ភាពវឹកវររបស់ស្តេច Trump
At home and abroad, his autocratic approach is starting to run aground.
For an American, touring the grandiose monuments of ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy—as I did recently—is an oddly relatable experience these days.
From the triumphal arches of Constantine and Titus to the soaring St. Peter’s Basilica to the stunning Medici palaces of Florence, one sees a clear through line: a parade of giant egos down the centuries. For princes of the past—even many popes—self-glorification was the norm.
This state of mind used to seem alien—and not a little jarring—to Americans, who were more used to the Cincinnatus tradition begun by George Washington, the citizen-farmer who self-effacingly retired from power. Not so with President Donald Trump. With his ego now fully unbound—his narcissism on full display—Trump has given us a much fuller measure of the man in his second term. Trump’s open coveting of other nations’ territory, his quasi-imperialist “Donroe Doctrine” of hemispheric dominance, his gilding and gutting of the White House as if it were just another Trump Tower, his regular calls for prison or death for dissenters, his hints at permanent reign—all of it has been rather shocking to many Americans.
But the main lesson is that, in the longer reach of Western history, Trump’s behavior is far more a rule than an exception. He is, really, just another giant ego out there smashing things and trying to rebuild them in his own image—perhaps even to the good on occasion. And there’s something strangely reassuring in that.
Why? Because like the most extreme autocrats of the past, who almost invariably fell through arrogance and overreach, we’re already starting to see cracks in the reign of the would-be Emperor Donald the First.
For the first time in his 10 months in office, Trump is facing serious pushback from Republicans who are getting tired of taking dictation from him. And there is a sense that even his MAGA movement doesn’t totally belong to him any longer.
Consider the mind-boggling bungling of Trump’s 28-point “peace proposal” for Ukraine—the first version of which dictated such a flagrant surrender to Russia that even Trump’s GOP allies in the Senate and House were outraged. “Rewarding Russian butchery would be disastrous to America’s interests,” former GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, joined by sometime Trump allies Sens. Lindsey Graham and Roger Wicker.
In the House—which has been safely tucked in Trump’s back pocket for most of the year—Republican Rep. Don Bacon said the plan “sounds like 1938 Munich” and tweeted: “Some people better get fired on Monday for the gross buffoonery we just witnessed over the last four days.”
Even more striking was the dispute between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his former Republican colleagues in the Senate, who are now accusing each other of lying about the plan. Sen. Mike Rounds said that Rubio—who jumped in to fix the mess made by chief Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff—told senators the original plan (which Trump initially demanded that Ukraine agree to by Thanksgiving) had been little more than a Russian wish list, and Rubio “made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal” from Moscow. Rubio later denied he had said that, emphasizing the plan was “authored by the U.S.” as “a strong framework for ongoing negotiations.”
Even for Trump—who regularly contradicts himself—his unilateral only-I-can-fix-it approach to Ukraine has whipsawed so crazily that his own party no longer understands where he stands. And they’re getting ticked off about it. It was only in September that Trump, after slamming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier for having “no cards,” reversed himself and wrote that Ukraine was now “in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form.” Last week Trump appeared to reverse himself yet again and insist Ukraine give up territory to Russia that it still controls.
Republicans are now complaining that the president, in the time-honored tradition of feckless autocrats going back to Nero or Piero de’ Medici, consults almost no one when he makes policy.
Trump “got everything he demanded from his party for nearly a year. Now, suddenly, some of his dictates are falling flat with fellow Republicans,” Semafor wrote earlier this month, citing GOP resistance to Trump’s bid to eliminate Affordable Care Act subsidies, impose a moratorium on state AI regulations, and implement broad redistricting. Wicker, for one, has also expressed pique that “there really hasn’t been any consultation with the Congress” on Trump’s emerging National Defense Strategy.
This is true of his tariff policy as well. The president, like an impetuous emperor juggling favorites in his court, has routinely slapped new tariffs on countries he thinks have personally offended him, such as Canada and Brazil (even though his right to impose any tariff unilaterally is now being challenged in the courts).
But in the last week, confronted with both rising food prices and GOP resistance, Trump quietly lifted his 40 percent tariffs on Brazilian food products, including beef, coffee, and cocoa, which he imposed in July to punish Brazil over the prosecution of his ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro.
And on Monday, in what could be the most serious blow to Trump’s imperious insistence that his Justice Department (and it is very much his, seeming to obey his every diktat) prosecute his political enemies, a federal judge threw out the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie found that the appointment of Trump’s handpicked prosecutor was invalid.
Why? Because ultimate responsibility for that move, the judge ruled, lay with the courts and Congress—not Trump’s devoted myrmidon, Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The list of recent Trumpian setbacks goes on. The president’s threats against Venezuela led another unhappy Republican on Capitol Hill, Sen. Rand Paul, to warn on Sunday that a U.S. invasion could lead to “a splintering and fracturing of the movement that has supported the president.” Paul noted that “a lot of people, including myself, were attracted to the president because of his reticence to get us involved in foreign war.”
Then there was the dramatic defection last week of one of Trump’s fiercest MAGA allies, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who announced she was resigning from Congress and likened herself to a “battered wife”—of Trump, that is.
“Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the president of the United States, whom I fought for,” Greene said. Joined by other longtime Trump allies on the Hill such as Reps. Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, Greene said she would defy Trump and vote with Democrats in favor of a House measure that would force the release of the files of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was once a friend of Trump’s.
That prompted the president, who had opposed the release, to suddenly back down and face something unheard of in the Trump 2.0 era: a near-unanimous vote by both chambers to force Trump’s Justice Department to make the files on Epstein public.
It’s noteworthy that, led by Greene, this same outspoken GOP cohort had long promoted Trump’s false allegation that he won in 2020.
Part of this pushback springs from the electoral weakness shown by Republicans on Nov. 4, when Democrats did far better than expected in several state elections. The results prompted Republicans to begin “contemplating a post-Trump world,” as National Review put it.
And for a wider world that is waiting for some sign that Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach to exercising power is at last being checked, hopeful reactions have come swiftly—perhaps too swiftly.
“The MAGA world is devouring itself,” wrote Piotr Smolar of Le Monde. “The euphoria of Donald Trump’s return to power has faded, and internal divisions, both ideological and personal, are now threatening the coalition that made his success possible.”
Well, not so fast. Trump has shown remarkable bounce-back ability in the past, and MAGA resistance to him still exists mostly on a case-by-case basis.
What is undeniable, however, is that after months of getting pretty much whatever he demanded—from Congress and much of the world—the president is showing a new willingness to listen, compromise, and even consult.
Does that mean that, for the remaining three years of his term, the would-be Emperor Trump might revert to being, more humbly, simple President Trump? In other words, something closer to what Americans are used to? Not necessarily.
In his new book, The Romans: A 2,000-Year History, University of California, San Diego, historian Edward J. Watts argues that the longevity of any great state relies on a judicious mix of enlightened leadership, and at the same time, strong institutions that respect the traditions springing out of that leadership. Rome at its height, even during the reign of its worst emperors, held to those traditions, he said.
By consciously emulating Cincinnatus of the Roman republic, Washington, for one, was acutely aware that he was setting a tradition, and creating a new institution, for future presidents to follow.
Even in times of crisis and great change—the Civil War, the Depression, two world wars—the greatest U.S. presidents “understood the need to couch whatever they were doing to shift American life in the traditions of our foundation,” Watts said in an interview. “This is the model of Emperor Augustus—who understood that his new order needed to be based on the structures of the old if it was to work.”
The danger, he said, lies with “charismatic disruptors” who deliver “sudden, unpredictable jolts” to the system and “try to bend the world around them to their wills.” (Read: Trump.) In the end, Rome had too many of those errant leaders and its institutions and empire collapsed.
It is also worrisome how the U.S., too, has “begun to trash many of those institutional restraints in the past decade,” Watts said.
For the moment they appear to be holding. But just.
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