Most political scientists agree that the Trump administration is attempting to build a “competitive authoritarian” dictatorship in the style of Nayib Bukele or Viktor Orbán or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In El Salvador, Hungary, and Turkey, there are nominally still courts and elections and the rule of law. They’re simply tilted overwhelmingly in the ruler’s favor.
Under a competitive autocracy, the opposition could theoretically win power; they just can’t practically do so.
In all those other countries, the authoritarian playbook was a subtle process. The autocrat wins power legitimately, builds up a formidable base of political support, then uses both those things to dismantle the institutions of democracy from within. The most visible repression usually only comes at the end of the process.
Through all of it, popular support is the key to consolidating power.1
Trump is increasingly deviating from that script in two important ways.
One, he is much less popular. When Putin and Orbán were consolidating power, they were genuinely, broadly popular. Trump is not.
The president also doesn’t really seem to mind his low approval ratings. The administration is still pushing hard for economically disastrous tariffs, despite intense public opposition. They’ve done almost nothing to blunt the cost of living, which the electorate consistently voices as its biggest concern (in fact, Trump keeps finding ways to make it worse). His signature piece of legislation is one of the most unpopular bills ever passed by Congress. And the White House keeps getting ensnared in a growing list of scandals — the Epstein files above all.
Two, Trump is jumping straight to overt attempts at repression before he has consolidated power.
Just in the past two weeks we’ve seen:
A shift to openly prosecuting political enemies on baseless charges.
A flailing and frenetic attempt to deploy troops into blue cities by any means necessary, without even the pretext of a crisis.
Increasingly militarized and brutal tactics by ICE.
Plainly illegal threats to retaliate against blue states (and federal workers) unless Democrats vote to fund the government.
A televised, in-person berating of the Pentagon’s chain of command as part of a broader attempt to politicize the military.
The president saying things like “we took the freedom of speech away.”
And he’s elevated this guy to be the central power broker and public spokesperson for his administration:
It seems almost like the White House does not care how bad this all looks.
Three theories of the un-subtlety of Trump’s authoritarianism
How do we explain this? And where does it all lead? Three options:
Theory one: Trump is innovating a new form of competitive authoritarianism. In this theory, Trump has simply realized that subtlety isn’t necessary. Maybe all those other competitive autocrats — Orbán and Erdogan and so on — were simply too cautious, too worried about popularity. Or maybe American voters are much more open to unapologetic tyranny. (Or more distracted. Or disillusioned with democracy. Or unwilling to believe what they’re seeing.)
It could be that the real key to building an autocracy in the U.S. is turbocharging polarization, outrage, obscene transgressions, controversy, and confusion.
Greg Sargent spells out this possibility convincingly in his piece Wednesday: Inside Stephen Miller’s secret plan to normalize Trump’s dictator rule.
Stephen Miller has a theory about this political moment. As President Trump expands his lawbreaking and dictatorial rule, the powerful MAGA disinformation apparatus — at Miller’s direction — is supercharging public attention to the debate over Trump’s conduct in a way that’s designed to deeply polarize it. That will force Americans to take a side in that standoff, Miller clearly believes, driving them to embrace authoritarian rule, though perhaps without understanding it in exactly those terms.
(Emphasis mine.) Read the whole thing.
If this theory is correct, Trump’s historically low poll numbers are an illusion — or the Republicans will tilt the electoral playing field enough, e.g. through gerrymandering, to pull off surprising wins in 2026 and 2028. Same endgame as Hungary, just more chaos.
Theory two: Trump’s skipping right over competitive authoritarianism. Instead of trying to manipulate his way to popular support, the president has given up on it. He is pivoting to consolidating power by force alone.
He is no longer concerned about future elections because he does not intend for there to be future elections — at least not in a meaningful sense. We’re seeing the groundwork for future Jan. 6-style coup attempts. That’s why he’s so concerned with the Pentagon, DHS, and the Justice Department: He believes they will be his foot soldiers when that day comes.
If Trump succeeds, it would blow us past the “hybrid” regimes of competitive authoritarianism and turn the United States into an outright dictatorship. No vestiges of democracy, no pretending.
To be clear, this would be extraordinarily difficult to accomplish. It’s an open question if the many actors Trump would need to convince — the military, the business community, and yes, even Congress and the Supreme Court — would ever be willing to go along with it. But normalizing the previously unthinkable (politicized prosecutions, troops on the streets) may be a key step to making that happen.
As Jonathan V. Last writes this week, reflecting on the Pentagon brass’ stony response to Trump’s tirades:
For me, the very act of having to engage on the existential question suggests that we are further along than people may realize. If you have to say that a second coup attempt probably won’t work, you are implicitly granting that (a) a second coup attempt is possible and that (b) it could conceivably succeed.
Theory three: There is no strategy. Donald Trump is an almost 80-year-old man. Unlike Putin and Orbán, he’s never had a truly viable plan to consolidate power. While some of this was planned out (especially in Project 2025), the main thrust is improvisation built on a life of televised dominance games. The only thing the president knows how to do is try to overcome his enemies by cartoonish intimidation tactics, and so that’s what he’s doing. It’s worked for him so far, but there’s no real logic to these escalations beyond Trump’s instincts and the desire of sycophants around him to keep up
Maybe this whole conversation — even trying to apply a grand strategy to Trump’s authoritarian agenda — is the anti-Trump equivalent of the “intellectual zamboni.”2
Even if this is true, it should not necessarily be a reassurance. All it means is we have genuinely no idea where this leads — because Trump himself does not know where this is going.
Read more: Are we on the road to repression? Or ruin?
I’m not sure if anyone knows which is accurate. It may be a combination. It may be that different people in the administration are pulling in different directions. (I’d bet the vice president leans theory one, Stephen Miller theory two, the president theory three.)
It also may not really matter — we must respond to all of the above, simultaneously. But let me know what you think in the comments below (or join us on the Live to discuss).
Chicago is now ground zero
The Windy City is, right now, the Trump administration’s focus for increasingly transparent and overt repression.
For more on the situation, read Amanda’s piece: The ‘Chipocalypse’ is now.
This week, Protect Democracy went to court to stop (at least some of) this lawlessness.
Here’s Shalini Agarwal, who leads our free expression and right to dissent team, on why we and our clients sued:
Our clients are people exercising their constitutional rights to speak, assemble, petition, gather news, and freely practice their religious beliefs. They were targeted with extreme brutality by federal agents precisely because they chose to exercise these storied American rights.
For example: A minister in clerical garb was shot in the head with pepper balls by a rooftop sniper without warning, while in a gesture of prayer, and then doused in the face with chemical spray.
A journalist outside an ICE facility was shot in the face with a pepper ball that burst a blood vessel in her nose. Her fiance was arrested while in a designated “free speech zone,” then driven half a mile away and released.
A photographer in Brighton Park had tear gas canisters and flash bang grenades thrown at him as he was documenting protest activities and was then instructed to leave or be arrested.
The judge yesterday granted an emergency order prohibiting federal agents throughout the Northern District of Illinois from using physical force, riot control weapons, or unwarranted dispersal techniques against lawful protestors; and it requires federal agents to wear visible identification. Here’s what she had to say:
Whatever lawlessness is occurring is not occurring by peaceful protestors. [T]he actions taken by some of these federal agents at this point and on this record clearly violate the constitution. Individuals are allowed to protest. They are allowed to speak. That is guaranteed by the First Amendment to our constitution. It is a bedrock right that upholds our democracy. We’re here today to ensure that federal agents and the defendants receive the guidance they need to conform their actions with the law and the constitution.
Again, if you want to hear more about what’s happening in Chicago and what it means for our democracy, join me, Ansley Skipper, and Beau Tremitiere live at 3:30ET/12:30PT today.
Retaliation alert:
A new entry on our retaliatory actions tracker.
How does this compare to James’s own successful prosecution of Trump on civil fraud charges? Here’s Andrew Egger:
We should be clear about this. There is no comparison between the acts Letitia James took as attorney general of New York to hit Trump’s companies and the ones he is now taking to hit “back” at her…
When people accuse James of “lawfare,” or of pursuing a “politicized” civil fraud case against Trump, they mean that she pursued that case with a zeal they believe she would not have shown against another target. Could be! But her fundamental case, as the New York Times noted last month, was not unreasonable. It was rooted in sworn testimony Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen had made before Congress that Trump habitually inflated the value of his properties to get favorable treatment in loans. She won her civil case against Trump at trial. This year, an appeals court vacated the financial penalty the initial judge had handed down, but did not vacate Trump’s civil liability. Trump had his day to argue in court that James’s investigations into him were vindictive and politically motivated—and the courts threw that argument out.
For more on Protect Democracy’s three-part test to spot retaliation, see: Is it law enforcement or is it retribution?
What else we’re tracking:
Protect Democracy has a comprehensive new resource on court orders, noncompliance, and attacks on the judiciary: The Trump administration’s conflict with the courts, explained.
Trump’s threats to jail foes take darker turn with damning new DOJ leaks. Listen to Protect Democracy’s Kristy Parker on Greg Sargent’s Daily Blast podcast.
MIT was the first school to reject the administration’s proposed “compact” — their response letter is a masterclass and should be emulated by every serious university.
A former Republican election official has purchased Dominion, the voting machine company that President Trump baselessly attacked in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Evidence of further political cracks: Oklahoma’s Republican governor criticized the Trump administration’s deployment of Texas National Guard troops to Chicago. (Vermont’s Republican governor went even further, calling the deployments unconstitutional.)
The next No Kings protest is October 18.
What you can do to help:
Joyce Vance summarizes a thing you can do right now to help protect the right to vote.
The EAC is considering adopting a requirement that voters show a passport or other proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. … [O]btaining proof of citizenship can be expensive, like obtaining a passport, which is out of reach for many voters. And it can become complicated, especially for women who may have changed their name when they married or students whose paperwork may be at home with their parents, not with them, where they vote.…
However, there are actions we can take right now to prevent this from happening. The EAC is accepting public comments on this issue. Anti-voter advocates have flooded their website with one-sided and misleading comments. We can fight back with comments of our own. Go here (let’s all go!) and explain our view on this subject, click here.
Submitting comments on federal regulations is not at all like other internet comments. These comments matter. It’s one of the most effective ways to make your voice heard.
Here’s our guide to what makes an effective public comment.
File yours today. Get your friends to do the same. The deadline is Oct. 20.
In this week’s Democracy Atlas, Michael Angeloni explores how even in Zimbabwe, one of the most helplessly entrenched dictatorships, public opinion is still important. As he writes, “Autocrats are susceptible to negative public opinion (that’s why they try to suppress the media), and they crave validation. This includes, counterintuitively, the validation of electoral victories, which they use to bolster their credibility.”
That’s Jon Lovett’s helpful term for the ostensibly serious Trump supporters, JD Vance and Mike Johnson and the like, who retroactively translate the president’s word salad into sane-ish arguments.
It never occurred to me that there might be a theory regarding what Trump is doing, but these, as disturbing as they are, make sense. I had to remember that they don't exist in a vacuum; lots of people are pushing back forcefully against Trump through protests, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits, Town halls when they occur, and voting in all the elections that have taken place since January 20. All this gives me some hope as does the fact that the anti-Trump Side has competent people of intellectual integrity and creativity
Option Four: Trump knows he's very sick and likely to die before the end of his term and is trying to grab as much money, consolidate as much power, and enact as much revenge as he possibly can before he dies. He doesn't really care what happens after that.