The Abuser, Part III: Autocrats Prosecute Opponents, Trump Fits Right In
If he talks like an autocrat and acts like an autocrat, he’s an autocrat.
A common characteristic of autocrats is prosecuting their political opponents. Russia under Vladimir Putin, China under Xi Jinping, Hungary under Viktor Orbán all have track records of the prosecution of opponents.
Trump fits right in.
Donald Trump made clear during the 2024 presidential campaign that if elected he would conduct a revenge and retaliation campaign against his perceived opponents.
On this, at least, he’s been as good as his word. Trump has moved in 2025 to do just that, grossly abusing his presidential powers and acting more irresponsibly than any empowered top person in our country since King George III.
He even publicly (by mistake, reportedly) instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi Justice Department to indict and prosecute three opponents.
And just yesterday, he met in public with the three top law enforcement officials and named three people who he wanted prosecuted: former Special Counsel Jack Smith, Former FBI Counsel Andrew Weissmann and former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco (although Trump didn’t even know her last name).
It was also reported yesterday that “sweeping changes” at the Internal Revenue Service are being prepared in order to make it easier “to pursue criminal inquires of left-leaning groups.” Trump earlier had said, citing no basis, that George Soros and his son Alex Soros should be prosecuted under the RICO Act and that George Soros should be in jail.
For fifty years, after the Watergate scandals, it had been an ironclad understanding that when it came to indictments and prosecutions the Justice Department operated independently from the President and White House.
Trump has shattered that understanding.
In what may be the most irresponsible demand ever made by a President to an Attorney General, Trump all but commanded AG Bondi on Truth Social to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff – instructing Bondi that “They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.”
The indictments of Comey and James followed quickly.
And now indictments may be coming soon against Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton and against Senator Schiff.
Trump, a convicted felon, does seem to like certain kinds of criminals – those who support him. For example, he pardoned the many convicted criminals who, on January 6, 2021, attacked the Capitol and helped his failed attempt to steal the presidency.
Trump also likes sex trafficker and sexual abuser, Ghislaine Maxwell. She claimed to the Deputy Attorney General that she had not seen any misconduct by Trump in his dealings with her partner in sex crimes, Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell then got special treatment from the Justice Department in being moved to a “Club Fed” prison camp after she had received a 20-year-sentence in 2022.
Our Founders foresaw the possibility of an autocrat, dictator or another king coming. They took steps to prevent it by creating three branches of government that had their own separate powers. Their extraordinary wisdom created a system that held together for 237 years. What they could not foresee, however, was that centuries later the protections embodied in our Constitutional system of three independent branches would fail because two of the branches bowed down to the executive branch.
We now have a narcissistic, self-serving, autocratic President, a Congress controlled by his party that lives in fear of the President and follows his commands like lemmings and a Supreme Court majority that has been bending the knee to the wishes of the president on almost all occasions.
Yet we persevere. Our democracy is being courageously defended by lower federal court judges, some of whom have taken on the Supreme Court majority, and ultimately by concerned citizens. Their voices will be heard loud and clear all over the country during the No Kings rallies being conducted on Saturday, October 18.
No Kings Day will be one of the largest coordinated protests in American history, with more than 2,500 rallies across all 50 states and in cities abroad. Their central message is simple and deeply American: “We have no kings. The power belongs to us.”
Regardless of what Congress and the Roberts majority do, the American people are stronger and will never give up and never give in. They have never tolerated leaders who believed themselves to be above and beyond the law. Indeed, that’s what birthed our nation to begin with (in what actor Robert DeNiro called “the original No Kings protest”).
Despite their vigilance, the Founders knew that autocracy would be a constant and existential threat. When our oldest Founder, Ben Franklin, was asked following the Constitutional Convention, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
That is now the job of every concerned American – to keep our republic, our democracy, and our Constitution.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s newsletter, and other recent editions, here. And subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
