What Word Should I Use for a President Who Claims Vast Powers that He Clearly Doesn't Have?
"Fascist" is out-of-bounds, but what's in-bounds?
In the past week, the president has:
Tried to unilaterally nullify part of the Fourteenth Amendment;
Tried to nullify Congress’ ability to spend money;
Ordered the Justice Department to ignore the TikTok ban, which should be in effect right now but isn’t;
Dropped all pretense that the tariffs he keeps threatening to unilaterally impose have anything to do with “national security”.
This seems bad to me. This seems like a president trying to do stuff that he’s clearly not allowed to do and seeing how it goes — if the president was a toddler, we’d call this “boundary testing”. And Republicans are playing the role of wilfully ignorant parent, utterly convinced that their precious little boy — their sweet Donnie Angel, that special little child — could never do anything bad.
Equally predictably, the left is freaking out. It’s unfortunate that some on the left always reach for the most extreme language available — calling Trump a “fascist” doesn’t mean much once you’ve already used that word to describe Bush, Obama, J.K. Rowling, traffic cameras, and Thomas the Tank Engine. In my opinion, “fascist” has lost all meaning, and it should be put in a locked drawer until we show that we can use it responsibly. And, as I've written before, hyperbole doesn’t really do anything except let your opponents: 1) Portray you as crazy, and 2) Be kind of right about that.