Trump Versus Democracy?

Abraham Lincoln
George Grey Barnard (1809-1865)
Photo Credit: Martin Henderson [CC BY_NC]

 President Donald Trump arrives on his second state visit to Britain this week and one Times reporter will be attending and supporting the "Trump Not Welcome" demonstration in London. Here are some of his reasons.

... His global vendettas include the imposition of 50 per cent tariffs on Brazil's goods in an attempt to force its government to free his friend Jair Bolsonaro, the former president now convicted of attempting a coup against his 2022 election defeat. He continues to threaten Denmark with the seizure of Greenland. He has withdrawn the US from international bodies, cancelled funding for climate change measures and eviscerated US foreign aid and soft power.

But it is Trump's assaults upon American democratic institutions which should cause every respecter of freedom most alarm. The deployment of the National Guard in the Democratic city strongholds of Washington and Los Angeles has nothing to do with crime prevention and everything to do with a symbolic flaunting of executive power.

Trump sacks from government bodies traditionally non-partisan appointees and replaces them with placemen and women, almost uniformly inadequate. He falsifies government data and cancels bodies  charged with its impartial collation.

He employs as health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr, an enemy of science and of evidence as most educated people understand these things, who is bulldozing America's defences against disease. Trump is also waging war on educational institutions which he regards as hostile to his purpose.

The most egregious and pernicious of his campaigns is against the legal system and thus, against the US constitution's checks and balances. Empowered by a supine Republican- dominated Congress and a Republican-packed Supreme Court, he ignores repeated findings against himself by federal judges, confident that his excesses will be rubber-stamped by the highest appellate body...

The FBI is exploited as Trump's enforcement arm against personal enemies - the search of the house of John Bolton, his former aide and now foe, was only a conspicuous example. Canadians arriving at the US border are routinely subjected to harassment...

Nobody should pretend that any of this falls within the parameters of the normal. The actions catalogued above represent an attack on precedent, freedom and ultimately US democracy; on the nation's historic role as an exemplar and standard bearer for values we all hold dear.

A few Europeans declare enthusiasm for Trump. The rich love him because he is their man; he is making them richer still. He himself will be the first US president who, along with his family, will leave office incomparably wealthier than he entered it...

(Max Hastings, The Times, 2025)

Undermining checks and balances, manipulating the FBI for personal ends, replacing non-partisan officials with loyalists, weakening educational and scientific institutions and consolidating  power  and wealth - don't all these seem to be strong indicators of authoritarian or dictatorial leadership?  Is this the start of criminalising criticism?

Letters

Sir, Max Hastings was spot on in his condemnation of President Trump's forthcoming state visit. As he says: "This will be a visit not inspired by affection or respect on the part of the hosts, but by fear - apprehension about what this president is capable of doing." It follows that events in Windsor this week will be taking realpolitik too far. It is time instead to somehow remove this grotesque pantomime in the White House before a once cherished beacon of liberalism on the other side of the Atlantic is extinguished, perhaps never to be rekindled.

(Peter Power, Lyndhurst, Hants, The Times, 2025)

Sir, Max Hastings's claim that President Trump has dismantled US democracy and that fear of what he may do next has reduced Britain to kowtowing before him mistakes bluster for substance. Trump's challenges to Nato complacency, trade imbalances, mass immigration and unchecked globalisation may be uncomfortable but they address realities long ignored by western leaders. I also disagree with Hastings's suggestion that "the rich" are his natural constituency. It was the centres of wealth and privilege such as New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley that voted decisively for Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024. Trump's coalition is rooted instead in working Americans who feel abandoned by the political elites and globalisation. To caricature Trump as a threat to civilisation is to misunderstand the resilience of US institutions and the deeper forces reshaping politics on both sides of the Atlantic.

(Joss Walker, Pembury, Kent, The Times, 2025)

Sir, I suggest that the protesters should stay at home, leaving empty streets to welcome the US president.

(Margaret Richardson, Belfast, The Times, 2025)