Donald Trump does not understand democracy [View all]
For decades, Donald Trump’s only boss was Donald Trump. As head of the Trump Organization, the real estate magnate did what he wanted with near-total impunity, hemmed in only by (surprisingly malleable) legal or contractual constraints and by his thirst for media attention. He was, in geopolitical terms, an autocrat. He was an all-powerful leader who spent years convincing himself and the world that the company he inherited from his father was something he’d been granted on merit.
He was active in politics only in the way that many wealthy people are. He made campaign donations when asked, getting letters from prominent officials such as Hillary Clinton that he cherished. At other times, he offered contributions more strategically, aiming to get laws or licenses to break his way. In the 2016 election, he pointed to this as his salient experience in politics: He knew how to work the broken system.
What Trump wasn’t was a champion of American democracy. There’s no indication he held even a minor curiosity about the country’s history, even telling talk show host Stephen Colbert at one point that he didn’t know what the stripes on the U.S. flag represented. Patriotism is a core part of Trump’s politics, but it manifests only in a superficial, America-is-the-best sense.
The first political contest in which Trump participated was the 2016 Iowa caucuses. He was expected to win but didn’t, so he began claiming that the winner, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), had cheated. Trump won New Hampshire a week later, largely burying those complaints, but the response was telling. Most elected officials who reach the point of contending for the presidency have been through other campaigns in the past, have been immersed in democracy and American democratic systems. Many or most have lost races, understanding such losses only as roadblocks.
Trump had none of that, just the autocracy of the Trump Organization. He expected power to be something he could seize, something that, like the Trump Organization, he had earned. And then 2020 happened.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/29/trump-democracy-autocracy/
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