Donald Trump's Autocratic One-Man Government Regime is Doomed to Failure, but Not Before a Lot of Chaos and Destruction
Tuesday July 1, 2025
By Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, Emeritus professor of economics, Université de Montréal
"I won't be a dictator, except for day one." Donald Trump (1946- ), during an interview with Fox News, December 6, 2023.
"If it is forced to defend itself (the U.S.) or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea." Donald Trump (1946- ), in a speech at the United Nations, September 19, 2017.
"If they [Iran] don't make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before." Donald Trump (1946- ), in a NBC News phone interview, March 30, 2025, with similar threats repeated on June 15, 2025, on his social media site Truth Social.
"We will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens." Donald Trump (1946- ), in his inaugural speech, January 20, 2025.
"Trade wars are good and easy to win." Donald Trump (1946- ), comment made on Twitter, March 2, 2024.
I- Every hundred years or so, there seems to be a cycle of the death of a democracy and the rise of a dictatorship in an important country
The British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975)) observed that "civilisations die by suicide, not by murder", as a result of moral decay, social strife or failure to adapt.
The same could be said of democracies. They are born, grow, prosper, age, and sometimes collapse and give way to plutocracies or to dictatorships. This is especially likely when democracies fail to solve major economic and social problems.
Indeed, over the past few centuries, a political revolution or a wave of collective madness or of collective ignorance have occasionally led to a dictatorship in a given country. At the beginning of the 19th century, this was the case in France, in 1804, with the consecration of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), of Corsican origin.
In the 20th century, it was Russia's turn to have a revolutionary government, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924), after the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. This was followed by Joseph Stalin's (1878-1953) absolute dictatorship from 1924 to 1953. —Then Italy descended also into a totalitarian dictatorship in 1925, under Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) —followed by Germany, in 1933, with the rise to power of the dictator of Austrian origin, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945).
—In the 21st century, against all odds, it is the United States that is now facing the prospect of an autocratic government.
It is always a challenge for a democracy to survive over time. Given the right circumstances, even the best constitutions can be violated and trampled upon.
History is there to remind us that democracy, that is, in the time-honored phrase of President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), when we have a "government of the people, by the people and for the people" (in his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863), is not necessarily a fundamentally natural and stable reality.
In fact, oligarchies, plutocracies, would-be dictators and their allies may sometimes find it to their advantage to seize power in a country and to subjugate the population. [N.B.: The average intelligence quotient in a large population, i.e. the IQ score, is around 100. (It is currently in decline in Western countries.) Therefore, there could be many possibilities for some unscrupulous people to manipulate large segments of the population to their advantage.]
II-Donald Trump the Politician: His dangerous character and personality flaws
The current occupant of the White House, Donald Trump (1946- ), seems to have ambitioned to transfer his one-man business model into a one-man US government model, and thus satisfy his innate fixation and low instincts for predation, extortion, exploitation and domination.
Moreover, it has been widely reported that his first wife Ivana confirmed that he kept a book of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's speeches, 'My New Order', on his bedside table.
There could be some similarity between Trump's authoritarianism and anti-democratic and neo-imperialist tendencies, and those of past dictators, considering his hyper egotistical personality and his populist and ultra-nationalist, sometimes violent, rhetoric.
The aid and support that D. Trump gave to the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021, and to their assault on the Capitol in their attempt to reverse the electoral results of 2020, and the fact that he pardoned almost all of them on January 21, 2025, add weight to this assessment.
Moreover, Donald Trump is the first person criminally convicted to occupy the White House, and he has also been condemned 34 times as a felon besides being widely considered an autocrat.
III- Donald Trump would seem to be unqualified to be President of the United States
One would have to be asleep, blind, deaf or very distracted not to see that politician D. Trump is not a normal and balanced individual, let alone a steady person of integrity, empathy, decency, competence, humility, prudence and responsibility.
Since his inauguration on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump has been a factor of chaos unto himself and a great source of political, economic and financial instability, not only for the United States but for all countries that have relations with his country.
With his impetuous pronouncements, his lies and boastings, insults, incendiary threats and bully tactics, D. Trump has revealed a whole series of personality disorders that should be of concern in a head of government. —He doesn't seem to have friends, only servants and potential enemies whom he insults in order to discredit them, humiliate them, destabilize and silence them.
Moreover, while acting as an autocrat, like other autocrats before him, Donald Trump can be expected to launch his country into unprovoked and illegal wars of aggression against other nations, if this is to his advantage.
Conclusion
Democracy is presently threatened in some Western countries, notably in the United States.
There is a real danger that the ominous move to plutocracy on the date of January 21, 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court opened the floodgates to unlimited amounts of money in American electoral politics, could one day lead to the instauration of an autocratic form of government in the United States.
The risk exists that current President Donald Trump and his administration of sycophants and rich oligarchs could push the US Constitution aside and could behave as de facto autocrats, thus imposing a one-man centralized Trump administration, while challenging the courts to stop them.
There is also a very great risk that such an individual, deeply self-centered, constantly self-congratulating and lacking in judgment and morals, could become the most serious risk to peace, creating chaos not only in his own country but also in the world.
As a general rule, an incompetent politician who surrounds himself with competent advisors can get by. However, if he is short-sighted enough to surround himself with like-minded people, failure becomes a certainty and disasters are bound to follow.
Let us hope that Americans could have the courage to save their country and save their Constitution, their democracy, and the rule of law, as well as their freedom and their prosperity. The world would only be a better place for it.
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International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals "The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles" of the book about geopolitics "The New American Empire", and of his recent book, in French, "La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018".
He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.