Commander in cheat
The through-line from 2020 to 2025 is a disdain for any outcome where Trump (or his party) might lose. Rather than accept losing with grace — a fundamental norm in democracy — Trump insists the rules be changed until he wins. This is the antithesis of the mutual toleration that democracy requires. It treats political opposition as illegitimate and voters as pawns to be shuffled around for one party’s advantage.
When reality contradicts the rosy narrative he demands, Trump demands loyalty above factuality.
Autocrats frequently dismiss or censor statisticians who report bad news. As Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer put it, “What does a bad leader do when they get bad news? Shoot the messenger.” Trump has made clear that, in his government, loyalty means saying the numbers he wants to hear — even if that means fudging reality. An honest civil servant is deemed a traitor if the data doesn’t flatter the leader. This attitude is poisonous to democracy, which relies on facts being reported plainly and institutions operating at arm’s length from partisan pressure.
The role of the president in our new American imperial system is to consolidate power by putting his people in charge of the game. You can rig an election by changing the district boundaries so that voters have no hope of getting representatives from the opposition party, and by suppressing or changing the official statistics we use to tell stories about the economy.
And to be clear, this is not a question of policy outcomes or political correctness. Democracy is on the line.
In the view of the authoritarian leader, democracy is something to be undermined, a referee to be bribed, not a method by which legitimate opponents can derive power from the people. To Trump, the only legitimate outcome is the one where he comes out on top. Anything that undermines that end is now a threat. That means that he will say that elections are rigged when he’s losing, and that he’ll fire the referees when he’s caught scoring an own-goal. Just like the only legitimate election is one where Trump wins, the only legitimate data now is data that shows him succeeding.
The unified theory of Trumpism is that loyalty to Trump is not simply a product of party competition of political game theory; loyalty to Trump is the ideology. Trump himself is now effectively the entirety of the Republican Party’s platform. If this were not politics, and if American journalists did not have a false pressure toward neutrality, we would call what has happened to the GOP under Trump a personality cult, not a political program. Any policy, principle, or person that conflicts with Trump’s will is disposable. From data to districts, from bureaucrats to ballots, all must serve the Leader or be cast aside. That’s not a party, that’s a cult.
The MAGA prioritization of blind loyalty to Trump is simply not compatible with republican democracy. So the two will not coexist for long. Democracies require acceptance of pluralism, compromise, and reality. Trumpism offers intolerance, absolutism, and factlessness. The two are on a collision course, and unless more people of conscience in the GOP and beyond pull the emergency brake, we may careen past a point of no return.