More than 10 months into Donald Trump’s second term, there’s little debate that this twice-impeached, convicted felon president is aggressively pursuing a hardline, authoritarian agenda that was laid out in detail in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Trump and the Republican party have blatantly defied the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and rule of law by dismantling large parts of the federal government as they’ve defunded cancer, Alzheimer and vaccine research and massively cut federal health insurance programs that working families rely on.
Trump has deployed a masked ICE secret police force to violently abduct noncitizens and citizens alike, denying many their due process rights and ordered the prosecution of his perceived political enemies—labeling many as terrorists while calling for legislators to be executed. As he’s abused his presidential power to repress free speech by using the Federal Communications Commission to threaten media companies, Trump has also ordered the erasing of America’s history of slavery and Jim Crow racism in national museums.
But in recent weeks, congressional Republicans have abandoned Trump in his effort to block the release of the Epstein files, GOP candidates across the country lost key elections in November, and the president’s approval rating in recent polls has dropped to its lowest level in his second term. Some observers are declaring that Trump is now a “lame duck president” who may soon lose even the solid support he’s long enjoyed from a shrinking right-wing base. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with journalist and author Sasha Abramsky, who assesses the state of U.S. democracy after Trump’s return to the White House and responds to the belief by some that the nation may now be witnessing the unraveling of the Trump-GOP authoritarian nightmare.
SASHA ABRAMSKY: Look, we’ve been in a constitutional crisis since Day One of this presidency because Trump came into power as a convicted felon. He came into power with a Supreme Court ruling basically saying he could do anything, and as long as he said it was in his official capacity, he was outside the scope of the law and he has the temperament of a tyrant. So if you put all of those things together and you then look at his agenda, you look at what he’s done—as you said with the secret police—you look at what he’s done with his assaults on the universities and the free media. You look at what he’s done with his prosecution or persecution of political enemies. I mean, this is not a democracy that Trump is trying to implement. This is the creation of an authoritarian state. You look at what rights and what constitutional amendments Trump is trampling on.
Well, the First Amendment, he has scant respect for if any respect for. The Fifth Amendment, the right not to self incriminate. The Fourth Amendment, the right against illegal search and seizure. The Eighth Amendment, the right against cruel and unusual punishment. He sent hundreds of people to a super maximum security prison in El Salvador with no trial, no due process where he knew they would be tortured. So bang goes the Eighth Amendment. You can go down the list and you find pretty much the only constitutional amendment Trump respects is the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, which he not only respects but fetishizes.
So we’ve been in a constitutional crisis from Day One. I was sort of half-joking with a friend of mine a few weeks ago that if the Democrats regain control of Congress, they should basically set aside two hours every afternoon to hold a new impeachment hearing because we know that on a daily basis there are going to be impeachable offenses committed by this regime whether they’re crimes; whether they’re corruption and cronyism; whether it’s violence; whether it’s the illegal deportation of people with no due process; whether it’s the breaking up of families; whether it’s the arresting of people with green cards not because of crimes they’ve committed, but because of thoughts that they’ve had.
We know that this is an extralegal regime and we have to discuss it that way. This is not normal governance. This is not the normal rough and tumble of politics. This is something different. This is something that America has never experienced before. It is a full-on authoritarian assault on the pillars of democracy.
SCOTT HARRIS: Trump now has the lowest public opinion approval ratings of his second term, about as low as after Trump incited the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6th, 2021 that took several lives. Americans, it appears, are unhappy with most of Trump’s authoritarian agenda. But most of all, they disapprove of his handling of the economy and rising prices—the very reason a very slim majority of voters cast their ballots for Trump in November, 2024. Sasha, is this the beginning of the end of Trump’s presidency, at least in terms of being a lame duck, which he’s labeled by many now, at least in terms of the Republican party who have followed his every order out of fear. Are they losing that fear and you think things are falling apart or is that just wishful thinking?
SASHA ABRAMSKY: There are many leaders, some left-wing, some right-wing, some populist, some nonpopulist around the world who, when they come into power initially right away for popularity, then very quickly the public gets disillusioned. That almost seems to be a sort of crisis in modern politics around the world.
The fact that Trump’s underwater politically doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not powerful. He is powerful. He still has a lock on the Republican party. He’s got this extralegal agenda that we’ve just been talking about, and he’s perfectly willing to push every constitutional boundary he can push to implement that agenda. But where I think you are right is that as his popularity fades and it’s going to get worse and worse and worse, there’s no evidence that he’s suddenly going to abound and become a hero.
He’s going to get more and more unpopular, and as he does so it’s going to become possible for at least some Republicans to sort of at first gingerly and then maybe not so gingerly stand up to him and say, “You know what? You can’t do this.” And you’re starting to see this a little bit. Sen. Rand Paul has been pretty good in calling out the administration for this assassination campaign of fishermen in the Pacific and the Caribbean. You are starting to see people who are expressing their displeasure. Again, a little bit timidly, they’re starting to express their displeasure with the sheer battiness of Robert Kennedy Jr. at the Health Department.
You are starting to see people who are sort of pushing back again, ever so slightly against Trump’s plans to essentially carve up Ukraine with Russia. Whether or not that coalesces into a sort of strong anti-Trump movement within the Republican party, I doubt it.
And the reason I doubt it is he has been very, very good at making the Republican party complicit in his crimes, which means they rise or fall with him if he goes down for naked, brazen corruption—which he should go down for, Republican party will go down with him. If he goes down for breaking the economy, which he could well do with this idiot policy of tariffs that he’s implementing. The Republican party has twisted itself into a pretzel not supporting that tariff policy. They go down with him. So I think they’re too complicit to be able to make a clean break.
But I do think what’s going to happen is you’re going to have increasingly loud voices within the MAGA movement sort of angling to be the heir apparent, because everyone knows Trump’s not going to be around forever. He’s an old man. He is not terribly healthy. He’s giving every sign of being increasingly senescent. At some point, we’re going to be in a post-Trump world and you’re starting to see all of these players within MAGA positioning themselves, trying to be the next hotshot. And that’s sort of both fascinating and also kind of nauseating at the same time. But I think that’s more likely than an absolute break within the Republican Senate in Congress away from Trump—I don’t see that happening.
For more information, visit Sasha Abramsky’s website at sashaabramsky.com
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Sasha Abramsky (25:56) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.
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