We begin today with Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reporting on Number 45’s totalitarian plans for ruling the United States should he win the 2024 presidential election.
Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.
Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.
Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.
There have been a few stories prior to this NYT story about Trump’s plans for the country should he win the 2024 (including a previous one by Jonathan Swan).
I guess that Mitt Romney’s “quiet rooms” have gone the way of dog-whistles in the MAGA Party.
