Trump: The Threat We Face
What's left after an authoritarian wins a democratic election
Sometimes authoritarians win democratic elections fair and square. In 2010, Viktor Orban, who had been prime minister of Hungary from 1998-2002, won a supermajority in parliament. He proceeded to dismantle the country's democratic institutions and muzzle independent media. In 2012, a reclusive billionaire named Bidzina Ivanishvili led his party to victory in the Republic of Georgia; the Georgian Dream party has held onto power since -- most recently in a disputed election last month -- and has cracked down on civil society and adopted a pro-Russian foreign policy.
In the United States, Donald Trump won fair and square on November 5 against Vice President Kamala Harris. He is on track for a huge victory in the Electoral College and the popular vote, the latter of which he did not win in his first term in 2016. He lost the 2020 presidential election and encouraged violence to overturn it on January 6, 2021; in 2024, U.S. voters rewarded the former president who had been convicted on 34 felonies by a New York court and faces various indictments with another term.
As Orban and other authoritarians who came back into power have done, Trump will govern with vengeance; he has promised "retribution." He has vowed to use the Justice Department to punish his perceived enemies and deploy the U.S. military against U.S. citizens who disagree with him. He has promised to round up and deport millions of immigrants, whom he has baselessly claimed of voting illegally and eating household pets. In declaring victory on the morning of November 6, he said: "I will govern by a simple motto: promises made, promises kept.” He added, "Nothing will stop me from keeping my word to you."
Trump is right. He will face far fewer obstacles to carrying out his plans than in his first term. When he was in office, officials from the Justice Department and military refused to carry out his plans to prosecute his perceived enemies and deploy the armed forces domestically; this time, Trump has made clear that he will pick officials in the Justice Department and the military who will fulfill his agenda. In his first term, the House twice voted to impeach Trump, and the Republican-held Senate acquitted him. On November 5, Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution as president; his victory means that the multiple criminal cases against him have effectively ended.
Without institutional checks, Harvard democracy scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have written that "societal mobilization" is the last line of defense against aspiring authoritarians. When the constitutional order is under threat, leaders and institutions like universities and churches "must speak out, reminding citizens of the red lines that democratic societies must never cross," they wrote in the New York Times last month. But as Levitsky and Ziblatt noted, the response to Trump's threats to democratic institutions has been "tepid," especially from the business community.
This election has brought an end to American exceptionalism: the notion that the U.S. is so distinct in its founding that it can avoid the authoritarianism that has threatened -- and destroyed -- other democracies. Now, one of the only things standing between the U.S. and the kind of competitive authoritarianism that has flourished in places like Hungary and Georgia are the very rights enshrined by the U.S. Constitution, especially under the First Amendment. Americans have the right to assemble and speak freely and to read and write whatever we like. It's up to us to use them.