Trump’s Twitter persona has felt like a revelation in American politics, generating constant commentary and a lot of free publicity (sorry). He’s embraced the medium with the self-assuredness and recklessness of a teenager, tweeting more and with fewer filters than any other American presidential candidate since Twitter’s launch in 2006. But what seems radical in the United States is par for the course in other parts of the world—ironically for someone who champions American exceptionalism, Trump has followed an approach employed by leftist Latin American leaders for years.
.. Federico Finchelstein, a professor of history and department chair at The New School, has recently argued that Trump fits into a mold of “post-fascist” populists, leaders who promote authoritarian democracies characterized in part by no mediation between the leader and the people. These types of leaders have flourished in Latin American countries since World War II, capitalizing on their populations’ desire to #MakeLatinAmericaGreatAgain and shake off their imperialist pasts to become economically and culturally independent.
.. Finchelstein points out that authoritarians’ embrace of Twitter is highly strategic: “They tend to regard independent reporters as deeply suspicious and even enemies, so they use technology as a means of achieving a direct connection.” Unmediated access to their public allows populists to emphasize their “outsider” status and downplay the importance of traditional institutions (a free press, other branches of government).
.. Institutional language—like the staid decorum of Obama’s tweets—becomes undesirable, the mark of a phony.
.. The danger of “real-talk” like Trump’s is that it erases much of what is valuable about a free press: skepticism, debate, accountability.
.. “At the same time that it provides a mirage of full participation, there’s not actually meaningful participation by citizens in the leader’s decisions. What a leader like Trump is asking is, Vote for me, because I know best what you should want. It’s a very authoritarian form of politics.”
Will Trump Be Dumped?
He doesn’t like invidious comparisons but he’s cool with being called an authoritarian.
“We need strength in this country,” he told me Friday morning, speaking from his Fifth Avenue office. “We have weak leadership. Hillary is pathetically weak.
.. Trump insisted that “the violence is not caused by me. It’s caused by agitators.” He added that “Hillary is the one disrupting my rallies. It’s more Hillary than Sanders, I found out.”
.. I wondered if he realized that, in riling up angry whites, he has pulled the scab off racism. “Obama, who is African-American, has done nothing for African Americans,” he replied.
.. He said he would soon unleash the moniker that he thought would diminish Hillary, the way “Little Marco” and “Lyin’ Ted” torched his Republican rivals; “I want to get rid of the leftovers first.”
.. Unable to resist, even though he knows I respect Kelly, he also described her to me as a “total whack job” with “no talent.”
.. Joe Scarborough said that just as F.D.R. was the master of radio and J.F.K. of television, D.J.T. is the titan of Twitter. The titan agreed, gloating about how his tweets to his seven million followers, sometimes penned in his jammies, become cable news bulletins. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll do them sometimes lying in bed.”
Not exactly a fireside chat. But it sure started a fire.
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There Will Be No Republican Unity in 2016
Trump fans gleefully point to his 7.5 million votes in the primary so far, and forget that the universe of voters in the general election will be on a completely different scale — probably 130 million voters. (Mitt Romney won 10 million primary votes.)
.. Last night, Bill O’Reilly offered an odd defense of the GOP front-runner: “The reason I think Trump won in Florida is because he comes across as more authoritarian. Not authoritative, authoritarian.”
.. And if you think “authoritarian” is too harsh a term for the Trump philosophy, last night his spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, contended the campaign had the right to ban reporters he doesn’t like or who write pieces that Trump doesn’t like from his events:
If you have a reporter that is not really reporting, just doing constant hit pieces for no reason, then that’s something we need to look at. We have a lot of reporters who essentially have just been glorified bloggers who aren’t really interested in covering the campaign or the race for that matter, they’re just out there trying to start trouble.
Of Course Ted Cruz Would Make a Better President Than Donald Trump
I don’t know how a President Trump would respond if one of the other coequal branches of government challenged his authority. Indeed, I am somewhat afraid that Trump would ignore or move against that other branch, whether it’s Congress or the Court. But I don’t have that worry with Cruz. He may be an ideologue, but he’s an ideological constitutionalist. Trump is neither an ideologue nor a constitutionalist. His only principle is winning. And he’s not talking about you winning. He’s talking about Trump winning. That’s all that matters to him.
.. Who does Trump idolize? Himself. And his neutral and sometimes flattering attitude toward authoritarian governments ought to make you think twice about seeing him in the Oval Office.