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Whether the quote is trolling or not, many in the X/Twitter replies were taking it at face value and affirming their support of the underlying sentiment. Someone in another thread said we need a "Kremlinology" of Trump that is attuned to knowing when to take what he says seriously or literally, and I agree in this case.
I would argue that if Trump is being literal with this tweet, then he is basically positioning himself as a "dictator" in the original Roman sense of the word. Someone imbued with emergency powers in order to save the republic in a crisis. The problem is that nobody actually appointed him to do that. Like, you could argue the American people did, but a 51/49 victory should not a Roman-style dictator make. 51/49 is "reform immigration, lower taxes, use the bully pulpit to get as much of your agenda through congress as possible" territory. It is not, "take all the power you need to save our republic, but please give it back when you're done" territory.
I simply do not share the belief that Trump couldn't have done most of what he wanted to do with the Republican majority congress and Supreme Court. He just chose to do it in a legally dubious method instead, and that's the main thing that concerns me.
EDIT: There's also the component where he's posting it on Lupercalia (Feb 15), the same day Mark Antony tried to crown Ceasar king. Even if it is god-tier trolling, then I've got to say I'm not amused. I actually care about my republic. (Thanks /u/SoonToBeBanned for reminding me of the Lupercalia connection.)
Ah, Twitter drama. Still don't care.
The US doesn't work all that much like Rome; we have no dictator, and no consuls to appoint them.
I beg to differ. While we don't have the formal office, I would argue that both Abraham Lincoln and FDR both arguably fill the "dictator" role in American politics. Though of course, the American tradition is for the "dictator" to die or be killed in office, rather than to have them voluntarily cede power back to the republic.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I think Trump is definitively a dictator in the Roman style. I'm saying that one reading of his Napoleon tweet is that he's positioning himself as a Roman-style dictator, thus justifying the extra-legal way in which he had been advancing his agenda these past few weeks.
While I have expressed my concerns on the Motte about the health of our republic as a result of Trump's actions, I don't think the republic is quite dead yet. Our republic was already sick from an Imperial Presidency, and a cycle of Crisis and Leviathan, but the way Trump has chosen to carry out his agenda is increasingly worrying, and I'm someone who mostly lurked on the Motte during the Trump I years and agreed with the consensus about Trump Derangement Syndrome.
If Trump had just used his Republican majority in Congress and the Supreme Court to push through a legislative agenda through the usual means, I would have mostly just rolled with the punches and shrugged my shoulders. Republics, what can you do? But he's bypassed congress, and seems to be hell bent on doing as much as he can on his own. Even if the administrative state needed a serious culling, I would have been much happier if it had been done via Congress and the Courts, instead of by another executive embodying the worst aspects of the Imperial Presidency.
This is not the original Roman sense of the word.
And another reading is that he is denying that he is engaging in extra-legal activity at all.
He would get nowhere. Nothing would happen. He does not even have a majority; Congress is split three ways, between Democrats, MAGA Republicans, and non-MAGA Republicans.
Congress did not create much of what Trump has been going after -- it's either discretionary or entirely the creation of the executive. You will not find a line item in any bill appropriating funding for a transgender opera in Colombia. If Congress did not create it, it should not take Congress to tear it down. The demand that it should is just a ratchet which allows things to grow but not shrink, or allows Democrats to do things but that Republicans not undo them.
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