One persistent theme coming from the Democrats is that Trump, if elected a second time, would become a dictator and end democracy. For eight years, critics have called Trump an autocrat and likened him to the despised autocrats of the twentieth century, from Mussolini to Hitler. This rhetorical extremism is odd: Reagan and Bush were despised by Democrats, but they were not generally portrayed as threats to democracy. Nor have these accusations gone away; if anything, they are more intense now than in 2015 when they first surfaced.
It is one thing to say that Trump will do this, and will do that, if we have not already had Trump in office to see what he did in fact do. Trump’s critics latch on to his phrases like “dictator for a day,” which are quite obviously intended jokingly, or at least half-jokingly, and they say: Aha! He even admits he’s going to be like Hitler. But Hitler proceeded, almost immediately upon his assumption of power in 1933, to institute a widespread regime of repression. Hitler didn’t govern in a normal way for a term, and then somehow metamorphose into a dictator the second time around.
My premise is that actions speak louder than words, and we can make a sound judgement about Trump by considering his conduct from the time he entered politics to the end of his first term in office. Here we’ll see that Trump displayed all the largeness and audacity and even pugnaciousness of a Caesar, but he didn’t do anything tyrannical—indeed by many objective measures he did the country a lot of good.
Let me put it another way. If Trump were a dictator while he was President, then he was the most incompetent dictator in the history of the world. Dictators control the police agencies of government; Trump was relentlessly pursued by them. He didn’t run the agencies; he spent much of time running away from them. Moreover, dictators don’t lose elections because they control them and rig them in their favor. It is conceivable that the Chinese Communists are voted out of power in China? That the mullahs in Iran lose an election? Tyrants ensure they stay in power. They certainly never relinquish power voluntarily; typically, they have to be ousted by force. None of this applies to Trump.
Consider how Trump treated Hillary Clinton, which goes to the key question of whether Trump conducted himself in the manner of a dictator. Dictators, let’s recall, can be counted on to investigate, prosecute and seek to lock up their political opponents. During the debates Trump at one point fired back at her and said, “You’d be in jail.” During the presidential campaign, crowds routinely chanted, “Lock her up.” And given the way the Clinton Foundation raked in tens of millions of dollars from foreign entities, seemingly in exchange for foreign policy favors doled out by Hillary as Secretary of State, there probably was cause to investigate and indict Hillary once Trump became President and had the power to do so.
But the point is that he didn’t do it. He never even directed his Justice Department to investigate Hillary. If anyone suggested it, Trump nixed the idea. Much later, just a couple of months ago, Trump reflected on this. “And they always said, ‘Lock her up,” and I felt—and I could have done it but I felt it would have been a terrible thing.” Trump said this while noting ironically that he himself was now subject to a range of criminal prosecutions. So the point he was making is that he isn’t the one acting like a dictator; the people trying to get him are.
Who are the ones doing mass surveillance? Systematic censorship? Ideological indoctrination in schools and in the media? Criminalizing political differences? Targeting political dissidents and opponents? Attempting to lock up the leader of the opposition party in an election year? Clearly the ones doing all this are the Democrats. They, not Trump or the Republicans, are the party of tyranny and repression.
If you want further proof of this, just consider the Russia collusion scheme that was launched by the Hillary campaign, with the full cooperation of the Obama administration and the media, even before Trump took office. And let’s be clear about what they were going for, nothing less than portraying Trump’s election as illegitimate, his presidency as illegitimate, and Trump himself as a traitor in league with foreign powers.
To put it bluntly, they wanted Trump to be viewed and prosecuted for treason, with the understood penalty being life imprisonment or death. Had the scheme worked, this would have indeed been the outcome. And it was all based on invention and lies. This is how dictatorial regimes act—this is what they do. This point is critically important to our purpose, because again, we’re asking the question of who the real dictator is. As we can see from this wicked and sordid framing scheme, it’s certainly not Trump!
This column is adapted from Dinesh D’Souza’s forthcoming book Vindicating Trump, published by Regnery. The movie of the same title opens in theaters nationwide on September 27. Get movie tickets and preorder the book at vindicatingtrump.com.