After pillaging and gutting the U.S. government, the Western alliance, and our relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump is thinking of himself as a king and cogitating on a third term. He basks in the magniloquent rhetoric of acolytes genuflecting to an instrument of divine providence.
America was forged in the blood and fire of rejecting tyranny; its institutions were meticulously formed around the principle that a king would never rule us.
Yet Trump delights in reposting memes of himself as a king and as Napoleon, with a line attributed to the emperor: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”
His dictatorial impulses were evident when he refused to accept the results of the 2020 election and egged on a mob to disrupt the certification of the election, even if it meant that his vice president might be hanged. And now he has added imperialistic impulses, musing about taking over the Panama Canal, Greenland, Canada, Gaza, D.C., and mineral rights in Ukraine.
