In 2017, after a year of the Donald Trump presidency, the comedian and political commentator, Bill Maher, announced his dictator’s checklist as a way of highlighting what he saw as dangerous signs from the top of the US political system. He revised the list over the next three years to the read as follows.
We know you are a dictator with designs on ultimate power when you;
· are a narcissist who wants his name and face on buildings
· appoint family members to positions of power
· hold political rallies even when not running for office (and they are scary)
· speak about jailing the press and your political opponents
· want to hold military parades
· muse openly about being President for life
· use your office for personal financial gain
· publicly admire other totalitarian dictators
· lie so freely that your supporters don’t know what the truth is anymore and don’t care
· appoint your biggest supporter to the highest legal position in the land
· appoint your toughest supporter as the head of law enforcement
· have state TV, where the ‘reporters’ openly endorse you as leader
· appoint your own people to oversee the elections they are running in
· respond to legitimate civil unrest not by calling for calm and promising action but by putting tanks in the streets and turning the military on your own people
· instruct the police to use tear gas and rubber bullets to clear a path to a church simply so that you can pose for a photograph
Bill Maher has been openly against Trump being President since before the election and it would be easy to dismiss the above as biased nonsense. However, he was able provide evidence, taken directly from TV news coverage, to back up every one of the items on the list.
Maher’s position is that Trump has no intention of leaving office. He cites a number of elections where the Trump supporting Republican incumbent lost, only to complain that the process was flawed or corrupted and refuse to leave office. Maher claims that Trump’s ambition really is to hold on to power. He makes the following statement.
“For a coup to work it is first necessary for truth itself to be destroyed, as well as the people who try to report it. So the dictator is free to say anything and his followers believe it”.
Trump’s behaviour in public and his love of Twitter to express his thoughts, often off the cuff and unguarded, gives credibility to Maher’s claim. One of the most significant factors of the Trump presidency has been his continuing battle with the press, who he accuses of being, liars, corrupt, biased against him and even the enemy of the people. The following are statements made by Trump or by some of his closest advisors.
“The truth isn’t the truth”
“There are alternative facts”
“What you see and hear isn’t what’s happening”
“It’s all fake news”
Taken together these statements portray a disturbing picture. Politicians often have a rocky relationship with the press. It is the press’ job to be provocative and sell newspapers, as well as calling politicians to account. But when a politician’s response to adverse press is to not only suggest that they are lying but that there is an alternative definition to ‘truth’ and ‘facts’ and to say these thing so often that people actually begin to doubt, it is not surprising that someone will call foul.
I don’t know if Maher is right about Trump but everything certainly points to him being a megalomaniac and that is not the type of personality anyone should endorse for the position of leader of the free world.