One hundred days of autocracy

The first 100 days of Donald Trump ’s second term will be remembered as a maelstrom of provocation, brazen power grabs and rolling chaos.

Lucan Way , a distinguished professor at the University of Toronto and co-author of Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism, tells me.

Way sees Trump attempting to implement the same authoritarian tactics from the moment he returned to power.

US is now a competitive authoritarian system, with Trump embracing a strategy of “autocratic legalism” Under this approach leaders are freely elected in fair elections before embarking on what Scheppele called a “blitz of legality” Trump ’s current approval rating is 42 per cent , a historic low for a US president in the first 100 days .

It is possible to argue that Trump has already blown it that his presidency is unravelling under the weight of his reckless approach to the economy and democratic norms.

But both Way and Scheppele caution against a failure of imagination in assuming that Trump will not try to hold on to power.

Trump ’s defenders insist that his repeated musings about running for a third term are solely a ploy to provoke hysteria amongst Democrats and “own the libs”.