IN THE MAKING: Is America Heading Towards a Trump Dictatorship?

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:46

It happens because the people that should be taking it seriously, that have the power to stand up and speak up and do something and stop it, don't.

With reaction and insights to the biggest stories and breaking news from the USA and a little bit of history thrown in, this Is America, a history in the making. It's Liam here again for another solo edition of in the Making.

Because in a previous episode of the podcast, I explained why constitutionally, it's pretty much impossible for Donald Trump to be elected president for a third term. And you know, that's still true.

The Constitution does pretty much remove any possibility that Trump could run for president or even run as vice president and assume the presidency with some sort of backroom deal. But what we didn't consider in the previous episode is the fact that those circumstances could change.

Now, we did address the fact that any major changes to the Constitution are probably unlikely, but that was on the basis of today's current context.

Now, there are a lot of fears, particularly from the left, that Donald Trump, since assuming the White House for his second term, is giving all the signs of an autocracy and worse, a dictatorship. Now, that's quite dramatic language, it's quite extreme language, and obviously the right are scoffing at that.

And there's still a huge amount of divisiveness.

So I just wanted to look now at, at some of the evidence that highlights why some of that language and some of the concern around Trump's possible dictatorship, as far fetched and as crazy as that might sound to some of you, might actually not be as outlandish as what you might think.

So let's start first by looking at who Trump is surrounding himself with, because what's really important, especially if there are any intentions to become a dictator that you don't have any dissidents, certainly not among your sort of higher ranks.

And what we saw immediately after the election is that Trump surrounded himself with a cabinet that were criticized for a lack of experience in the roles that they were being hired to.

I mean, Pete Hegseth as an example, as a broadcaster then being tasked with the entire Department of Defense was a hard sell, I think, to any non Trump supporters. RFK Jr. Considering his history on, you know, and his outspokenness on things like vaccines being given, health secretary.

And we're now starting to see, you know, Florida has said that as a state, it wants to start removing child vaccine mandates. And that is a big concern. And they're just two examples.

The whole cabinet of Trump was filled with loyalists this time, as if he's learned his lesson from the first term, and actually now he's doubling down and just surrounding himself with people who are just going to do what he wants. But it's not just about hiring people that are loyal to him. It's about sacking people that aren't.

And so much has happened in the last eight months that we've probably forgotten that the US Archivist Colleen Shogun was sacked very early into Trump's presidency, bearing in mind this is the person that is responsible for National Archives and making sure that the records in those archives are preserved and accurate. So that is a big worry. Additionally, he also sacked Charles Brown, who is America's highest ranking general. Now, that, again, made no sense.

There was no real justification for it, and it seemed very much like a personal vendetta.

And then more recently, sacking Fed Governor Lisa Cook, as well as other people in and around the Fed and the treasury, which is clearly a deliberate attempt to get the people he wants running the Federal Reserve and the treasury so that he can influence interest rates.

Now, people who support Trump might not agree with that, but it seems like a bit of a coincidence that he wants interest rates to, to be lowered and he's now sacking people in that department who appear to be the roadblocks to that happening. And that's a very concerning thing.

That then suggests that Trump is very deliberately trying to put people in the right positions that give him autonomy over these functions that should act with a certain degree of independence from the president. Additionally to that, we're seeing it at lower levels with RFK Jr now putting his own deputy in as the director of the cdc.

Now, again, it's just layer by layer, putting in people that are not going to stand up or speak up against Trump. And once you have nothing but Trump loyalists at these higher levels, you can start to filter that down and enshrine loyalty to Trump elsewhere.

And we're seeing that now in Oklahoma. Oklahoma are rolling out new tests to applicants, teaching applicants who come to the state from blue states like New York and California.

They'll be given a test to determine their loyalty to Donald Trump. That is a radical move that is putting the pieces of the jigsaw in place.

That means that the, the whole education system, the whole, and therefore what, what children are being taught in schools is then done through a right wing, through, not even through a wiring, because that does a disservice to actual Republicans who want to be good politicians. It's making sure that everything is done through a MAGA gaze, through a Trump lens. It's his agenda, right? These are little things, okay?

A little Trump loyalty test to teaching applicants you might not think is a big deal, but when you've got people at the bottom, up to the very top, who are making sure that that Trump agenda is being pushed through, and then that's being taught in schools to kids, we're getting closer and closer and closer to this brainwashing, that's not okay. And the problem right now is that these little things are all happening, that in isolation, you can look at and think, that's not too bad.

If you look at the big picture, you can see what's going on here. And then you've got Trump silencing critics not even discreetly. Look at what's going on with Harvard University. He's.

He's making sure that universities that are not willing to pedal his agenda have as difficult a time as possible, not just to peddle his agenda, but to just stay open and continue teaching. He's trying to financially cripple institutions that stand up against him.

He's making sure that people in the White House, in the press room are right leaning. And then you start to control the messaging. And we're seeing this again even further with things like pulling federal funding for PBS and npr.

He's making sure that the, and the institutions that have, at the moment, the platform to speak up against what he's doing, he's making sure that they don't have the means to do that anymore. He's very deliberately silencing them. He's prosecuting them. We're not seeing that with institutions that support Trump. There is a clear line here.

This isn't just a coincidence anymore. Trump is very much doing this against people that don't like him. And there's a reason for that.

Because if he can make sure that the people who don't like him can't speak, then it makes it a lot easier to persecute minorities and those who don't vote for him, as we have seen him do. And it started with ice. It started with the mass deportations. And we've seen a lot of criticism about that.

A lot of press have been openly critical about that. That's why he's trying to silence them, because he can't marry through an agenda as successfully if it seems like there's public backlash to it.

And if you remove the voices that can verbalize that backlash, then you remove the appearance of any backlash. He's then kicking or vowed to kick transgender soldiers out of the army. Again, you might think, okay, like, so what?

How's that gonna lead to a dictatorship? It's showing that he's willing to persecute minority groups.

Tell me how that's not what every single dictator did in the lead up to them seizing power.

stricter voting laws for the: 2026

But problem is, and Trump knows this, is that actually there is a hugely disproportionate number of non white American citizens that don't have voter id.

And the processes and the systems in place at state level to support people in minority and non white communities to get voter IDs to be able to vote are made as difficult as possible. So, on the face of it, yes, ensuring everyone has voter ID before they can vote in an election is great.

But when only white people and affluent people find it easy to get voter id, what you're doing is massively skewing the electorate. You're making sure that the only people that can vote are people that are going to vote for you.

That's how you rig an election without actually fraudulently rigging an election. Right?

It's making sure that these little things are brought into place, these little tweaks to the system, to the rules, make it as difficult as possible for people who want to vote against Trump to do so. And then in the meantime, in the next three years, you're silencing all the people that are speaking out against you.

You're making sure that the messaging is as pro you as possible. That's propaganda. And then all the people that are undecided, well, you've got two camps then, haven't you?

When you remove all the people that are voting for Trump anyway?

You've got people who are undecided, who are just seeing this barrage of propaganda that are then going to think, oh, actually, maybe Trump's doing an okay job. Maybe I will vote for him.

And then you've got people who don't want to vote for him, don't like him, but are too scared to either vote, and if they do, to not vote for him. It's a culture of fear. It's this threatening environment that says, if you're not with us, you are against us.

And you might think that's dramatic, but just look at the rhetoric. Look at things like renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

That's a deliberate, very deliberate choice that says a lot about the Trump administration. Denmark recently have expressed concerns about a potential influence operation in Greenland.

Trump has already been quite vocal about the fact that he wants to take Greenland from Denmark.

And now there's accusations that there are American operatives in Greenland at ground level, spreading this sort of influencer campaign to try and change public opinion. If Trump is willing to do that in Greenland, we cannot dismiss the fact that he would be willing to do that domestically as well.

And he is doing it domestically. We're just dismissing it as, you know, oh, it's fine. He's just, you know, he's exercising his right as a president. Do you know what?

The president also has a right to kill anyone that he deems a national security threat. The Supreme Court have given him that power. He can call anyone that he doesn't like a threat to national security.

And he can create and fabricate a reason to kill them or to put them in prison because he's surrounding himself with loyalists.

The fact is, America is in a dangerous situation where you can look at each of these hundreds of headlines about what Trump is doing and think, oh, that's a bit crazy. Ha, ha, ha. Laugh it off and just think, that's Trump. Only three more years.

But when you look at it all in totality, he's surrounding himself with loyalists. He's making sure that the systems are in place to protect that loyalism, down and down and down to ground level. He's silencing critics.

He's persecuting minorities. And then what happens? Decision makers support him.

Critics can't speak out against him, and anyone that does vote either is brainwashed into supporting him or is too scared not to. Now, that's the sign of a dictatorship in the making. And that's why not just Americans, everyone should be terrified of what's happening right now.

Because do you know what? And people make Trump and Hitler comparisons all the time. Right? But let's just look at this realistically.

You can't seize power if everyone's against you. You cannot take over a government by force if the public don't want you to.

There is a reason that people like Hitler, people like Putin and others throughout history have seized power. You control the messaging, you control the people. That's how you do it. And we are seeing these cogs being put into place right now in America.

Now, I started this episode by saying that I explained previously how constitutionally, Trump cannot be elected. He can't even get through the back door as Vice president and then assume power. But what about the distraction of a world war?

There's enough loopholes.

And by that time, there would be enough support in Congress, there would be enough support in the Supreme Court that could allow Trump to stay in power, even if not in an official capacity. Just look at what Putin did. He couldn't be elected president for a third term.

He got one of his mates elected president, who then gave him the role of prime minister. And then you've got this president by proxy where Putin is still in charge.

And when you've got Congress on your side, when you can make tweaks to the law, when you can find those loopholes, what's stopping him from doing that? And even more, I mean, a constitutional amendment is sure difficult, but look at everything he's done in eight months. Let's add two years to that.

Let's just imagine the landscape if Trump continues doing everything he's doing and then he does it twofold, threefold, tenfold. Suddenly, the possibility of being able to get a constitutional amendment in place is not so far fetched.

The possibility of repealing the amendment that says a president can only serve two terms is not that far fetched. The possibility of getting Congress just to change the date of the election, and then suddenly it gets kicked back.

It gets kicked back, it gets kicked back. It's not so far fetched.

So when people talk about America heading towards a dictatorship, it's easy to laugh at that, it's easy to dismiss it as just extreme. And come on, that's not really going to happen, is it? That's how it starts.

It happens because the people that should be taking it seriously, that have the power to stand up and speak up and do something and stop it, don't. So I realize this is probably a very dramatic sounding episode.

And, you know, people who want to believe that this isn't happening, who want to keep turning a blind eye, are going to listen to this and say, I'm just scaremongering. I'm not. Okay, I'm hypothesizing. I'm looking at worst case scenario. But it's not rooted in nothing.

We're seeing the building blocks of something incredibly dangerous slowly being put in place.

And if it continues to go unchecked, I think it will be too late by the time we realize as a world, the situation that we've allowed ourselves to fall into. So consider this a warning message, public service announcement. I don't know, whatever you want to call it, you might agree with me, you might not.

But I think that we're in an incredibly volatile time.

I think America is a very concerning precipice politically, and when you then consider the wider global context that this is happening in, I don't think we should be ignoring it and I don't think we should be sitting on it. Thanks so much for listening to a history in the making.

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