It is not easy to take Donald Trump seriously. He’s a buffoon who seemingly has no intellectual curiosity, who moves through the world with made-for-TV bombast. He is a con man who somehow manages to convince scores of people he’s working in their favour. In another life, Trump would be running petty scams and pyramid schemes. In this one, he’s president of the United States.
But just because Trump isn’t trustworthy doesn’t mean he’s not to be believed. Yes, much of what he says is bluster, and much of the rest is simply false. But when he lays out his plans, he usually means what he says. And right now, Trump says he’s considering running for a third term – an unconstitutional move that would throw the US into crisis, and separate the conservatives who are fully on board with the end of American democracy from those who may, deep down, still have the tiniest sliver of decency. The US is already descending into fascism. When Trump says he wants to take us all the way there, we should believe him.
In an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker on 30 March, Trump said that a third term wasn’t out of the question, and that “there are methods which you could do it”. Just in case you thought he might be bluffing, he clarified: “I’m not joking,” Trump said. “But, I’m not – it is far too early to think about it.”
Many Trump supporters meet the president’s most incendiary comments with a kind of practised credulousness, believing what they want and disregarding what doesn’t fit their own desires. Finance leaders cheered when Trump re-entered the White House, despite the president running on two big promises: harsh immigration crackdowns and aggressive tariffs. The bros of Wall Street decided that mass deportations didn’t bother them, and Trump couldn’t possibly be serious about tariffs that anyone who has ever taken so much as an economics 101 class understood would be devastating. After Trump took the White House and made good on his tariff promise, Wall Street reeled with shock.
Meanwhile, a troubling number of people who are experts in authoritarianism are hitting the eject button. Prominent academics Jason Stanley, Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore – who also happen to be fascism researchers – have all recently announced they are leaving Yale for the University of Toronto. Their reasons were not strictly political, they said, but certainly informed by the way American democracy seems to be coming apart – and many of the US’s venerated institutions, including some universities, have been quick to capitulate. Columbia, for example, folded to a series of Trump administration demands to curb student protest, speech and academic freedom. Several large law firms also surrendered to the president, negotiating deals with the White House after Trump threatened to sanction them in an effort to stop what he called any “frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation”.
In the meantime, legal residents of the US are being snatched off the streets and imprisoned or deported with no due process of law, many with no criminal record at all. One make-up artist was recently deported to El Salvador for having alleged gang tattoos – he had a crown on each wrist, with the words “mom” and “dad” below them. Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, in the US on a student visa, was handcuffed on the street by immigration officials and shoved into an unmarked car – the kind of thing that looks an awful lot like a kidnapping or the kind of government-sanctioned disappearance one might see in a violent dictatorship. Öztürk’s crime? Protesting the war in Gaza and writing an op-ed that the administration didn’t like. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree,” the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told reporters questioning about Öztürk’s arrest, “not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.” The administration claims she “engaged in activities in support of Hamas” and revoked her visa. Similar justifications have been used against multiple foreign students.
Concerns about the lack of due process, the political attacks on institutions and Trump’s scheming for a third term have been met with a shrug from most Republicans – and support from many others. Representative Andrew Ogles of Tennessee has introduced legislation that would invalidate part of the US constitution and allow Trump to run again to “sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs”. One recent survey found that more than half of Trump-supporting Republicans think a strongman leader who is not beholden to Congress would be a “fairly” good system of government, and 45 per cent said the same about a strongman leader without Congress or elections. Other surveys have found that, while Republicans generally say presidents should follow court orders, their answers change when the president in question is Trump: a poll in 2024 found that more than half of Republicans believed it would be “a good thing” if he could rule without Congress or the courts; one in March found that more than three-quarters of Republicans say his administration should defy court orders to keep deporting people. Some supporters have taken to extending their arms out and up in a gesture that looks an awful lot like a Nazi salute.
This is no longer creeping authoritarianism. We are in it. Trump supporters are welcoming our new era of fascism with open arms – and sometimes extended ones.
[See also: Bernie Sanders’ long march to failure]
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This article appears in the 02 Apr 2025 issue of the New Statesman, What is school for?