The Washington Post asks the question, Would you be a dictator if Donald Trump were elected president? and the answer is, Yes. And it s a question that has been asked repeatedly since Trump was elected president.
00:00:39.580I like to pay attention to rhetorical trends.
00:00:43.200A lot of times we get lost in the day-to-day news grind.
00:00:46.960We tend to look at every new thing that gets shoved in front of us.
00:00:50.960But I like to think about the way that language is building.
00:00:54.500The way that ideas are being shaped by that language.
00:00:58.480Because a lot of times, the ins and outs, the day-to-day grind of the news is not really as important to what is going on as the language that is entering the public conversation.
00:01:12.040Once people have words for something, once people have been given a vocabulary for something, that starts to shape the way they think about things.
00:01:21.700That actually starts to fill in certain events for them, make certain events possible or desirable or terrible.
00:01:28.880But just their presence changes the conversation, changes the landscape of ideas.
00:01:36.720And I think something like that is starting to happen around Donald Trump.
00:01:40.880The Washington Post has been doing a series of, oh my gosh, the sky is falling.
00:01:46.760Trump is the devil Nazi dictator of doom.
00:01:50.960They've been doing these kind of articles for a while.
00:01:54.380They've been kind of building a series of these, all the terrible things that could happen if Donald Trump becomes president.
00:02:02.100Now, obviously, this is a scare tactic.
00:03:14.900But before I do, let's hear from today's sponsor.
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00:05:59.820I'm willing to act with a real fervor on these priorities, which is good.
00:06:05.420That's something that his base certainly wants to hear.
00:06:07.400But, of course, the language that it's wrapped around is dictated by the left.
00:06:12.020However, like I said, that starts to take us to some interesting places.
00:06:15.500I want to read a little bit of the article in question that set up this frame.
00:06:20.100I'm not going to read the whole thing because it's extremely long and we just don't have time to delve through all of those delusions.
00:06:26.100But I want us to get an idea of the way that this is being set up by the media.
00:06:31.720And then I want to talk a little bit about Trump's response, talk about the general zeitgeist on both the left and the right when it comes to looking at executive power.
00:06:41.500And also talk a little bit about the power of memes and rhetorical momentum and the way that those things can carry us forward into situations we might not predict.
00:06:52.220So let's go ahead and take a look at the piece in question real quick.
00:07:29.640In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will will have locked up the Republican nomination in the real clear politics poll average.
00:07:36.580Trump leads his nearest competitor by 47 points and leads the rest of the field by a combined 27 points.
00:07:42.520And this has actually only gotten more to be the case.
00:07:46.040You know, Megyn Kelly pointed out in the most recent Republican debate the fact that, you know, basically everyone, everyone on stage is kind of living in a fantasy land that Trump is crushing everybody in his primary by quite a bit.
00:07:59.900Even people like Ron DeSantis are losing in his home state.
00:08:03.920Ron DeSantis, well-loved in Florida, but still losing to Trump by a good 30 points or so in his home state.
00:08:09.480The only way that anyone on that stage is going to be the Republican nominee is if something happens to Trump, God forbid, or if there's some kind of legal machinations that force him to not be able to run.
00:08:23.300Again, there's a reason that the media immediately started using the word insurrection, even though they had never used that before January 6th.
00:08:32.160And the reason was that there is a clause in the 14th Amendment because it was written after the Civil War stating that those who have been involved in an insurrection against the United States cannot stand for office.
00:08:44.060Because remember, the only requirements to run for office that are actually in the Constitution when it comes to president is you have to be at least 35 years old.
00:08:53.920You have to have been a natural-born citizen.
00:10:09.640I don't think they're playing that level of 40 chess when it comes to the reasons that they indicted Trump.
00:10:14.640Though I'm sure some of them thought that that would be advantageous to them.
00:10:17.640The point is, outside of some legal chicanery or something that, you know, Trump just being an old man and being physically unable to run, those would be the only reasons he would not be the GOP nominee.
00:10:36.380The idea that he's unelectable in the general election is nonsense.
00:10:40.980He's tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls, stripping other Republican challenges of their own stated reasons for their existence.
00:10:50.540The argument was always for guys like Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley or Vivek Ramaswamy was that Trump is currently unelectable due to some percentage of hatred by the other side or his legal problems, something like that.
00:11:05.120And that's the reason that he has to be replaced by one of these people running in the primary.
00:11:11.040It was just never going to be the case.
00:11:38.460Along with just obviously being a laughingstock and an embarrassment as a doddering old man who has no hope of finding where his shoes are in the morning.
00:12:08.600The fact that many Americans might prefer other candidates much ballyhooed by such political stages as Karl Rove will soon become irrelevant when millions of Republican voters turn out to choose the person whom no one allegedly wants.
00:12:22.540And, again, this is a really good point.
00:12:25.300He's being pretty truthful about the fact that half a country wants Donald Trump.
00:12:31.700A lot of establishment people in the Republican Party, a lot of people who were disappointed in the way that Trump governed in his first time in office were hoping that there would be an alternative to Trump.
00:13:01.420And the political reality is whether or not Donald Trump is worthy of the movement that is attached to him, the movement is attached to him.
00:13:09.420And the energy is not attached to the Republican Party or the conservative cause.
00:13:15.700That terrifies a lot of people, this author included, because we are not used to a politics of personal loyalty.
00:13:22.200We are used to an ideological politics.
00:13:24.920And we get very uncomfortable when people are loyal to a man instead of loyal to some set of ideology, some creed, something like this.
00:13:34.900But the truth is that politics is much more about the person.
00:13:38.540It is much more about being attached to an individual, to an identity, to a group, than it is to being attached to an ideology, an abstract party, something like this.
00:13:50.860What we've seen in the United States is an aberration.
00:14:28.200That's why the GOP has found it impossible to transfer the energy from Trump to other candidates.
00:14:32.760This is a phenomenon that is around Trump.
00:14:35.920Whether he deserves it, whether he's worthy of it, that's a different discussion.
00:14:39.700I can easily agree with people who say he's not, but it's immaterial to where we're at.
00:14:45.260People sense something about Donald Trump.
00:14:47.700They lashed their futures to Donald Trump, and they are going to see him run for president again, whether you like it or not.
00:14:57.100No matter how many consultants you pour in to it, no matter how many defense contractors donate, Donald Trump is going to be this nominee unless something quite terrible happens.
00:15:09.160For many months now, we have been living in a world of self-delusion, rich with imagined possibilities.
00:15:15.840Maybe it'll be Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley.
00:15:18.080Maybe the myriad of indictments against Trump will doom him with Republican suburbanites.
00:15:22.440Such hopeful speculations allowed us to drift along passively, conducting business as usual, taking no dramatic action to change course in the hope and expectation that something will happen.
00:16:24.480Like people on a riverboat, we have long known that there is a waterfall ahead, but assume they will somehow find our way to shore before we go over the edge.
00:16:32.400But now the actions required to get us to shore are looking harder and harder, and it's, if not downright, impossible.
00:16:38.520Of course, this is, again, delusional.
00:16:40.480They have literally gone after the most significant political opponent of the sitting president.
00:16:46.520They have leveled BS charges at him on purpose in order to try to rig the election.
00:16:53.300It's funny, the real delusion, the delusion that really occurred, was for people who thought that Donald Trump's election was some kind of, again, just this once-in-a-lifetime thing.
00:17:05.600He drove the left into some particular crazy due to his crazy personality and his ability to just fly off the handle.
00:17:12.900And so if we got rid of Trump, then all of the fervor would die down.
00:17:20.880Once Trump's out of the picture, that was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
00:17:24.120The way that the left involved themselves in the election, the way that government agencies involved themselves in the election, this was a one-time thing, and it's never going to happen again.
00:17:35.860The left immediately came back and actually took the extrajudicial step of going after sitting president, raiding his home for things that then we found out that the current president had also had in his home.
00:17:51.120Remember all those nuclear secret documents that we found in Mar-a-Lago?
00:19:23.820I think all the people who have been screaming about the dangers of Trump and how we have to vote for somebody else will find a way to come back and be like,
00:19:31.780well, I always supported a rigorous primary process.
00:19:35.680And actually, you know, now I think we'll probably see a lot of that.
00:20:54.680But then, like I said, I want to go ahead and get into where this rhetoric is taking us.
00:20:59.200But before I do, let's hear about First Cup.
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00:22:13.480All right, so back to our article here.
00:22:16.300Of course, he talks a little more about how Trump's going to win the nomination, but he goes on it for, like, seven paragraphs.
00:23:13.080But Trump will not only dominate his party, he will again become the central focus of everyone's attention.
00:23:19.280Even today, the news media can scarcely resist following Trump's every word in action.
00:23:24.700Once he secures the nomination, he will loom over the country like a colossus.
00:23:28.880His every word and gesture chronicled endlessly.
00:23:31.740I got to say, they make Trump sound epic, man.
00:23:34.500Even today, the mainstream news media, including The Post, NBC News, et cetera, joined forces with Trump's lawyers to seek televised coverage of his federal criminal trial.
00:23:45.500Look, and again, there's a lot of truth to this, right?
00:23:49.280A big part of what made Trump so powerful when he first ran was all the free media he got for just being him, for just being a celebrity, for being a novelty.
00:23:59.980He ended up getting all kinds of free media coverage that catapulted him into the public consciousness.
00:24:05.420And that's kind of the interesting thing, again, about Trump is that the media can't help but cover him.
00:24:18.680They know it's good for ratings, but they're also just rabid, you know, they're just rabid haters, and they have to involve themselves constantly in everything Trump does.
00:24:28.660They don't know how to constrain themselves.
00:24:30.080And every time one of these guys gets up and yells in some unhished manner about how Trump is Satan, he just ends up getting more and more support from the base.
00:24:39.360And that's, of course, the thing about him.
00:24:41.680But, you know, the way that Joe Biden is going, it's easier to steal a little more of that middle ground than maybe it was previously once Joe Biden was an unknown quantity.
00:24:59.780And so I think that, you know, it was a little easier to delude yourself that he would be okay.
00:25:04.080But having lived under this kind of presidency, I don't think most people want it.
00:25:10.020They're just hoping to maybe on the left or someone besides Trump.
00:25:13.120But, you know, even if it is Trump, I think some of these people will be willing to vote over there.
00:25:19.360Trump will thus enter the general election campaign early next year with momentum backed by growing political and financial resources and increasingly unified.
00:26:00.620Trump's power comes from his followers, not from the institutions of America, American government and his devoted and his devoted voters love him precisely because he crosses lines and ignores all boundaries.
00:27:13.100But the point is, they do understand a certain critical dynamic.
00:27:17.820And when Trump is up in front of these court cases, he probably will get a lot of positive coverage.
00:27:23.140It probably will endear him, not just to his voters, but many people who might have been in the middle and see him as somebody who's now being punished, who's now being, you know, put upon because of the hatred of the system.
00:27:33.780They're going to identify with that, and that's going to be a problem for them.
00:28:06.300Is it worth getting inside Trump's head a bit and imagining his mood following the election victory?
00:28:13.520He will have spent the previous year and more fighting to stay out of jail, plagued by myriad prosecutions, and helpless to do what he likes to do best, exact revenge.
00:28:21.860Think of the fury that will have built up inside of him, a fury from his point of view he has worked hard to contain.
00:28:28.540As he once put it, I think I have been toned down.
00:28:31.820If you want to know the truth, I really, I could really tone it up.
00:28:37.460He caught a glimpse of his deep thirst for vengeance in his Veterans Day promise to root out communist, Marxist, fascist, and radical thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.
00:28:51.660Lie, steal, cheat on elections, and do anything possible, whether legally or legally, destroy America and the American dream.
00:28:59.340I mean, yes, all of that incredibly accurate.
00:29:02.740But, of course, if you are one of these communists and Marxists and radical leftists, then you are worried about that, right?
00:29:09.380You don't want anyone calling those things out.
00:53:23.460For people who are unfamiliar, so Marius was more of a populist.
00:53:29.060He did the Marian reforms in the Roman military.
00:53:32.720And then Sulla was kind of more of the backer of the Senate.
00:53:38.000The Senate is more of the old aristocracy.
00:53:41.120There ended up being these massive civil wars.
00:53:44.040Most people focus on the wars between Caesar and Pompey, or they look at the wars between
00:53:50.800Augustus Caesar, Octavian, and Mark Anthony as the big civil wars.
00:53:56.600But all of those were actually preceded by the Marius and Sulla civil wars.
00:53:59.660And it is interesting, yeah, the way that you're looking at that, both of these people fighting for what could be the future of Rome, right, and ended up putting themselves in very, very dangerous places that ended up with a lot of bloodshed for Rome.
00:54:16.700I certainly hope that that is nothing that is in our future, but history is a teacher.
00:54:23.660We should pay attention because, again, there's a reason you don't go down these roads.
00:54:28.000And Democrats have wanted to go down them.
00:54:31.080They think that there's no cost to be paid.
00:54:33.460And that's very stupid and dangerous steps to take.
00:54:35.920But thank you for your history reference, sir.
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