Summary
Part Two: The Authoritarian Experiment
Chapter 11: A Snapshot of America
Donald Trump came on the political scene in 2015. He was a reality show host and business tycoon, not the typical candidate. It was not expected that he would make any headway, as he seemed more image than substance, but he was a “brilliant salesman who grasped what thirty years of Republican rhetoric and voting distortion had made the party’s base want far more accurately than the politicians in the Republican establishment who had created those voters” (84). Trump tied together Republican politics and authoritarianism, conjuring a mythological lost world for the voters.
Trump promised to make America great again. He was a narcissist who claimed he was the “best” at everything. These messages dovetailed with similar dictatorial messages arising around the world. In terms of Russia, a policy expert said that the power of the ancient Russian empire depended on destabilizing American democracy, and it became clear that getting Trump elected would further that goal.
Disaffected white Americans liked Trump’s message, especially evangelicals. Many traditional “establishment” Republicans were not on board but that didn’t seem to matter. Trump became the 2016 candidate, held raucous rallies, used crass language, and cozied up to Russia. Hillary Clinton was a perfect foil for him, and he managed to turn many people against her obvious qualifications and intelligence. His campaign used social media to spread lies, and eventually focused on claiming that her emails as Secretary of State were problematic. Nothing untoward was ever found, but the damage was done and Trump won the election. His inaugural address claimed the country was a place of carnage and a joke. He promised to give power back to the people and that he would fight for them.
Chapter 12: A Shocking Event
Many Americans, even Republicans, were not happy about Trump’s agenda. They did not want to dismantle the government completely, but rather hoped for the sort of oligarchy present in the 1850s, 1890s, and 1920s. But Trump was making the leap from oligarchy to authoritarianism, offering lies and alternative facts to drum up media coverage and establish dominance. He and his cronies and media stooges employed the tactic of gaslighting, keeping people on their toes as to what was real and what wasn’t. The Washington press corps was completely unprepared for this, and ended up giving him more media coverage to keep up with the lies.
Some groups saw their rights in danger, such as women and Muslims, the latter who experienced a travel ban. At the southern border with Mexico, parents were being separated from their children. Anyone who disagreed with Trump’s policies were shut out of meetings or fired. The people surrounding Trump were now less intelligent, less qualified, and a lot more sycophantic.
All of these flagrant violations of rights and liberties did not escape notice of Americans, who were “waking up to the administration's attacks on American principles” (99).
Chapter 13: Russia, Russia, Russia
Even from the beginning of American democracy, the Founders worried a foreign power could take over by installing a puppet in the presidency. They were right to worry, as in 2017 the director of National Intelligence released a report that stated how Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. Even if Trump hadn’t collaborated, the campaign played along.
In decades prior, Republicans had decided the spread of free market capitalism had common cause with authoritarians who “leveraged their anti-communism to attract U.S. funding” (102). After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian oligarchs began putting their money in the U.S. where it was safe, and saw that their interests were allied with those on the right.
A struggle for resource-rich Ukraine began in the early 2000s. Ukraine was turning toward democracy and the rest of Europe, and Putin wanted to regain control over the region. He turned to Republican campaign leader Paul Manafort, who helped install a puppet leader in Viktor Yanukovych. The people of Ukraine overthrew him, and Putin then invaded Crimea. This was clearly a threat to European democracies as well as a threat to Ukraine.
Manafort became Trump’s campaign chair for a time, and then unofficially advised him after he resigned. Russian operatives flooded American media with disinformation about Clinton. The goal, Richardson notes, “was not simply to elect Trump. It was to pit the far ends of the political spectrum against the middle, tearing the nation apart” (104). It worked, and Trump won.
Trump vociferously pushed back at the claim he was involved, firing those who pointed the finger at him and claiming he was part of a deep state conspiracy. Republicans largely stood behind him, using their own power and positions to mislead voters and say that Trump was telling the truth. It was clear by now that Republicans had to fall in line with Trump or lose their own positions. They were silent as Trump began to further develop his relationship with Russia.
Finally, 34 people and 3 companies were indicted or pleaded guilty of the attack or cover-up on the 2016 election, and Trump pardoned three of them. Trump loyalists remained steadfastly devoted to him even as the truth became manifest, and painted anyone who did not believe him as a conspiracy theorist or deep state supporter.
Chapter 14: The Streets of Charlottesville
Members of the “alt-right” were emboldened by Trump’s victory and his behavior in office. The U.S. always had violent street gangs, which Richardson details by discussing anti-New Dealers, Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Timothy McVeigh. Right-wing terrorists were convinced by the 1990s that they protected American individualism from a socialist government, and by the 2000s, the anti-government movement was permeating Republican Party leadership.
In 2017 antigovernment, right-wing groups converged violently on Charlottesville. Trump refused to condemn them and said there were “fine people” on both sides. This “Unite the Right” rally was a clear political line, and is apparently what led Joe Biden, former Vice President to Barack Obama, to see that the threat to the nation was unlike any he’d ever seen before. He decided to run against Trump to defeat what he saw as a major threat to democracy.
Chapter 15: The First Impeachment
Republicans stood behind Trump because he was delivering their agenda, but it was not clear if they would stand behind him once news came out in 2019 that he had subverted constitutional government in terms of trying to get Volodymyr Zelensky to help him beat Joe Biden in the election. Trump had suggested he would release the money Zelensky needed if Zelensky would announce an investigation into Hunter Biden and Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company Hunter Biden was on the board of.
The media covered this extensively and Trump did not back down, whining that he was the victim of a witch hunt. Trump was not just a candidate, though–he was actually president and he was using the power of the government to “force a foreign government to take part in a campaign to hurt his political enemies" (119).
The House began an impeachment inquiry. They soon found that Trump and his allies were “running a shadow foreign policy to advance the president’s interests” (120). During the impeachment hearings, the Republicans on his side did not try to discount the evidence but instead tried to create an alternate reality. They harassed witnesses, likened Democrats to Nazis, said Trump was being targeted by a conspiracy, and claimed he was a true patriot.
At the Senate trial, the lawyers for Trump ignored the facts and repeated right-wing media talking points. Republicans took over and admitted publicly that it was not about what Trump really did but about flipping the Senate. There was overwhelming evidence of Trump’s guilt, but they didn’t care, and the Senate voted 52 to 48 to acquit him. Richardson says that they “sacrificed democracy for power” (124) and the Republican Party was now the Trump Party. And since the numbers who represented a conviction were 18 million more than those who voted to acquit, it was clear a minority was taking over from the majority.
Chapter 16: Destabilizing the Government
Trump began firing people who had crossed him in the impeachment trial. He also began getting rid of nonpartisan bureaucrats hired for skills, not politics, and Republicans said nothing while he did so. They were clearly afraid of losing power and of his very vocal and potentially violent base.
Trump elevated people to positions that they weren’t qualified for, such as his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. He relied on acting officials rather than permanent appointees to advance his agenda and slashed oversight of his administration. This “appointing [of] unqualified figures is a tactic of authoritarians, who turn to staffers who are fiercely loyal not because they are qualified or talented enough to rise to power in a nonpartisan system” (130).
Trump gave a State of the Union address in January of 2020. It was sensational, scripted, full of lies, and, according to scholars, reminiscent of Hitler. It was all show, all fire-and-brimstone, full of stoking fear of others. Republicans jumped to their feet to applaud over and over again, even though they surely knew what they were hearing was false.
Chapter 17: Embracing Authoritarianism
Trump wanted to be reelected so he could take control of the Justice Department and exonerate himself of any crimes. However, the coronavirus pandemic began and threw a wrench into his plans.
The administration sidestepped FEMA and gave Kushner control. He explained that he felt that there were people who were better able to manage crises than others, but his response was inadequate and inefficient. He and his team ignored medical professionals and favored political messaging.
Trump eventually claimed it was not the federal government’s job to manage the pandemic and told states they were on their own. What ended up happening was that the private sector was enriched because the public need resulted in their ability to control prices and supply. Democrats called for a “czar” to help coordinate efforts and to use the Defense Production Act to speed up the production and dissemination of medical equipment and devices. It didn’t happen.
Eventually the pandemic affected the economy, which was one of the things Trump hoped would re-elect him. He claimed he had "absolute authority” to force the states to reopen, when he’d once told them they could control if they had stay-at-home orders or not.
Trump was indeed stronger in 2020 than he had been in 2017, consolidating his supporters through disinformation, getting rid of professionals from government and installing cronies in their places, and turning more and more to his zealous, violent base. During the election season, he claimed if he lost the election it would be because it was rigged. He had Republicans try to keep opponents from voting. He also weaponized the pandemic and whipped up violence among his base.
In May of 2020 George Floyd was killed by a police officer, which resulted in the Black Lives Matter movement. It swept throughout the country, and Trump decided he could use troops against regular Americans. On June 1st he had the military clear protestors from Lafayette Square and told the states that they needed to do the same in such circumstances. After that, former political leaders including all four living presidents and more than 1,250 former members of the Department of Justice, Democratic lawmakers, and military leaders came out and condemned the president. They reiterated loyalty to the Constitution and warned of the end of the American "experiment" of democracy. The Pentagon disarmed the National Guard in DC and sent regular troops back home.
Trump was indifferent to such criticism and focused on trying to create his own army. He took control of law enforcement teams from the FBI; from the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Explosives; the Secret Service; the Drug Enforcement agency, and more.
Chapter 18: Rewriting American History
Trump told his supporters that they were fighting a war for the soul of America, which was a rewriting of American history that brought together strands of authoritarianism. He excoriated multiculturalism and “secularism,” which was appealing to evangelical voters who believed the country had been founded as a Christian nation. His attorney general, William Barr, claimed that the Founders meant self-government was the ability not to vote for representatives of one’s choice but to literally govern oneself, and that since people are inherently wicked it meant that Christians needed to govern to help people help themselves. This, Richardson writes, is a sleight of hand that directly contradicts the Framers’ work. James Madison, for example, saw the establishment of religion as attacking the unalienable right to freedom of conscience, and how it would be a slippery slope to get rid of the free press, trial by jury, the right to vote, etc. Establishing a “traditional” society was not in accordance with the nation’s founding principles, but instead closer to the South on the eve of the Civil War with its white Christian nationalism.
As the 2020 Trump campaign continued, they used symbols of America but also Nazism as dog whistle politics for their supporters. The Republican convention in 2020 had “the trappings of dictators” (145), tradition, spectacle, and might—all power invested in one man, not in democracy. The Republican Party, formed to stop enslavers, now had no party platform of their own and said they’d support the president’s America First agenda.
Trump focused on history itself, attacking the 1619 Project which centered the nation’s founding date not in 1776 but in 1619 when the first slaves were brought to the colonies. He said it was “child abuse” to teach such things and formed the 1776 Commission made up of right-wing activists and politicians, not educators, to end the “radical” lies and promote patriotic education.
The election was nigh, and Trump had done his work well. “His propaganda, cruelty, and demonstrations of dominance had empowered his followers and made his leadership central to their identity. At a debate in early October, he snarled, spat, lied, bullied, badgered, and apparently tried to infect Biden with Covid-19, for it later turned out he had tested positive for coronavirus before the debate” (147).
Chapter 19: January 6
Trump had joked about staying in power and his ally Steve Bannon told supporters privately that Trump was going to declare victory no matter what. As soon as it became clear Biden had won, he claimed the election had been rigged. Barr, the attorney general, said it was legitimate and the conspiracy theories were false, but Trump did not care.
Over the next few months the Trump campaign demanded recounts and filed lawsuits, losing over 63 of them. The right-wing media took up his cause, but it was not going his way. The next plan his allies chose was to have Trump supporters in seven battleground states meet and submit a false slate of electors, and when it came time for Mike Pence, the Vice President, to count and certify the results, he would refuse to count those from the seven states. Trump would be elected outright or Democrats would be upset and Pence would say there was no clear winner so the election would go to the House and the majority of Republicans would put Trump into office. They framed this as a fight between good and evil, but it was a blatant subversion of democracy.
Pence refused to participate, so Trump continued to spread a false narrative about problems with the counts. Even though all ten living former Defense secretaries signed an op-ed warning that using armed forces in resolving election disputes was "dangerous, unlawful and constitutional territory” (152), Trump again did not care.
Trump’s final play was the right-wing, violent mobs he’d been courting. There was a “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse near the White House on January 6th, 2021, and Trump told his supporters to fight harder, to save their democracy, to show strength, to demand Congress do the right thing, and to “fight like hell” (153) or they wouldn’t have a country anymore. He then told them to go to the Capitol.
This was the mythological history the Republicans had been trying to write, the new history of the United States that embraced the hierarchical vision of the Confederates (indeed, one rioter brought the Confederate flag into the Capitol, which had never been done before).
The rioters converged on the building. Frightened lawmakers asked Trump to call off his supporters but he did nothing for three hours. The National Guard was finally deployed without his orders. He issued a message to the supporters, telling them everyone knew he won the election in a landslide and that he loved them and they needed to remember this day forever.
Chapter 20: The Big Lie
All four living ex-presidents called out Trump for inciting the rioters, but Trump refused to back down and the Republican Party refused to abandon him. He’d suffered no consequences for his actions so he began to articulate what scholars call “The Big Lie,” a lie so huge that no one can believe it is false. This is a propaganda tactic used in Nazi Germany, as Hitler had written that people found it much easier to believe a giant lie than a small one because they themselves did not tell giant lies so they had trouble conceiving of others doing that.
These big lies are "springboards for authoritarians. They enable a leader to convince followers that they were unfairly cheated of power by those the leader demonizes” (157). Republicans purged those from their party who didn’t agree, and “Election denier” became a powerful label of loyalty.
This belief of Democrats cheating led Republicans to insist the electoral system was rigged and needed to be strengthened to keep Democrats, especially Black voters, from the polls. The Big Lie also led Republicans to take up a fringe constitutional theory called the “independent state legislature doctrine,” which said it was state legislators alone who chose the presidential electors without having to confer with state constitutions, courts, or governors; this would let Republicans cut Democrats out altogether. If this had been there for 2020, Trump would have won.
Republicans were attacking the liberal consensus by destroying the power of the national government in favor of the states. The Supreme Court, now stacked with originalists, also bolstered states’ rights. They overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), saying that the 14th amendment did not give the federal government power to protect certain civil rights. Worried, Democrats tried to pass federal legislation to protect such things as gay marriage and the use of contraception, but Republicans voted to oppose such laws even though the majority of the American people favored them. Thanks to the Court, the states passed "draconian abortion laws, passed extreme gun laws, and wrote laws prohibiting public school teachers from teaching ‘divisive concepts’” (159).
Richardson concludes that the Republicans looked like the Democrats before the Civil War–promulgating a hierarchical system, insisting on states’ rights and then demanding federal protection for those rights. MAGA Republicans had used authoritarian language and tactics, rewritten history, and ultimately rejected the Declaration of Independence and replaced it with the vision of America held by the Confederates.
Analysis
The second section of the text is a powerful overview of how Trump came to power, what he did with that power, how he lost (some) of that power, and how he gained it back. It is the story of how he erected his political structure on top of the foundation the Republicans from the 20th century built, meaning that he capitalized on an attitude among the populace that had been forming for decades. It is also the story of the contemporary Republican Party, which comes across almost worse than Trump himself in the blatantly obvious way they sacrificed any honor, tradition, and sense of duty to the American people in their craven desire to stay in power.
Like another popular contemporary book, On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, Richardson explains how Trump used (and uses) the tactics of authoritarian leaders to amass and retain his power. Ultimately, he “[made] the leap from the oligarchy to authoritarianism” (94). How did he do this? First, he understood and utilized the power of image and spectacle, his persona more akin to someone on a reality TV show rather than a substantive politician. Second, he “spoke simply and with words that packed a rhetorical punch” (84); there was no need for complexity or nuance if one wanted to appeal to voters’ emotions rather than their reason. Third, he spoke of a “mythological lost world in which [Republicans and their voters] called the shots” (84). The worldview he spoke of “struck a chord with disaffected white Americans who felt as if they’d been left behind since the 1980s” (87).
Fourth, he brilliantly used the media by spreading lies and forcing the media to scramble over them, giving him way more coverage than his opponents. He lied, spread alternative facts, gaslit people, and kept listeners constantly guessing what was real or not, which “destroys their ability to make sense of the world” (95). Fifth, he cozied up to authoritarian Eastern European world powers like Russia and Hungary and encouraged them to meddle in American politics. He ignored the rule of law and “[was] running a shadow foreign policy to advance the president’s interests” (120). Sixth, he purged anyone from his administration and the bureaucracy that disagreed with him, was not sufficiently loyal, or was nonpartisan. Seventh, he cultivated the support of violent American street gangs to terrorize people who disagreed with Trump and to, eventually, try and overturn a democratic election. Eighth, in 2020 he spoke of how electoral politics was rigged to cast aspersions on democracy and rile up his supporters if he lost, but then worked to keep his opponents from voting. Ninth, he tried to use the military to carry out his repressive agenda, as in the Black Lives Matter protests, and to create his own military. And tenth, he tried to rewrite history, overturn a fair election, and ultimately destroy democracy.
Richardson told a Boston interviewer how she felt about the second section of the book: “Once you’ve got the rise of all of the pieces of authoritarianism, then the Trump years are about the construction of an authoritarian government. That is probably what I found most shocking in that book. Once I stripped out all of the noise, I found it just absolutely chilling. We were so freaking close [to losing our democracy]. I thought, dear God, this middle section is so frightening. How many people will make it to the third one, which is a lightning fast trip through American history. That’s the fun one! Maybe I scared people so much that they won’t even get there!” A reviewer in the Journal for Public Affairs writes that “the second section is, indeed, scary, even though we lived through it. Richardson pulls us back into the anxiety, angst, despair and fear of the rise of Christian nationalism, the use of gaslighting opponents, the prioritization of dictators over traditional allies, the trampling of the rule of law, the lives lost, and the ramifications of ‘The Big Lie.’”
The Guardian also found this section very successful, noting: “Richardson is refreshingly direct about the importance of the fascist example to Trump and his Maga movement. When he used the White House to host the Republican convention in 2020, the first lady, Melania Trump, wore a ‘dress that evoked a Nazi uniform.’ And, Richardson writes, the big lie was a ‘key propaganda tool’ for the Nazis, which Hitler himself explained in Mein Kampf, the book Trump may have kept on his night table at Trump Tower (or maybe it was a collection of Hitler’s speeches). Richardson even uses the psychological profile of Hitler by the Office of Strategic Services, the US intelligence agency during the second world war, to remind us of similarities to Trump.”
