How Trump Transforms Democracy to Dictatorship: A Warning America Can’t Afford to Ignore

Trump’s proven plan to crush opposition, corrupt government, and rewrite the rules in his and his billionaire buddies’ favor…

Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger is wondering out loud if “President Musk” will force “Vice President Trump” and Speaker Mike Johnson to shut down our government as Musk tweets his orders to the GOP. It’s all about raising the debt ceiling, Trump says, so they can roll out the next round of tax cuts for billionaires, paid for by average working people.

It seems like a bizarre power play: The actual story is much more sinister.

As Trump is in the process of teaching America, it’s impossible to disentangle democracy-ending authoritarianism from billionaire corruption of government. They require each other.

And the way this will play out won’t need a crystal ball to see: Trump has already begun traveling a well-trod path that leads to the destruction of our form of government.

While all authoritarians who take over democracies initially come to power on a wave of popular sentiment, presenting themselves as normal politicians bent on “shaking up the system,” once they begin their crackdowns against political opposition their popularity typically collapses.

At that point, they need three things:

— A compliant, financially, and politically dependent media;
— subservient, terrified, or complicit politicians;
— and a captured, corrupt judiciary loyal to the idea of oligarchy and beholden to wealthy sponsors (think Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito).

With these three elements of democratic capture they can gaslight the public, shovel money to their oligarch buddies, and expand their own power in defiance of increasingly feeble popular, political, and legal challenges.

This is nothing new; it’s a formula as old as republican forms of government. It’s how the Greek democracy ended, how Rome was brought down, and how every autocratic government on Earth that started out as a democracy got to where they are today. Russia, Hungary, Egypt, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Venezuela, Turkey, etc., etc.

Most recently, President Yoon tried it in South Korea, but he’d failed to consolidate his control over those three systems that can defend or corrupt democracy, so he failed.

Trump and the oligarchs who brought him to power, both in Russia and the US, don’t intend to make the same mistake in 2025.

— The first major roadblock to authoritarian capture is the press. As long as the public is well-informed about a wannabee autocrat’s antidemocratic efforts to dismantle government, he’ll encounter significant popular opposition. With a compliant, fawning, or terrified press, however, history shows it’s not that difficult.

— The second biggest obstacle to authoritarian (or “fascist”) takeover of government is typically found within the institutions of that government itself. Bureaucrats and agencies protective of their own fiefdoms that have historically defended various aspects of the nation and its democratic government tangle up efforts at regulatory capture, and the senior management of these agencies refuse to go along with the new strongman, as Trump learned in his last term. To destroy a democracy, a strongman must neuter these people and seize control of their agencies.

— Finally, would-be fascist leaders must hobble the judiciary and dominate the police and legal systems of their nation prior to their final takedown of that country’s democracy.

Trump learned these lessons in his first term, just as did both Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán in their first terms when Russia and Hungary were both still operating as democracies.

Which is why it was only in their second terms that both Putin and Orbán changed their nation’s libel laws so they could use lawfare to cripple the Russian and Hungarian independent press.

Reporters, commentators, and news agencies were sued into bankruptcy if they didn’t immediately bow to the Putin’s and Orbán’s demands for positive coverage, and those news agencies surviving were then acquired — as Musk did with Twitter — by friendly oligarchs.

Then those two went after the agencies of government itself. During Putin’s second term as Russian president he abolished the direct election of governors, replacing it with a system where Putin loyalists were appointed by the Kremlin, effectively ending regional political autonomy and the ability of local politicians to stand up to him.

Similarly, after securing a supermajority in 2010, Orbán's government passed a new constitution that centralized power, curtailed judicial independence, and reduced checks on executive authority. He also instituted term limits on judges so within a few years he was able to remake the Hungarian judiciary in his own image.

Over the past 8 years, Trump has done much the same thing through the electoral primary process, purging the GOP of “RINOS” and endorsing MAGA loyalists at both the local, state, and federal levels, as well as in elected state judiciaries.

He’s now solidifying that power and cowing any remaining opposition with his threats to persecute, prosecute, impoverish, and imprison Republicans like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Alexander Vindman who dared stand up to him. Although it’s rarely mentioned in the media, terror is today spreading across what’s left of the non-MAGA GOP at all levels.

Like Orbán and Putin in the early months of their second terms, Trump is also threatening prosecutors and judges, while his captive senators prepare to push through Trump-loyal judges.

Just this week, Trump demanded that Republican senators do whatever is necessary to block any more of President Biden’s judicial nominees from ending up on the federal bench.

And, like both Putin and Orbán, The New York Times reports that Republicans beholden to Trump are now openly discussing rewriting the US Constitution.

Putin then purged Russian federal agencies of anybody showing any signs of independence, replacing senior management of all agencies with his own mostly incompetent and inexperienced toadies or employees of friendly oligarchs. They leaned heavily on Putin precisely because of their own lack of experience and expertise.

His purge was particularly radical in Russia’s equivalents of the FBI and CIA, the keys to his seizing total control of the police and intelligence agencies that could be wielded as weapons against his opponents. Deeply corrupt loyalists in these positions were essential to his seizing total power.

Trump is similarly appointing profoundly unqualified and incompetent nominees to federal agencies, including numerous Republicans who’ve lost elections and thus are doubly dependent on his good graces for both their political and personal economic futures.

His proposal of Schedule F, which will decapitate every major agency within the US government, is a virtual clone of Putin’s and Orbán’s successful second-term purges. By removing the senior management of every federal agency — some fifty thousand people by some estimates — Trump will have ended any vestige of resistance within the federal government.

The final step to securing total control over America and our financial and political systems for himself and his oligarch co-conspirators will require Trump to take on the remaining local bastions of resistance, principally Democratic-controlled Blue cities and states.

Already we’re seeing how he intends to pull this off. By hyping the problem of gangs, homelessness, and drugs in Blue cities within Red states, Trump and his friendly Republican governors will be able to declare them crime-ridden zones subject to a state-based variation on martial law (laws vary by state).

A decade ago, Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder pioneered a less violent and more acceptable form of this when he unilaterally deposed the elected mayors of Detroit, Flint, Benton Harbor, Pontiac, Ecorse, Allen Park, and Hamtramck, replacing each with an unelected “emergency manager” loyal only to Snyder and his wealthy business buddies.

One result of this was the infamous lead poisoning of Flint’s children when the emergency manager privatized that city’s water supply with a Snyder-aligned Michigan oligarch. Expect to see this strategy reprised.

Finally, Trump will have to deal with the opposition of Blue state governors like JB Pritzker (IL), Gavin Newsom (CA), Jared Polis (CO), Kathy Hochul (NY), and Lujan Grisham (NM) who have already pledged to fight him.

In this, he’ll most likely use Orbán’s strategy of having wealthy oligarchs launch massive media and social media campaigns to cripple those governors, crashing their approval ratings to the point where they can no longer resist him or even, come the next election, continue to hold office.

Since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have gutted our campaign finance laws and declared political bribery is merely “free speech” protected by the First Amendment, it’ll only take a fraction of the $277 million that Musk spent to buy the White House for Trump to pull this off, particularly once rightwing media, podcasters, and social media trolls jump into the game.

Musk himself could finance it, if he’s inclined, with a tiny fraction of the $200 billion in additional wealth he’s gained since the election.

Once he’s crushed dissent and seized total control of state and federal governments, Trump will turn their agencies and powers to enriching himself and his oligarch buddies (including Republican governors), just as Putin and Orbán (and every other autocrat in history) have done.

We saw the first indicator of this strategy when he told a group of fossil fuel executives that if they gave him a billion dollars he’d strip out federal environmental regulations that reduce their profits.

The Senate Budget Committee, under the stewardship of Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, is currently investigating this naked solicitation of a bribe, but when that committee is taken over by Republican Chuck Grassley in early January that probe will end.

That singular moment will signal the beginning of the end — at least for the next two years — of any meaningful congressional resistance to America’s morbidly rich oligarchs and their industries corrupting government to their own advantage while Trump pursues his fantasies of revenge.

Buckle up: This is going to be a wild ride.

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