{"id":13023,"date":"2025-09-28T20:46:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T12:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=13023"},"modified":"2025-09-28T20:46:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T12:46:04","slug":"trumps-moves-to-consolidate-power-punish-enemies-draw-comparisons-to-places-where-democracy-faded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=13023","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s moves to consolidate power, punish enemies draw comparisons to places where democracy faded"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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APTOPIX Trump US Turkey\u00a9\u00a0Evan Vucci<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2007, eight years after becoming Venezuela’s president, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez revoked the license of the country’s oldest private television station. Eight months into his second term, President Donald Trump suggested revoking the licenses of U.S. television stations he believes are overly critical of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since he returned to office in January, Trump\u2019s remaking of the federal government into an instrument of his personal will has\u00a0drawn comparisons<\/a>\u00a0to elected strongmen in other countries who used the levers of government to consolidate power,\u00a0punish their enemies<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0stifle dissent<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But those familiar with other countries where that has happened, including Hungary and Turkey, say there is one striking difference: Trump appears to be moving more rapidly<\/a>, and more overtly, than others did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe only difference is the speed with which it is happening,\u201d said David Smilde, who lived in Venezuela during Chavez\u2019s rise and is now a professor at Tulane University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political enemies of the president become targets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. is a long way from Venezuela or other authoritarian governments. It still has robust opposition<\/a> to Trump, judges who often check his initiatives and a system that diffuses power across 50 states, including elections<\/a>, making it hard for a president to dominate the country. Some of Trump’s most controversial pledges, such as revoking television licenses, remain just threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has both scoffed and winked at the allegation that he\u2019s an authoritarian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During last year’s campaign, he said he wouldn\u2019t be a \u201cdictator\u201d \u2014 except, he added, \u201con day one\u201d over the border. Last month, Trump told reporters: \u201dA lot of people are saying, \u2018Maybe we like a dictator.\u2019 I don\u2019t like a dictator. I\u2019m not a dictator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, he has moved quickly to consolidate authority<\/a> under the presidency, steer federal law enforcement to prioritize a campaign of retribution<\/a> and purge the government<\/a> of those not considered sufficiently loyal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent social media post, Trump complained to his attorney general, Pam Bondi, about a lack of prosecution of his foes, saying “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!\u201d Days later, the Department of Justice secured a felony indictment<\/a> against former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump has blamed for the Russian collusion investigation that dogged his first term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same day, Trump ordered a sweeping crackdown<\/a> targeting groups he alleges fund political violence. The examples he gave of victims were exclusively Republicans and his possible targets were those who have funded Democratic candidates and liberal causes. The week before, Trump\u2019s Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr<\/a>, threatened ABC after a comment about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk by late night host Jimmy Kimmel angered Republicans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ABC suspended Kimmel<\/a> for five days, but Trump threatened consequences for the network after it returned his show to the airwaves: \u201cI think we\u2019re going to test ABC out on this. Let\u2019s see how we do,\u201d the president said on his social media site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has said he is repaying Democrats for what he says is political persecution of him and his supporters. The White House said its mission was accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Trump administration will continue to deliver the truth to the American people, restore integrity to our justice system, and take action to stop radical left-wing violence that is plaguing American communities.\u201d White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Saturday in response to a question about comparisons between Trump and authoritarian leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US unprepared for attacks on democracy from within<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Trump opened his second term pardoning more than 1,500 people<\/a> convicted of crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol<\/a>, an attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss<\/a>. He has threatened judges<\/a> who ruled against him, targeted law firms<\/a> and universities<\/a> he believes opposed him, and is attempting to reshape the nation’s cultural institutions<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, the president said he was going to send troops to Portland, Oregon,<\/a> \u201cauthorizing Full Force” if necessary. It would be his latest deployment of troops<\/a> to cities run by Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of the book \u201cHow Democracies Die,\u201d said he is constantly asked by foreign journalists how the U.S. can let Trump take such actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you talk to Brazilians, South Koreans, Germans, they have better antennae for authoritarians,” he said. “They experienced, or were taught by their parents, or the schools, the danger of losing a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the United States, he said: \u201cThis is not a society that is prepared for authoritarianism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018America has become little Turkey\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Alper Coskun presumed the U.S. wouldn\u2019t go the way of his native Turkey, where he served in the government, including as the country\u2019s director general of international security affairs. He left as that country\u2019s president, Recep Erdogan<\/a>, consolidated power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coskun now laughs bitterly at the quip his countrymen make: Turkey wanted to become little America, but now America has become little Turkey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very similar playbook,\u201d said Coskun, now at the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace. The difference, he said, is that Erdogan, first elected in 2002, had to move slowly to avoid running afoul of Turkey\u2019s then-independent military and business community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump, in contrast, has more \u201cbrazenly\u201d broken democratic norms, Coskun said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erdogan, who met with Trump<\/a> this past week, has had 23 years in office to increase his authority and has now jailed writers, journalists<\/a> and a potential political rival, Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrump is emulating Erdogan much faster than I expected,\u201d said Henri Barkey, a Turkish professor and expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who lives in the U.S. and has been accused by Erdogan of complicity in an attempted 2016 coup, an allegation Barkey denies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said Trump is following in Erdogan’s path in prosecuting enemies, but said he has yet to use the Justice Department to neutralize opponents running for office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We have to see if Trump is going to go to that next step,\u201d Barkey said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eroding democratic norms took longer in other countries<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/a> has often been cited as a model for Trump. Orb\u00e1n has become an icon to some U.S. conservatives<\/a> for cracking down on immigration and LGBTQ rights. Like Trump, he lost an election and spent his years out of office planning his return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When voters returned Orb\u00e1n to power in 2010, he moved as quickly as Trump, said Kim Scheppele, who was an adviser to Hungary’s constitutional court and now is a sociologist at Princeton. But there was one difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To avoid resistance, Scheppele said, \u201cOrb\u00e1n had a \u2018don\u2019t scare the horses’ philosophy.\u201d She said he spent much of his first year back working on legal reforms and changes to Hungary’s constitution that set him up to consolidate power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Venezuela, Chavez faced resistance from the moment he was elected, including an unsuccessful coup in 2002. His supporters complained the country’s largest broadcast network did not cover it in real time, and he eventually pulled its license.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chavez later deployed the military as an internal police force and accelerated a crackdown on critics before he died in office in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the U.S., Smilde said, people trust the country’s institutions to maintain democracy. And they did in 2020 and 2021, when the courts, staff in the administration, and elected officials in state and federal government blocked Trump’s effort to overturn his election loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut now, here we are with a more pointed attack,\u201d Smilde said. \u201cHere, nobody has really seen this in a president before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2007, eight years after becoming Venezuela’s president, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez revoked the license of the country’s oldest private television station. Eight months into his second term, President Donald Trump suggested revoking the licenses of U.S. television stations he believes are overly critical of him. Since he returned to office in January, Trump\u2019s remaking of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":13024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[3659,1754,1724],"class_list":["post-13023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa","tag-eight","tag-president","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump's moves to consolidate power, punish enemies draw comparisons to places where democracy faded - LISTEN WORLD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=13023\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump's moves to consolidate power, punish enemies draw comparisons to places where democracy faded - LISTEN WORLD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 2007, eight years after becoming Venezuela’s president, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez revoked the license of the country’s oldest private television station. 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