Jeff Robbins

By JEFF ROBBINS

Syndicated Columnist

Seems like only yesterday when warnings that Donald Trump qualified as a neo-fascist and that what he was selling qualified as neo-fascism guaranteed rolled eyes, dismissals that the warnings were hysterical and cries of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a neat little expression utilized by those who argued that the evidence in front of our faces wasn’t there.

Addressing a group of young people in 2019, Trump provided a civics lesson at sharp variance with what they had learned in school. “I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” he told them.

It wasn’t the first time he’d claimed to have absolute power as president. “(The Constitution) allows me to do whatever I want,” he’d told ABC News earlier. Fox host Sean Hannity tried to cajole Trump into walking back his repeated vows to be the “retribution president,” encouraging him to promise “that you would never abuse power as retribution against anyone.” Trump declined. “Except on day 1,” he replied.

Day 1 has lasted well into Trump’s second administration, and we ain’t seen nothing yet. We were warned about this in no uncertain terms by those in a position to know, who bluntly described Trump as a “fascist.”

Just weeks before the 2024 election, Trump’s first chief of staff, John Kelly, told The New York Times that the word “fascist” fit the bill. “Looking at the definition of fascism, it’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism (and) forcible suppression of opposition,” the retired four-star Marine general said, breaking his silence about the president whose clinical narcissism and addiction to falsehoods Kelly had attempted to manage.

“So, certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.” It was a measure of how obvious this had become that scant attention was paid to the disclosure that Trump had complained that he “wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had.”

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was even more direct, if possible. Trump, General Milley told The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, was “fascist to the core” and “a total fascist.”

There’s no longer any reason to tiptoe around the bush on this point. By April of this year, Americans had seen enough of the executive orders targeting law firms who’d dared to dispute Trump’s fraudulent claims that he’d won the 2020 election and the mass purge of anyone in government not prepared to buy his con-artistry to reach their conclusion.

A Public Religion Research Institute poll released that month found that 52% of Americans agreed that “President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.”

But the poll provided little reason to cheer. First, 44% of Americans disagreed, all evidence to the contrary. Second, with a Supreme Court and a Congress that Trump accurately assesses will do his bidding, his power has not been limited.

And he intends to use it to the fullest. The huckster who actually campaigned in 2024 on opposing weaponizing the federal government while simultaneously pledging “retribution” against his political opponents has weaponized the federal government in a fashion never approximated in American history. Trump’s conduct is a staple of fascist or functionally fascist regimes over the past century — Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, the Ayatollahs’ Iran, Kim Jong Un’s North Korea and Putin’s Russia.

Each week brings fresh examples; last week’s was no exception. The administration putatively opposed to weaponizing the Justice Department commenced criminal investigations into former National Security Adviser John Bolton, a sharp critic of Trump, Sen. Adam Schiff, who managed the first Trump impeachment, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who obtained a fraud judgment against Trump and his family.

Over the weekend Trump threatened to find a way to prosecute former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who challenged him for the Republican nomination in 2024, after Christie — get this — criticized Trump for politicizing criminal investigations.

Hurtling into fascism here in America? Trump says his actions are justified. But as esteemed social historian Robert Zimmerman once wrote: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Jeff Robbins’ latest book, “Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad,” is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast. Copyright 2025 Creators.com.