Five days after narrowly escaping assassination, Donald Trump will accept his presidential nomination before a crowd of supporters on Thursday, marking his final act of transforming the Republican Party into the Party of Trump.
His death has fuelled a growing quasi-religious fervour among party loyalists, turning him from a political leader into a man they believe is protected by God.
“Trump, Trump, Trump,” chanted attendees each night this week as he appeared in Milwaukee, his right ear bandaged, and listened to one speaker after another speak reverently about him and credit God for his survival from a would-be assassin’s bullet.
Republicans are uniting behind him this week. With most dissent suppressed and his grip on the party stronger than ever, if he wins the November 5 election, Trump will be in a stronger position to advance his agenda than he was during his 2017-2021 term.
Unconstrained by the internal divisions that sometimes hampered him in his first term, Trump will be more free to pursue hardline policies, including mass deportations to crack down on illegal immigration, aggressive trade policies, and the dismissal of government officials seen as insufficiently loyal.
Even if Trump recaptures the White House, Republicans control both houses of Congress, and conservatives retain a majority on the Supreme Court, there will still be institutional control over a Trump second term.
Constitutional experts say they can be checked by Congress, the courts and the public, which elects a new Congress every two years and a president every four years.
Still, many Trump supporters want to see a strong president.
“You need a strong leader at the top,” said Bill Dowd, a 79-year-old timber businessman who was a guest of the Colorado delegation in Milwaukee.
“I’m a big fan of Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan also unified the party,” Dowd said.
Dowd acknowledged that some of his Republican friends fear Trump might try to abuse his power. He said that while he does not fear that, he believes dissent in either party should not be stifled.
For Trump’s critics and political opponents, this is a dark and troubling moment: They see the modern Republican Party as a personality cult, a base through which Trump can advance extreme policies and create America’s first truly imperial presidency, threatening the future of its democratic norms.
Ammar Moussa, a campaign spokesman for Trump’s Democratic rival and incumbent President Joe Biden, said, “Donald Trump has called for the Constitution to be ‘abolished,’ promised to be a ‘dictator’ from day one, and now his Supreme Court justices say he can rule without any checks on his power.”
“Trump is a liar, but we believe him when he says he will rule like a dictator,” Moses said.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the Democratic Party’s claims that Trump is a threat to American democracy and would become a dictator if re-elected were “fear mongering” and “a clear attempt to deceive the American people.”
An unrepresentative Trump
In Milwaukee, nearly all of the 30 delegates, guests and elected Republicans interviewed by Reuters for this story acknowledged that their party has become the party of Trump, but rejected suggestions that it had become a cult-like party.
“I believe President Trump is a transformative figure, a man of destiny, a man who was saved by God from death on Saturday,” said Rep. Ed Tarpley of Louisiana. “He has been given a special mission in our country. The divine hand of God has given Donald Trump a unique status.”
Those interviewed said they wanted a President Trump who was not constrained by bureaucracy or Congress in implementing his agenda. They favored more extensive use of executive action — decisions made by the president that do not require congressional approval.
He wants nothing to stand in the way of his plans to deport millions of people living illegally in the country and reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy. During his first term, Trump often complained about “deep state” bureaucrats he said were trying to thwart him.
Tarpley said, “The president … must be allowed to implement his policies free of bureaucracy that opposes him and unelected officials who don’t agree with him.”
However, there are constitutional limits to what Trump can do through the power of his office, and any policies could still face lawsuits.
“I think the critics’ fears are exaggerated, in the sense that they’re more concerned about the substance of his potential policies than whether they would be adopted through unilateral executive action,” said Stewart Baker, a former U.S. National Security Agency general counsel.
His opponents say that even if Trump goes too far, they can rely on the federal courts to stop him.
“We’re aware of the fact that we have a very conservative Supreme Court. But what we’ve found is that even judges appointed by Trump have ruled against his policies and found them to be illegal,” said Kika Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center.
Half of Republican respondents in a Reuters/Ipsos poll this week said they agreed with the statement that “the country is in crisis and needs a strong president who should be allowed to govern without too much interference from the courts and Congress.”
This was significantly higher than the opinion of 35% of Democrats and 33% of independents who agreed with this sentiment.
Only one person at the conference interviewed by Reuters, a senior Republican from a southern state, said he was worried about a second Trump administration. He said he feared Trump would become a dictator, fill government agencies with yes-men, and take revenge on his political enemies.
“This effort will be catastrophic,” the Republican, who asked not to be named, said, referring to Trump’s promise to supporters that he would be their “vengeance.”
Trump was widely criticized for saying during the campaign that he would become a “dictator” if he won – even if only for a day; he later said this was a joke.
Democrats have slammed him for promising to pardon his supporters jailed for the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was triggered by his refusal to accept his defeat in the 2020 election.
Trump, who was convicted of paying a former porn star to keep quiet and faces charges related to efforts to overturn Biden’s victory, has threatened to use the Justice Department to harass opponents, including Biden. Trump has pleaded innocent to the charges.
Former Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson said he was concerned about the lack of sanctions on Trump in a second term.
“The Justice Department is probably the perfect example. Clearly, President Trump will have a close hand in directing the activities of the Justice Department,” Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor, told Reuters.
Making ‘Nixon Blush’
Presidential historian Timothy Naftali said the consequences of a second Trump term are extremely troubling for the US and the world. Naftali was the former director of Richard Nixon’s presidential library, who resigned in disgrace in 1974 after the Watergate scandal.
Naftali said a recent Supreme Court ruling that gives the president broad immunity for most actions while in office, and the Republican Party’s leniency, means there are limited sanctions against Trump if he acts maliciously and abuses the presidency for his personal power and political vendetta.
“He could destroy the Justice Department and launch a campaign of revenge that would put even Nixon to shame,” Naftali said.
Of course, Trump would not be the first president to test the limits of executive power. Leaders including former Democratic presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama have taken a broader view of their authority.
Even with the high court’s July 1 ruling on presidential immunity, Trump will still be bound by the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers, which reserves key functions for Congress and the judiciary.
Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee and Trump’s daughter-in-law, acknowledged this week that governing by executive action — which could be overturned in the courts or by a successor — was not ideal. That’s why it was crucial for Republicans to retain control of the House of Representatives and take the Senate from Democrats in November, she said, “so that we don’t have to rely on executive action and we can actually see some lasting change.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
