Trump’s “Autocracy By Appointment”

President-elect Donald Trump appears determined to create an American autocracy, established by government appointments and led by Trump.

There apparently is one overriding qualification that his appointees must meet – loyalty to Trump – not to the Constitution, not to the nation, not to the rule of law.

Absolute loyalty and bending the knee are what matter to Trump.

The result is what one pundit dubbed a “shock-and-awe” Cabinet and inner circle. Many are flat-out unqualified, seriously flawed personally, and/or downright dangerous. Some, including Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard could do great damage to our nation.

This “loyalty first and foremost” approach to his appointments will give Trump the ability to directly control every government decision he wants to make.

That is the power of an autocrat. And it directly contradicts the nation our Founders established – a democracy where no individual would have the power of a king.

We have been a nation where checks and balances provided by the Constitution and the rule of law have governed, at least until Trump came along and indicated that he doesn’t believe in either. These fundamental values will be tested during Trump’s second term.

Trump has made clear he is out for revenge and retribution against his perceived enemies.

Those enemies include Justice Department and FBI officials, and the media, which Trump has called an “enemy of the people.”

(Trump appears to have forgotten that our Founders enshrined freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the Constitution.)

Trump’s nominees demonstrate that he plans to use law enforcement agencies as instruments to impose his vengeance and retribution on his enemies.

That brings us to Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to be FBI Director.

Garrett Graff, historian and author of The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror, wrote this about Patel’s nomination: “Donald Trump wants Kash Patel as the FBI director for all of the wrong reasons. He wants Patel precisely because Patel would be the most dangerous and destructive FBI director in American history. He wants Patel because Patel will try to weaponize the FBI against Trump’s enemies.”

Patel made clear his disdain for the FBI in his book Government Gangsters, writing: “The rot at the core of the FBI isn’t just scandalous, it’s an existential threat to our republican form of government.”

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said about Patel when there was an effort to have him serve in the FBI during Trump’s first term that Patel “had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency.” Barr told Trump’s chief of staff that Patel’s appointment to the FBI would happen “over my dead body.”

John Bolton, a rock-ribbed conservative and a National Security Adviser to Trump in his first term, compared Patel to Lavrentiy Beria, the feared secret police chief during Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia.

Patel has said “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” and that he is “going to go on a government gangster’s manhunt in Washington, DC, for our great President.”

Patel has listed nearly 60 current and former government officials he has targeted. This is Patel’s own form of an enemies list, raising the haunting specter of President Nixon’s infamous enemies list from some 50 years ago.

This is who Trump wants to lead the FBI? He shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it.

Patel’s nomination should be rejected by the Senate.

Recent stories have said that the resistance is feeling burnt out and exhausted.

That simply won’t cut it.

To protect and preserve our democracy and the rule of law we must be ready to do battle for as long as it takes to defend the sacred foundational values of our country.

As John Lewis, the great civil rights champion once said, “Freedom is not a state; it is an act.”

In his book On Tyranny, Yale historian Timothy Snyder says that “do not obey in advance” is the main lesson of the 20th century.

There can be no bending of the knee to Trump.

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