Within days of taking office, Trump is already remaking the Justice Department to his liking and installing loyalists.
Hitler appointed Hermann Göring to his cabinet and made him Prussia’s acting state interior minister.
“I cannot rely on police to go after the red mob if they have to worry about facing disciplinary action when they are simply doing their job,” Göring explained. He accorded them his personal backing to shoot with impunity. “When they shoot, it is me shooting,” Göring said. “When someone is lying there dead, it is I who shot them.”
Then, later in March, Hitler wiped the slates of his National Socialist supporters clean:
…an Article 48 decree was issued amnestying National Socialists convicted of crimes, including murder, perpetrated “in the battle for national renewal.” Men convicted of treason were now national heroes.
Upon taking office, Trump signed an executive order granting pardons and commutations for the January 6th rioters and murderers.
The similarities are uncanny.
A large part of what made Hitler’s dismantling of the Weimar Republic possible was because of the German Reichstag—their legislature. In a high-turnout election, Hitler’s Nazi party received 44 percent of the vote.
Although the National Socialists fell short of Hitler’s promised 51 percent, managing only 44 percent of the electorate—despite massive suppression, the Social Democrats lost just a single Reichstag seat—the banning of the Communist Party positioned Hitler to form a coalition with the two-thirds Reichstag majority necessary to pass the empowering law.
They took this as a mandate to storm government offices across the country, causing their political opponents to flee.
While Trump and his cronies haven’t exactly dissolved our Congress yet, it has already happened on the Republican side in a radical MAGA makeover.
Many Republican politicians have been primaried to their right and have lost. And now, with the wealthiest person in the world, Elon Musk, on Trump’s side, he has vowed to fund a primary challenge against any Republican who dares defy Trump’s agenda.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of Ezra Klein’s columns and podcasts. In a recent episode of his show, he dissects the first few days of the new administration. On the emerging oligarchy:
The thing that has most got me thinking about oligarchy is Elon Musk, who in putting his money and his money is astonishing in its size and his attentional power because he used that money to take control of X. Yes. The means of communication. The means of communication in putting that in service of Trump to a very large degree. And then being at the Trump rallies, he has become clearly the most influential other figure in the Trump administration. The deal has not just been that maybe Trump listens to him a bit on policy, it’s that he becomes a kind of co-ruler.
In his closing for that episode, Klein leaves us with a very pessimistic diagnosis:
in many ways, Donald Trump was saved in his first term by all the people who did not allow him to do things that he otherwise wanted to do, like shoot missiles into Mexico or unleash the National Guard to begin shooting on protesters en masse. Now he is unleashed, and not just to make policy or make foreign policy decisions, but to enrich himself. And understanding a popular vote victory of a point and a half, where you end up with the smallest House majority since the Great Depression, where you lose half of the Senate races in battleground states, and where not a single governor’s mansion changes hands as a kind of victory that is blessed by God for unsparing ambition and greatness, that’s the kind of mismatch between public mood and presidential energy that can, I guess it could create greatness. It seems also like it can create catastrophe.
I, for one, will be hopeful but realistic that America will end up in catastrophe and our fears of democracy dying will come to fruition.
P.S. I didn’t have a good spot to include Ezra Klein’s January 28, 2025 episode, but it’s a very good listen to understand where the larger MAGA movement is headed.
Donald Trump's rallies draw thousands of devoted followers who wait hours to see him speak, creating an almost religious fervor among his base. This cult-like devotion inspired me to design a poster depicting him as a false idol.
Under immense pressure, under the highest of expectations, Kamala Harris outperformed in her acceptance speech at the DNC, delivering way beyond what anyone anticipated. Her biography is what makes her relatable. It illustrates her values. And her story is the American story.
The design blog that connects the dots others miss. Written by Roger Wong.
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