It may not have been Trump's original intent to convert our democracy into an autocracy, but that's mostly because, when he first took office, Trump hadn't yet realized that an autocracy was potentially within his reach. Now that he's crashed through a series of political guard rails though, he realizes it's the established order that has taken the brunt of the resulting damage, not he. And that emboldens him. Trump idolizes the autocrats of the world, even those who he is not personally beholden to. Now Trump has set upon a path to join them in unfettered rule. He is not taunting his opponents. He is not baiting them. To the full extent possible Trump is sweeping them aside.
Trump escalates intimidation and confrontation faster than our systems are designed to react to. He is always on full offense. What does a force on offense do? It seizes ground and continues to push forward before opposition has time to regroup. Before there is even time to say "He can't do that" he's already done it. And Trump is still gathering speed. Whenever he senses weakness he pushes harder. And in Trump's mind efforts to counter him with calls to honor precedents, shows of slow paced incremental resistance, and/or attempts at “good faith negotiations”, are all signs of weakness.
The pattern is clear and ominous. Trump won the Republican Party nomination for President through intimidation, his willingness to defy conventions, and the complacency of his foes. It took the established Republican Party too long in 2016 to take seriously what they were up against in Trump. At first he was seen merely as a buffoon, and then just as a fringe candidate with a strong hold on a small sliver of the electorate. Virtually no leading Republican in the early stages was willing to place themselves in the cross hairs of Trump's withering attacks by directly taking him on because the accepted political calculus did not support that. Why risk Trump's frontal attacks and the anger of his supporters if he was going to self destruct anyway? Wait him out was the conventional wisdom, don't risk alienating his voters now when we will need them later. When a Jeb Bush or a Mark Rubio belatedly realized that they could no longer ignore Trump's tactics and his ridicule it was too late for them, he had already branded them as weak. When the Republican Party realized it was being taken over by Trump it was too late for them, he had already stolen their base. Then he co-opted their apparatus, and once that was achieved he moved against those who were not sufficiently loyal to him all along. Game over. Trump seized the Republican Party.
The same happened with an extraordinarily high percentage of his early appointments to his Administration after Trump was in office. There were enough high ranking officials named to it with suitably independent credentials to provide a veneer of normalcy and continuity. Then, one by one, Trump picked them off, and replaced them with loyalists to his personal agenda. Washington became numb to the revolving door of Trump appointees, and so did the public. But the ranks of career public servants was decimated. The State Department was neutered quickly. Defense is going a little slower but it is headed in the same direction. The National Security Council is now essentially occupied. The Justice Department takeover is now virtually complete. There's been a wholesale housecleaning of the top echelons of the FBI. The Intelligence agencies by now are battered. The reputations of those who work in them as American patriots have all taken a hit, replaced by suspicions that they are actually secret agents of a deep state conspiratorial attempted coup against the President.
The thin line that upholds our democratic traditions by now is paper thin. One more top replacement at the FBI, one more top replacement at the CIA, and at the NIA, and those agencies also will be brought under Trump's full control. What is one more Administration turnover no matter how important the role? We've seen so many already. Politically appointed non Senate confirmed acting heads of agencies is now “normalized”, it hardly seems unusual. There will never be a Saturday Night Massacre, the massacre is constant and ongoing. We hardly notice the vacancies as they occur. Our heads are kept spinning so we can barely focus on any one appointee, any one event, any one new outrage.
Trump seized control of the Republican Party, (and the conservative and evangelical movements also while he was at it – but that is another tangent to explore), and now that Party swears allegiance to him. He is rapidly seizing control at all levels of the Executive branch of government, and consolidating his hold on it, cowing opposition from those ranks. In Congress the House Republicans are virtually all his minions now. McCain is gone in the Senate, as is Flake, as is Corker. Graham is the victim of a body snatcher. Now Senate Republicans are turning against Burr for his disloyalty to family Trump. There's been a wholesale housecleaning of the top echelons of the FBI. When Trump decides it's time to invent a pretense to move against Christopher Wray, his personally installed but insufficiently subservient head of the FBI, what Republican Senators will show more loyalty to him than they did to Jeff Sessions? How long will even the courts remain independent, when hand picked Trump loyalists are being confirmed to all levels of the judiciary at a record breaking pace?
Trump stands before members of the American military and expects them to cheer him on personally rather than hold the Office of President in respect. He stands before law enforcement officers accusing Democrats of favoring crime, and states he will always have their back if anyone questions any of their their actions or the motives behind them. His attacks on the free press are incendiary and continue to escalate. And now, for the final scene of act one of America becomes an autocracy, Trump is defying the authority and legitimacy of the one institution remaining that still stands resolutely firm against Trump's further consolidation of power, the House of Representatives in Congress.
Time is not on Democrats side. They can no more afford to delay a frontal conflict with Donald Trump's continuing assault than could Ted Cruz before them during the Republican primaries, when he chose to save his powder to use against Trump after Trump had taken out his other opponents, when the political calculus for such a move supposedly would turn more in Cruz's favor. It simply doesn't work that way with Trump. Delay is weakness in his world. Time is on his side as the public becomes numb to his ongoing assaults on the pillars of our Democracy. Trump is not goading Democrats, he is blocking their avenues of power in the process of disarming them.