According to former federal prosecutor Jim Zirin, Americans should be worried about President Donald Trump’s aspirations to follow in the footsteps of the so-called “great men” of history. When Trump speaks about the famed leaders he hopes to match or surpass, he doesn’t reference George Washington or Winston Churchill, but some of history’s most “bloodthirsty dictators.” This, according to Zirin, reveals the president’s desire for “limitless power.”
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Writing in the Hill, Zirin points to the recently released book Regime Change, which offers a behind-the-scenes view of Trump’s chaotic, autocratic White House. When interviewed by the book’s authors, Trump “unveiled a document arguing he is more powerful than mass murderers Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler.” As Trump read the document, he recited the names of each dictator, and explained how each “fell short of his own power as U.S. president.”
“Is our president mad?” writes Zirin, saying that “you may draw your own conclusion,” but noting that when Trump posted the dictator document on Truth Social last week, it didn’t help the case against madness. While Trump asserted it was written by a “presidential historian,” Regime Change revealed that it was in fact written by his friend’s golf caddy.
According to Zirin, “Haberman and Swan write that the revealing part was ‘the evident pleasure he took in the company of Mao, Hitler and Stalin’ — and ‘the untroubled ease with which he accepted a place among men who had reshaped the world through conquest and fear.’” Why is the president so eager to be compared to these mass murderers? Zirin suggests it’s because “Trump is through testing the unitary limits of the presidency. He is describing power in world-historical terms — placing himself in the annals of conquerors, dictators and war criminals who worked nations to their wicked will.”
“For all of Trump’s bombast about limitless power,” writes Zirin, “he acknowledged one force still constrains him — the economy. He argued that extending the war to satisfy hawks could have triggered a ‘worldwide depression.’ He pointed to falling oil prices and a surging stock market as proof he made the right decision to back a deal that could end the Iran war.” This, notes Zirin, has spurred Trump to reveal the historical figure to which he least wants to be compared: “I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover,” Trump said, referring to the 31st president, whom Zirin says some historians erroneously blame for the Great Depression.
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Instead, Trump is desperate to model himself after the final line in the “Great Men” document, which asserted that Trump’s willingness to use his power on a global scale “makes him by far the most powerful person that has EVER walked this planet.”
“Not so fast,” writes Zirin, noting that Congress — including Republicans — has begun pushing back against his powers, successfully limiting them in many cases. These limits, argues Zirin, will prove essential to the survival of American democracy during the second half of Trump’s term.
Despite his delusions of grandeur,” concludes Zirin, “Trump is not all-powerful. As King Charles III recently reminded Congress, Magna Carta in 1215 gave America the ‘foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.’ His words brought lawmakers of both parties to their feet.”
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