Trump’s assertions — all on Twitter, some false, some without clear evidence — come just over nine weeks before the midterm elections that could help determine his fate, and they are bound by one unifying theme: All of his perceived opponents are peddling false facts and only Trump can be trusted.
The recent objects of the president’s ire are a host of familiar if disparate targets — from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s “Rigged Russia Witch Hunt” investigation to cable news outlets to Silicon Valley — and reflect Trump’s ongoing effort to create a reality where he is firmly at the center and, perhaps more important, the arbiter of his own Trump-favorable truth.
“The widening circle of the parties that he’s accusing is predictable because I see Donald Trump as an authoritarian in the making or an authoritarian wannabe, and there’s always a transition process of this sort of leader asserting himself above all the authorities,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who studies authoritarianism. “Every authoritarian leader eventually asserts himself as the only arbiter of truth.”
Ben-Ghiat added that the president’s fixation on Silicon Valley being rigged against conservatives — a tech-bias concern that his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., also recently vocalized — is yet another sign of this behavior. “When Donald Trump is starting to raise the specter of trying to fiddle with search engines and saying that they are rigged — this raises alarm bells in me as a scholar of authoritarianism.”
Sesno said, “and desperation in that he is losing control of the narrative and needs to reassert his version of the truth.”
In elevating himself as the truthful authority, the president has repeatedly undermined his own Justice Department, portraying it as corrupt for investigating his campaign and ignoring his rivals. In a tweet Wednesday night, Trump also seemed to contradict his own secretary of defense, implying that even policies from top members of his own administration cannot always be trusted.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...f7faa680710_story.html?utm_term=.b8e937e5f85b
The recent objects of the president’s ire are a host of familiar if disparate targets — from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s “Rigged Russia Witch Hunt” investigation to cable news outlets to Silicon Valley — and reflect Trump’s ongoing effort to create a reality where he is firmly at the center and, perhaps more important, the arbiter of his own Trump-favorable truth.
“The widening circle of the parties that he’s accusing is predictable because I see Donald Trump as an authoritarian in the making or an authoritarian wannabe, and there’s always a transition process of this sort of leader asserting himself above all the authorities,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who studies authoritarianism. “Every authoritarian leader eventually asserts himself as the only arbiter of truth.”
Ben-Ghiat added that the president’s fixation on Silicon Valley being rigged against conservatives — a tech-bias concern that his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., also recently vocalized — is yet another sign of this behavior. “When Donald Trump is starting to raise the specter of trying to fiddle with search engines and saying that they are rigged — this raises alarm bells in me as a scholar of authoritarianism.”
Sesno said, “and desperation in that he is losing control of the narrative and needs to reassert his version of the truth.”
In elevating himself as the truthful authority, the president has repeatedly undermined his own Justice Department, portraying it as corrupt for investigating his campaign and ignoring his rivals. In a tweet Wednesday night, Trump also seemed to contradict his own secretary of defense, implying that even policies from top members of his own administration cannot always be trusted.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...f7faa680710_story.html?utm_term=.b8e937e5f85b
