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Trump’s Long March toward Power Without Limits
From pardoning insurrectionists to musing about dictatorship, Trump’s record reveals a long project to stretch presidential power into personal rule.
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By Brian Daitzman
Donald Trump has never hidden his authoritarian ambitions. From January 6 to his latest talk of dictatorship, his actions reveal a consistent project: to rule more like Putin or Xi than any American president in history.
A President Who Never Disguised His Intentions
President Donald Trump has never shied away from signaling that he is comfortable with anti-democratic power. He has challenged the legitimacy of elections again and again — most notoriously in 2020, when his refusal to accept defeat led to the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Experts across the political spectrum called the event a failed self-coup, an attempt by the president to stay in power by overturning an election result. The indictments that followed underscored just how close the country had come to democratic breakdown.
What makes Trump unique in American history is not only that he encouraged a mob to storm the legislature, but that afterward, he openly celebrated those who did.
Upon returning to office in 2025, he pardoned many of the insurrectionists, including individuals convicted of sedition and violence against police officers.
By absolving them, Trump sent a clear message: violence in defense of his presidency was not a crime, but a badge of loyalty.
From ‘Maybe We Like a Dictator’ to ‘I Can Do Anything I Want’
The events of August 2025 show the same trajectory, updated for a second Trump term. In one week, Trump declared that he had the “right to do anything” as president — including deploying the National Guard unilaterally into cities like Chicago — and mused aloud that perhaps Americans would “like a dictator.”
He denied that he was a dictator, but his words, combined with his actions, showed how little interest he had in democratic restraint.
Trump’s authoritarian ambitions are not about national security emergencies. They are targeted: Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco, New York — cities run by Democratic leaders.
The data undermine his case: Chicago’s crime rate, often a Trump talking point, has fallen dramatically, with murders down by half since 2021. The National Guard talk is not about crime. It is about power — the power to override governors, impose military presence, and normalize the idea of a president unconstrained by law.
The Protest Playbook: Shoot Them in the Legs
This is not new. Trump has long admired violent crackdowns as the proper way to handle dissent.
In Mark Esper’s 2022 memoir, the former defense secretary recalled Trump’s Oval Office request during the George Floyd protests: “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Esper refused. Trump fired him soon after.
Now, Trump has surrounded himself with officials who will not refuse.
His defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, confirmed in Senate testimony in January 2025 that he would not rule out shooting protesters if ordered. That shift — from principled resistance inside Trump’s first Cabinet to pliant acceptance in his second — shows how institutional guardrails have been stripped away.
Tiananmen and the Strongman Model
The worldview behind these moves has been visible for decades. As far back as 1990, Trump praised China’s “vicious” and “strong” suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests, calling it an example of the “power of strength.”
In office, he repeated this admiration for authoritarian rulers: praising Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a “genius” for invading Ukraine, calling China’s Xi Jinping “brilliant” and “president for life,” and telling audiences he “maybe should try that someday.”
Trump has consistently drawn the wrong lesson from history: that repression demonstrates strength, while democratic restraint reveals weakness.
To him, violent force against civilians is not an abuse of power but the essence of leadership.
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
― George Orwell, 1984
January 6 as Prelude
The throughline from Trump’s admiration for strongmen to his own attempt at authoritarian power runs directly through January 6, 2021.
The Capitol attack was not just a riot. It was the first attempted self-coup in American history.
Trump’s goal was plain: stop the certification of his opponent’s victory, and remain in office despite losing the election. He failed — but in pardoning those who acted on his behalf, he has rebranded failure as loyalty.
No other U.S. president has both attempted to overthrow democratic results and then rewarded the perpetrators.
This is not a break from Trump’s pattern.
It is the pattern itself.
The Autocrat’s Temptation
When Trump says Americans may prefer a dictator, he is not joking.
He is testing the waters, normalizing the idea, and seeking to make it politically survivable.
His comments echo a long admiration for leaders who kill critics, crush protests, and extend power indefinitely. Stephanie Grisham, his former press secretary, said plainly that Trump “admired Putin’s ability to kill whoever he wanted.”
Trump himself has praised Xi Jinping’s iron-fisted control of 1.4 billion people.
The cumulative record leaves little doubt: Trump wants to exercise power not as a constrained president of a republic but as a personal ruler, accountable only to himself.
Why It Matters
American presidents have invoked emergency powers before, but always within limits. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, but still submitted himself to election in 1864.
Franklin Roosevelt wielded sweeping wartime authority, yet framed it as temporary and bound to the struggle against fascism.
Even Richard Nixon, whose abuses of power shocked the nation, resigned when confronted by Congress and the courts.
The contrast is stark: Trump does not frame his actions as temporary or constrained, but as a new normal in which personal will supersedes institutional limits.
In a democracy, words and actions by a president matter not just for what they achieve in the moment but for the precedents they set. Trump has now twice declared that he can deploy troops into American cities at will.
He has pardoned insurrectionists who attacked Congress. He has installed officials who will obey if he orders protesters shot. He has openly said that Americans might prefer dictatorship. He has long admired foreign strongmen for their ability to do exactly these things.
The danger is not theoretical.
Each time Trump acts without consequence, he inches the country closer to a model of government more like Moscow or Beijing than Washington or Philadelphia.
If the first insurrection attempt was a warning, the second Trump term is its continuation.
Don't Compare Donald Trump to Neville Chamberlain | ||||||
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It's the wrong analogy and the wrong history. It flatters Trump, diminishes Chamberlain, and legitimizes betrayal as leadership. | ||||||
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Chronology
1990: Trump praises China’s Tiananmen crackdown as showing “strength.”
June 2020: Trump suggests shooting protesters in the legs (Esper memoir).
Jan 6, 2021: Trump incites Capitol riot; experts call it a failed self-coup.
Mar 2022: Stephanie Grisham says Trump admired Putin’s ability to “kill whoever.”
May 2022: Esper memoir details Trump’s protest crackdown demands.
Oct 2024: Trump again praises Xi as “brilliant” and “president for life.” (Belfer archive)
Jan 2025: Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, refuses to rule out shooting protesters.
Aug 2025: Trump says “Maybe we like a dictator”; threatens unilateral Guard deployment in Chicago.
Fact Box
Trump has repeatedly challenged election results, culminating in January 6th.
Experts describe Jan 6 as a failed “self-coup.”
Trump pardoned insurrectionists, including convicted seditionists.
Trump has praised Putin, Xi, and other autocrats for their “strength.”
Trump suggested shooting protesters in 2020; his current defense secretary will not rule it out.
Trump now claims he has the “right to do anything” as president.
We Are Past the Rubicon
Trump’s trajectory is no longer about flirtations with authoritarian language or isolated abuses of power.
The throughline from Tiananmen admiration to January 6, from pardoning seditionists to musing aloud that Americans may “like a dictator,” reveals an unmistakable project: the corrosion of constitutional limits in favor of personal rule.
Where Lincoln and Roosevelt bent the system but returned to it, Trump seeks to replace the system with himself.
Where Nixon resigned when faced with accountability, Trump has instead pardoned those who tried to overturn democracy in his name.
This is not a Rubicon we are approaching; it is one we have already crossed. The second Trump presidency is not a deviation within American democracy but a departure from it.
Unless checked, history will remember this period not as an aberrant moment of disorder, but as the time when the United States began to resemble the autocracies it once defined itself against.
Sources
Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, “The ‘vicious’ response to protests Trump once hailed from China in Tiananmen Square,” June 1, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/01/trump-suggests-kind-vicious-response-protesters-he-once-hailed-china/
Maya Yang, The Guardian, “Trump ‘admired’ Putin’s ability to ‘kill whoever’, says Stephanie Grisham,” March 9, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/09/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-stephanie-grisham
Mike Allen, Axios, “Scoop: Esper says Trump wanted to shoot protesters,” May 2, 2022. https://www.axios.com/2022/05/02/mark-esper-book-trump-protesters
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Representative Quotations from President Trump on President Xi and China, October 2024. https://www.belfercenter.org/programs/thucydidess-trap/representative-quotations-president-trump-president-xi-and-china
Philip Bump, The Washington Post, “Pete Hegseth seems open to ordering soldiers to shoot protesters,” January 14, 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/14/hegseth-seems-open-to-ordering-protesters-shot/
Chad de Guzman, Time Magazine, “‘Maybe We Like a Dictator’: Trump Suggests Many Americans Would Prefer Autocracy,” August 26, 2025. https://time.com/7312196/trump-americans-maybe-we-like-a-dictator/
Chris Cameron, The New York Times, “Deploy National Guard to Chicago? Trump Says He Has ‘The Right to Do Anything I Want to Do,’” August 26, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/us/politics/trump-national-guard-chicago-dictator.html
Brian Daitzman is the Editor of The Intellectualist. Read the original article here.
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