The Weakest Strongman: As America Rages, Donald Trump Goes Dark
Donald Trump told voters there was American carnage and that he alone could solve it.
Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 as a billionaire mogul who understood America’s problems so well and so thoroughly that he would step away from his business empire in order to perform this feat of charity and patriotism.
Because he alone could solve it.
This past weekend, as Americans protested yet another murder of a black man by police, and as fires raged and the country’s majors cities rioted, Trump repeatedly tweeted conspiracy theories about anarchists and Democrats and Joe Biden and China. He refused to take to the airwaves to try and calm tensions or bridge divides. At one point, with protestors near the White House, Trump rushed to a bunker to be protected from the people he is supposed to represent.
Let’s be clear. We cannot define Donald Trump’s presidency as a failure simply because he has failed to fulfill the role of president. That was never his intention. Trump became president to profit off the country and dismantle government as an impediment to corruption and power. In these goals, he has been wildly successful. While the media and politicians continue to call for Trump to behave as a president, he has used their active denial of reality to his benefit.
His failure to lead in this crisis is no different from his failure to lead in the pandemic or to provide relief from the looming economic depression. He has no intention to bridge divides, heal wounds, or lead anyone anywhere. His presidency is a controlled demolition and a personal payoff.
What Trump’s pathetic cowardice reveals, however, is important.
As discussed previously on The Muckrake, American understanding of authoritarianism is mistaken because of our long history of battling authoritarians and enabling them. Particularly during the Cold War, America came to rely on dictators around the world whom we relied on for control of their people and economic favor. Because of this, we have perpetuated a myth that strongmen are actually strong.
The truth is that these men are incredibly weak. To be an authoritarian is to be insecure and fragile. The despotism is a means of controlling the world and silencing critics, all of it with the purpose of bending the world to your will in order to shield your vulnerability.
Trump is a coward. A pathetic little man who is eggshell brittle. When he turns on the television to Fox News, a corporate propaganda arm dedicated to worshiping him and inspiring others to worship him, he still sees an organization that is “tough” and “unfair.” It is his brittleness that defines him and endangers the rest of us.
Do not misunderstand. Just because Trump is a pathetic coward does not mean he isn’t dangerous. Men who are insecure are incredibly dangerous. They attack. And as we’ve seen in the past few days, Trump has done just that, blaming the chaos on everyone but himself and promising to designate anti-fascists as a terrorist organization, which is more than likely an attempt to rein in his critics and anyone opposing him, and could become a true authoritarian measure.
This weekend, we saw Trump exposed as the coward that he is. Authoritarians hate when their weakness is shown to the world. They have, after all, spent their entire lives and all of their energy attempting to hide it, mask it, stow it away. He will scapegoat minorities and conspiracies. He will lash out. He will seize power. It’s inevitable.
But remember. The aggression isn’t strength. It’s weakness. And no amount of posturing or violence will ever make that any less true.
Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Politico, and elsewhere. He currently serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.
