It must be acknowledged, without reservation, that Presidents Donald Trump and Elon Musk believe they can dictate the law—though their power is only to enforce it. This is to say: they would be dictators if America allows.
Typically, this is an observation that feels banal, too obvious. Mr. Trump has always been this way—in 2019, he said Article II of the United States Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever [he] want[s] as president,” and in 2020, he claimed “[w]hen somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total. It’s total.” Tell us how you really feel, Sir. Within days of the inauguration, SNL had a skit calling out Mr. Trump’s “king era.”
This is not only a cliché or a cheap joke. This is an escalating danger. Americans have to treat this monarchist delusion with seriousness, because it will have to be stopped.
In recent days, Mr. Trump wrote on his money-laundering front TruthSocial: “All federal funding will STOP for any College, School or University that allows illegal protests … Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS.”
He has since been stealing federal funding from universities that “allow” whatever he dubs “illegal protests,” while still leaving to the reader’s imagination which protests he is describing. We can presume he means the pro-Palestine activism from the last year or so, but it is not difficult to imagine that, if a Liberty University quad were packed nuts-to-butts with a mob wearing “Trump is a Bitch” T-shirts, suddenly that school, too, would be considered a hotbed of criminal rioters.
The Trump administration accused Columbia University of “harboring illegal protesters” and failing to assist puppy-killer Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security in making arrests. They pretend expressing opposition to the war in Israel is de facto “supporting Hamas,” called the protesters “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American,” and “terrorist sympathizers,” then “canceled” $400 million of federal funding for the school’s research programs. Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student and Palestinian-American activist, was black bagged by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and transported to a notoriously shitty prison 1,400 miles away in Louisiana, despite being a permanent legal resident, having a green card, a wife, and child on the way.
Regardless of whether you stand for or against that war—I am of the opinion that there are very fine people on both sides—it hardly seems controversial to suggest that some people will sympathize with some set of suffering people in the world. This is not reasonable if your goal is to maintain discipline and decorum on a university campus. It is exactly what you would do if you want to make dissenters fear that, if they step out of line, they, too, could wake up to police at the door and be thrown in the back of a van. Well, Mr. Trump, here I am, stepping out of line. Please do not hurt me.
The “Tesla Takedown” organized nationwide protests of Elon Musk’s businesses. Traders have been dumping the carmaker’s overvalued stock, and its value has halved since December 2024. Vandalism of the hated Cybertrucks is mocked and celebrated on social media. In Seattle, Washington, four of those trucks were burned in a storage lot—presumably by arsonists, though divine intervention has not been ruled out.
Mr. Trump bundled these all together as “domestic terrorism” and claimed “Radical Left Lunatics … are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla.” Presumably, his goal is to erase any distinction between holding a sign outside a dealership and setting Cybertrucks on fire.
To be clear: calling boycotts of Tesla Motors “illegal” makes no sense. Tesla boycotts, Black Lives Matter consumer strikes, canceling my Washington Post subscription, Bud Light’s “anti-woke” backlash, and my feud with UPS over failed deliveries, are not shadowy or sinister. People are free to choose not to buy products they do not want. I do not own a Tesla or even a parking space where it would be reasonable to install an EV charger. Am I now a criminal? Then the jig is up, the news is out, they finally found me. Hangman is coming down from his gallows and I don’t have very long.
Mr. Trump has always had a fascist’s heart. In 2020, he tear-gassed Black Lives Matter protesters in DC in unwelcome defense of the St. Johns Episcopalian church so that he could pose for a photograph in front of it with an upside-down Bible. His victims included a priest from that same Episcopal Diocese of Washington who was standing with the activists, so one imagines this violent crackdown had either different motivations than stated or was to protect the brick of the church, not any human.
According to American hero and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, as well as former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Mr. Trump demanded that protesters be shot. Secretary of Defense and Fox News morning show host Pete Hegseth, the “DUI hire” whose ascendency to the post was a disgrace, has meanwhile, suggested it would have been reasonable for the president to order Americans murdered by their government. When the mass protests start against Mr. Trump this spring and summer, I suppose we will have to prepare to be killed.
I do not understand how these assholes have forgotten Kent State. It appears in montage in every single damn movie covering that era.
Mr. Trump’s dislike of protests ideologically opposed to him contrasts his fundamentally disqualifying support for violent January 6 insurrectionists—he shamefully provided unconditional pardons to thousands of rioters convicted by judge and jury of breaking into the United States Capitol, assaulting police officers with whips and flagpoles and tasers, trying to kill lawmakers (including his former vice president Mike Pence!), looting government property, and smearing their shit all over the walls. Mr. Trump called those thugs “patriots.”
I am troubled that institutions are left to guess what Mr. Trump means when he calls things illegal, and take action based on those interpretations. In Becket, King Henry II, frustrated that clergy had legal rights, cried: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” His knights assumed this meant they should assassinate the archbishop. Mr. Trump’s vagueness allows the same implausible deniability. If they fear significant turbulence, institutions will self-censor out of fear. If police are so credible as to assume that the President of the United States is accurate when he insinuates students are providing support for international terrorist organizations, they might also infer that harsh or violent suppression is permissible.
Mr. Musk has also attempted to label people criminals by decree. He has claimed it is “illegal” to name his fake, criminal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees. It is not. The names of public servants are public and searchable. Some of them can be found here.
Mr. Musk declared astronaut Senator John Kelly, another American hero, a “traitor” because he was unhappy the lawmaker visited Ukraine and expressed support for the war-ravaged nation. For someone who is supposed to be only the shadow president, Mr. Musk certainly projects the demeanor of someone who has assumed unchallengeable royal authority.
Messrs. Trump and Musk are American presidents, not kings, but if left unchecked, they will be worse than the despot this country was founded to overthrow. They are loyalty-addicted, bloviating tyrants who declare criticism illegal while celebrating insurrection, who would rather insist their enemies are traitors and terrorists than acknowledge that half the country opposes their unpopular agenda. This is cartoonish, not subtle, authoritarianism—these are unserious, self-pitying men who need fear and violence in lieu of respect to advance their causes. eludes them. If no one stops them, it might work."