Littwin: Trump claims to be king of a country that doesn’t do kings. As if dictator wasn’t enough.

First, the bad news.

As you may have heard, Donald Trump, in maybe the Trumpiest own-the-libs trolling effort on record, has announced that he is now king.

Which, I guess, is a step up from when he said on the campaign trail that he would be dictator for a day. That day has now turned into a month, as Trump and his mega-billionaire tech bro/Thug in Chief continue to run roughshod over what is left of democratic norms in the United States.

Meanwhile, Trump is basically abandoning the democratic freedom fighters in Ukraine, while the VP in charge of sounding even crazier than Trump was scolding our long term (but maybe not for much longer) NATO allies.

And all at the behest of Trump’s best dictator buddy, and closest ally, Vladimir Putin. 

Blogger Andrew Sullivan calls the moves out bluntly, and accurately, as possible, in a piece called Requiem for the West, which details the blitzkrieg-like upending of 80 years of American policy around the world.

I mean, Trump actually blamed Volodymyr Zelenskyy for starting the war with Russia, which would be too Orwellian even for Orwell himself. He also called Zelenskyy a dictator, which is straight Putin talk from the Russian dictator and would-be modern-day czar. 

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And now, even as Trump sides with Putin in seeking a sure-to-be disastrous negotiated “peace” in Ukraine without even inviting Zelenskyy to the table, he is also demanding that Ukraine, with much of the country in ruins, with a GDP the size of Kansas, give up hundreds of billions of dollars in mineral rights to the United States. 

Why? As payback, Trump officials say, for the money U.S. taxpayers have spent in helping defend Ukraine during the three-year Russian assault on an independent and democratic nation.

Trump is not just Putin-like. Not just Willie Sutton-like. But also king-like, and I don’t mean MLK Jr.

I mean King Donald I. And if Donald of Orange is really king, then I’m ready to audition as jester in chief.

The story goes this way: After signing an executive order to end New York City’s traffic congestion pricing program, Trump posted this on his social media platform: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”

And to make sure we got the point, the White House reposted the regal message on Instagram and Twitter/X, but this time with an illustration of Trump wearing a crown — gold, of course, even as Trump is sending Musk to Fort Knox to see if the gold is actually there — on a Time-like magazine cover.

If you haven’t seen the illustration, check out the link above. But you might want to take an anti-nausea pill first.

And Trump might want to, uh, brush up on his Shakespeare, who tells us that “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”

I don’t know if Trump understands that one of the basic principles in the founding of our country is that we don’t do kings. George Washington, who probably could have been king, set the tone by stepping down after serving two terms as our first president. But Trump has no time for Washington. 

His favorite president is the imperialistic, tariff-loving William McKinley.  But I’m not sure what McKinley would think of Trump. Who’s busily giving Musk the keys to Americans’ most private data. Who’s watching as Musk fires — and now is attempting to rehire — federal workers who safeguard our nukes. Who, after taking over the Kennedy Center, now wants to take over the Post Office, and possibly the Federal Communications Commission. 

Who is eviscerating our national parks. Who is threatening to rip apart what’s left of the nation’s safety net. Who allows Musk’s DOGE to fire random workers at the Centers for Disease Control  and Prevention during a bird flu threat. Who appoints, with Senate approval, anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. as Health secretary even during a measles outbreak in five counties in Texas. Who, with Senate approval, installed an election denier who promises retribution against Trump’s enemies as head of the FBI.

But Trump — and I’m guessing McKinley would approve — also has time to threaten Canada with annexation, threaten to take over Greenland by force, with a promise to retake the Panama Canal, and push a plan that would expel all the Palestinians from Gaza and turn it into Trump’s version of the Riviera of the Middle East. All while selling out Ukraine and threatening European allies.

It’s more than exhausting. It’s terrifying. It really is a blitzkrieg, as Democratic norms lie scattered across bloody fields. Republican politicians, the few who know better, are completely cowed by Trump and MAGA world. Democratic politicians can’t find their way to form anything resembling a resistance movement. And the question I hear more than any is this: What the hell can we, just ordinary Americans, do about it?

That’s the bad news, I guess, but as you know, not really even half of it.

But I did sort of imply that there might be — and this is very tenuous — maybe, just possibly, some good news. 

There is some evidence that people have finally started to notice Trump’s march toward tyranny. Among the most depressing aspects of Trump’s first month in office is that his approval rating has been slightly over 50% — for the first time in his political career. I keep wondering if people — ordinary American citizens — would ever begin to wake up.

Well, at a town hall meeting in a deeply red congressional district, Georgia GOP Rep. Rich McCormick heard catcalls and angry questions, particularly over the CDC firings in nearby Atlanta.

And maybe that’s just one sign. The better news is that Trump’s approval ratings— according to a slew of polls from Washington Post-Ipsos, Reuters, Quinnipiac University, CNN and Gallup — have ranged from 44 percent to 47 percent, a significant drop. 

And in the Post-Ipsos poll, 39% of Americans strongly disapprove of Trump compared to 27% who strongly approve. He’s also underwater — often by large numbers — on his USAID cuts, tariffs, firing of government workers, pardoning violent January 6 offenders, even in his handling of the economy and inflation. And though a majority backs him on deporting immigrants, an even larger majority doesn’t believe he should deport kids born in the United States or Dreamers who were brought here as children. And 57% say he has overstepped his authority since returning to office.

What to make of it?

I want to believe there is at least something to make of it. And then I watch Trumpian strategist Steve Bannon doing a Musk-inspired Nazi-like salute to a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where he pushed the idea, which Trump is also pushing, of the president running for a constitutionally barred third term.

The Bannon salute was enough to make Jordan Bardella, of France’s far-right National Rally party, cancel his CPAC speech, calling it a “gesture referring to Nazi ideology,” which is difficult to deny.

OK, Trump’s polls are finally showing some awakening from Americans. And at least one right winger in France may have seen the light. 

But what about the CPAC/MAGA crowd in our own country? And what about Trump’s everyday Republican voters — the normies, I call them — and Trump’s craven political enablers?

How much worse will the news have to get before it reaches them?

Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.

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