President Donald Trump on Monday denied that he aspires to be a dictator.
But at the same time, he decided to make a related point: that lots of people actually seem to want a dictator.
“And they say … ‘He’s a dictator. He’s a dictator,’” the president said of his critics. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’ I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator.”
Why did Trump add this addendum? Maybe he’s being provocative. Or maybe the guy who has repeatedly suggested he should have absolute power and gone to great lengths to expand his power is planting a seed that it might be a good thing – even a popular thing.
What we can say, though, is that Trump is more or less right. Many people are increasingly entertaining the idea of a dictator. They are his supporters.
They don’t necessarily say, “Yes, I want a dictator.” But polling shows Republicans have edged in that direction – to a pretty remarkable degree.
And that’s allowed Trump to keep poking and prodding for a broad new grant of presidential authorities with little pushback from a base that once prided itself on limited government and federalism.
Perhaps the most startling poll on this came last year. A University of Massachusetts Amherst survey asked about Trump’s comment that he wanted to be a dictator, but only for a day. Trump said it was a joke, but 74% of Republicans endorsed the idea.
Okay, that was only for a day. That’s a pretty limited form of dictatorship. And maybe some people felt they were getting in on the “joke” by endorsing it to a pollster.
But there’s plenty more where that came from. When you ask such questions in more nuanced ways, you find that the Trump-era GOP is increasingly authoritarian-curious, at the very least.
Polls generally show more than half of Republicans say they want fewer checks on Trump’s power, and upwards of one-third endorse some version of unchecked power.
Let’s start with that first part.
A Pew Research Center poll early this year showed 59% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents agreed that many of the country’s problems could be better solved “if Donald Trump didn’t have to worry so much about Congress and the courts.”
That’s a larger number than two polls that asked a similar question last year, but all showed a majority of Republicans endorsing this sentiment. The number in the Pew poll spiked to 78% among Republicans who identified with the GOP “strongly.”
Saying Trump should face fewer hurdles, of course, isn’t the same as saying he should be a dictator.
But when you dig a little deeper, you’ll find a significant number of Republicans endorsing that kind of power – as many 3 or 4 in 10.
Some of the most striking findings on this:
- 44% of Republicans said the courts shouldn’t even be allowed to review Trump’s policies, according to a CBS News-YouGov poll earlier this year.
- 28% of Republicans said a president should be able to ignore Congress or the Supreme Court when those institutions “hold our country back,” an Axios/PRRI poll around the same time showed.
- 36% of Republicans said they wouldn’t be at all bothered if Trump were to “suspend some laws and constitutional provisions to go after political enemies,” a Monmouth University poll in December showed. (Just 23% said they would be “bothered a lot” by this; the rest were in the middle.)
- 28% of Republicans said the country needed a president who was “willing to break some rules and laws to set things right,” per a late 2023 Fox News poll.
- 24% of Republicans said ahead of the 2024 election that if Trump lost, he should “do whatever it takes” to take power, according to another PRRI poll.
So to sum up, around one-quarter of Republicans – or more – have endorsed the idea of Trump seizing power, breaking laws and violating the Constitution when necessary, and being completely unchecked by Congress and the courts.
(And to be clear, this isn’t just a matter of lots of people not understanding the concept of checks and balances. When pollsters have asked these kinds of questions broadly about presidents and not Trump, Democrats have been significantly less likely than Republicans to embrace these ideas.
So where does this leave us with Trump’s new comments?
They help explain why Republicans don’t push back on Trump’s power grabs. In that way, the president is pointing to a very real phenomenon.
But it’s also not ridiculous to think Trump might be pointing to support for dictators for a very specific reason: to legitimize his power grabs. Trump often uses the “many people are saying” construct to promote ideas he likes, after all.
If many people more or less want a dictator, maybe it’s not so extreme for him to be asking for more unchecked power?
It’s also worth noting the context in which Trump is lodging this. There is a growing argument in more extreme portions of the right that the country is marching inexorably toward a more authoritarian brand of government. (See: Tucker Carlson last week.)
To the extent people embrace that idea, it’s not a big logical leap to think your side should do the authoritarianism before the other side can.
We’ll see if Trump keeps fertilizing this seed he’s planted. All of the above shows how much that’s worth paying attention to.
