For Strongmen like Trump, Holding Office is a Means of Committing Crimes with Impunity

Getting away with crime and becoming untouchable is the essence of authoritarianism

“They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you. And I am the only one that can save this nation because you know they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you. And I just happened to be standing in their way. And I will never be moving.”

And so, another chapter opens of former president Donald Trump's version of the authoritarian playbook. The remarks he made to supporters at his Bedminster, N.J. golf club after his post-indictment arraignment in Miami on June 13 may have seemed spontaneous. Yet they are carefully calibrated. They continue the propaganda points and emotional manipulation that have allowed his leader cult and his bonds with his followers to endure more than two years after leaving office.

Yet Trump is in the middle of the strongman's worst nightmare —an indictment that could lead to a conviction and jail sentence— and his rhetoric has accordingly escalated. Everything he is doing and saying right now has one goal: getting him back into the White House so that he can realize the strongman's dream of committing crimes with impunity and neutralize anyone and anything that can harm him.

The purpose of holding office for strongmen like Trump is not governance, but having the power to get away with crime.

This is the essence of authoritarianism, a political system that converts rule of law and democratic institutions, like the judiciary, into bludgeons to use against the press, prosecutors, investigators and others who can expose the corruption of the leader and his allies.

Conventionally corrupt politicians think twice before running for office while under investigation: why risk the spotlight, opposition research and a ruined reputation? That’s not how strongmen roll. Their corruption often prompts their entry into politics and they are always laser-focused on creating the conditions for their legal and financial problems to vanish once and for all.

Trump ran for president in 2016 while his Trump University fraud case was active (he settled it for $25 million in 2018). Trump's kindred spirits Vladimir Putin, Silvio Berlusconi, and Benjamin Netanyahu acted similarly. It was no surprise that Netanyahu made "judicial reform" his cause as soon as he got back into office.

Trump's vow at Bedminster to "totally obliterate the Deep State" is along these lines (the "deep state" including investigative and prosecutorial entitles such as the FBI and the DOJ) and is entirely self-serving.

The first Fascist dictatorship came in being under similar circumstances. Benito Mussolini was prime minister of a democracy when a special investigation incriminated him in the 1924 murder of Italian Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti (which he ordered and his thugs carried out). To avoid the ruin of his political career, Il Duce declared dictatorship in 1925.

Then he replaced the impartial magistrates with Fascist-friendly ones who decreed him guilty only of involuntary manslaughter, clearing him of direct responsibility for the crime and setting him up to rule without limitations on his power. Pardoning all political criminals later that year, including the blackshirt thugs whose violence brought him into office in the first place, completed the cycle.

In Trump's case, he missed his first chance to be Il Duce 2.0. His coup failed and now he is unprotected from the exercise of justice and the rule of law. His victimhood ideology and the mass indoctrination of Americans by Fox and other media sources has kept him the front-runner for the GOP nomination by a wide margin. The indictment did not affect his standing, polls show.

Yet with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his former VP Mike Pence, and other GOP elites running against him, he has to keep his devotees' loyalty and his victimhood cult going.

Savior and victim: A Trump supporter shows his faith outside the federal courthouse during the former president’s arraignment, Miami, June 13, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.

Authoritarianism requires that enemies be depicted as existential threats. "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore," Trump told his followers just before they assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, joining the multitudes who have committed violence on a strongman's behalf.

In his remarks at Bedminster, Trump declared, "they're not coming after me, they're coming after you." It's not enough for him to be under duress; this will be a long-haul legal proceeding, and some of his followers might tire of it.

The smart demagogue turns the threat onto the crowd, letting them know they are the targets: they will be silenced and unfree without him. Luckily, he will never let that happen and is ready to take the fall for them. "I will never be moving," he tells them, repeating his recent comment about continuing to run for president even if convicted: "I will never leave."  

And indeed, Trump won't leave the White House if he returns to the presidency, since he will quickly do what he needs to make himself beyond prosecution. In the meantime, he will seek to create as much turmoil and civil strife as possible to build an appetite in Americans for a savior who will make all the chaos stop. That, too, is part of the authoritarian playbook, and it never ends well.