It's Worse Than You Think

The only thing stopping Trump from slipping into authoritarianism? Trump himself or his MAGA following.

It’s worse than you think.

You don’t need to be a judge to know President Trump is encouraging a constitutional crisis when he defies a Supreme Court ruling to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father and sheet metal worker wrongfully deported after being accused of being in MS-13.

You don’t need to be a lawyer to know there is no evidence that Garcia was ever a member of gang or charged with any crime.

You don’t need to be a biographer to know that while he entered the United States illegally in 2011 at the age of 16, Garcia had lived and worked in the country legally since 2019, when an immigration judge granted him "withholding of removal" status. It’s a rare alternative to asylum, granted because of the threat to his life from gang violence in El Salvador if deported.

You don’t need to be a family member to know both his wife and child are American citizens.

You don’t need to be a mind reader to know Trump doesn’t want El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to send Garcia home to the United States. Or he would tell him to do so.

You don’t need to be a fortuneteller to know what Trump has in mind for his next step on the slippery slope: Sending U.S. citizen to foreign concentration camps, with no more due process than Garcia was given.

“We also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters,” Trump told reporters inside the Oval Office on Monday. “I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country.”

The president insisted he would only do so by following the law, though he admitted, “I don’t know what the laws are.” You know what that means: The laws will be what he wants them to be.

But it’s worse than you think because there is little to stop him.

Trump commands armies. Judges don’t.

Trump sits astride a MAGA media ecosystem. The mainstream media is no match.

Trump heeds only his inner voice. The Constitution doesn’t speak to him.

Trump runs a team of yes-men and yes-women. Nobody in his orbit has the moral courage or power to say no and make it stick.

His entire norm-busting deportation agenda is run by liars, defiers, and electronic killers goose-stepping toward authoritarianism.

There are only two things that can stop him: Trump himself or the American public.

I can’t imagine Trump curbing himself. Which makes this is a “We, The People” problem.

Trumpism can’t be stopped unless some portion of MAGA nation rejects it and him, and not just in the next election, but as part of a supermajority coalition that eradicates America’s undemocratic demons in a string of landslides.

Can you imagine a day, soon enough, when Trump voters bolt to The Opposition?

Like I said, it’s worse than you think.