Trump wants Americans to sit up at attention when he speaks

[pbrower2a]

We laugh, but remember it was a visit to NK that convinced Ceausescu to become a dictator.

Worth remembering. Ceausescu was not quite the murderer that any member of the Kim dynasty was, but he was horrible.

[TDAS04]

I’m hopeful that our democratic institutions are strong enough to prevent Trump from becoming a dictator, no matter how much he clearly wants to be one.

[pbrower2a]

This seems like a joke, albeit an extremely distasteful and weird one

How many times do we have to hear "he's just joking" about his tyrannical aspirations?

And note that "he's just joking", even if said by Trump himself is not any sort of apology or retraction.

I seem to remember reading that not that long ago, 'I was just joking' was used as a cover for all sorts of bigoted behavior here in the US.

Idi A-murderin' (Idi Amin) showed that sort of humor.

[Progressive Pessimist]

I’m hopeful that our democratic institutions are strong enough to prevent Drumpf from becoming a dictator, no matter how much he clearly wants to be one.

Unfortunately our system relies on checks and balances between the branches of government, and one branch in particular is failing miserably at their job to check the President.

[Virginiá]

I’m hopeful that our democratic institutions are strong enough to prevent Drumpf from becoming a dictator, no matter how much he clearly wants to be one.

Unfortunately our system relies on checks and balances between the branches of government, and one branch in particular is failing miserably at their job to check the President.

At this point it is fair to say that any check on the presidency that requires the president's party to do the checking is automatically useless. I don't know exactly how much Democratic voters would put up with from a Democratic president, but it's becoming pretty clear that Congressional Republicans would stand by Trump through just about anything so long as he maintains favor with Republican voters. If Trump somehow found the means and rationale to suspend the next presidential election, I would seriously doubt that Congressional Republicans would turn on him en masse so long as he offered some sort of justification that the base accepted. They don't want to upset the base and lose their jobs, so they'd begrudgingly participate in the end of America's democratic system so long as they thought they could cling to power through the worst of it.

I think we need to amend the constitution to introduce another check. I always liked the idea of SCOTUS being able to appoint a special prosecutor for the worst cases of abuse.