’s killing in the summer of 2020 may have pushed people and institutions toward decisions they would not have made otherwise: corporations increasing their diversity initiatives, moderate Democrats embracing aggressive police reform, Joe Biden picking Kamala Harris as his running mate.
I am not suggesting that Trump and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party will be defeated simply by more people using the word dictator or a Times reporter writing a series of stories on how many of Trump’s moves were first undertaken by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
But I do think it will be easier to stop Trump from acting like a dictator if everyday Americans think of him as the American equivalent of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Putin.
And we can take this step. Well, let me narrow “we.” Mainstream media organizations such as the Times, The Washington Post, and CNN are deeply committed to a neutral approach to covering American politics. They aren’t going to change, even though that’s very shortsighted. (If Trump gains enough power, he will end independent journalism in the U.S.) Many billionaires and business leaders are aligned with Trump, in the way that oligarchs in Russia positioned themselves to benefit from Putin’s autocratic rule, so we sure can’t count on them.
But those of us in the anti-Trump camp must do a better job of collectively telling a single story. The Democratic Party should name members who specifically focus on Trump’s dictatorial tendencies. I would love to see a well-respected figure not formally associated with the Democratic Party designated as a lead spokesperson for the anti-authoritarian movement, amplifying all the great work activists are doing to confront Trump. (Sherrilynn Ifill, former president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Found, would be an ideal choice.)
News outlets not committed to a both-sides approach can orient their coverage around the potential of dictatorship in America. I worry that MSNBC, which is now separating from NBC, is missing an opportunity to remake itself into the kind of news outlet that the United States needs in 2025. The network seems to be leaning into covering incremental events and breaking news without much context (its new name will be MS Now) and is creating a traditional D.C. bureau that seems fairly similar to those of outlets like CNN. It would be better if the network put a set of reporters on the authoritarianism beat in addition to the ones covering Capitol Hill and the White House.
“Journalism is a curriculum of everything that happens in the world on a single day or in an hour,” said Kathy Roberts Forde, a journalism historian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in a recent episode of TNR’s Right Now, the Substack video series I host. “What’s often missed are these kinds of syntheses and putting them together and telling us, ‘We reported on these 25 things that happened this week in Washington, these 25 things that happened at the state level.… Let’s put this together for you and show you a pattern.’ We need that ambition in our journalism.”
I worry that too many in the anti-Trump camp view the 2024 election as a referendum on authoritarianism. Harris lost while casting Trump as a dictator, hence that message should never be repeated again.
“Persuading people is not the work of 5,000-word treatises on the importance of liberal democracy or lectures about how bad the post-liberal world order is (we get it and no one cares; see the 2024 election!),” journalist Jerusalem Demsas said in a press release for the launch of a new publication she is running called The Argument.
I disagree. (Well, I agree with her on the need for shorter pieces.) It is probably the case that Democratic candidates in swing districts and states should talk about the economy and other issues in addition to preserving democracy. But those of us not campaigning in swing areas should highlight the most pressing issues. And right now, Trump running America like a dictator is simply more important than creating jobs or expanding health care.
Also, we didn’t actually have a referendum on dictatorship in America in 2024. Harris was an unpopular candidate tied to an even more unpopular president at a time of worldwide anti-incumbent sentiment. Trump did not really campaign on defunding colleges, eliminating the Department of Education, making the Smithsonian less anti-slavery, putting Elon Musk in charge of the federal workforce, sending the National Guard into Los Angeles and D.C., firing people in charge of government statistics, dismissing basically any Black person from any prominent role in the federal government, and so much else he has done.
Yes, Trump was an autocratic president the first time around, and you could have assumed he would take these steps if you listened closely to his speeches or read Project 2025. But I have been surprised at how authoritarian Trump has been. And I suspect millions of other Americans didn’t expect this, either.
And they don’t like it. Trump is one of the most unpopular first-year presidents ever. And that’s not because of the Democrats’ hyper-focus on the economy—voters hate the Democrats too.
There is no electoral risk to emphasizing that Trump is behaving like an autocrat. And there’s a huge risk in not emphasizing it—choosing that route means he becomes a dictator without much of a fight. So say it loud, say it proud, and most importantly, say it every day: Donald Trump wants to be America’s dictator, and we can’t let that happen on our watch.
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