Donald Trump has the title and the great powers of the presidency. But it is not enough for him. His real goal is to be America’s first dictator or king. The presidency is a skin suit that barely conceals this ambition.
Historically, monarchs had a court of advisers, diplomats and merchants who jockeyed for proximity to limitless power. And, of course, there were the sycophants, jesters and Wormtongues. Trump is no different.
His Cabinet and senior staff consist of extremist ideologues, like White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; businessmen and powerbrokers, such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and power-hungry shape-shifters including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
But regardless of category or position, their most important qualification is loyalty to Trump and MAGA rather than to the Constitution, the American people and the nation. For them, there is no contradiction or tension — Trump is the State. This is the logic of political personality cults and authoritarianism.
Historians, political scientists and other experts generally agree that Trump’s Cabinet is among the worst in American history. The group of sycophants tell a tale: Leaders attract the personalities and people who mirror their character and satisfy their needs. The president is an egomaniac with a bottomless hunger for narcissistic energy, praise and affirmation, and his Cabinet members eagerly provide it in the form of ritualistic public praise sessions. As the New York Times’ Ashley Cai recently noted, Trump’s Cabinet has become less a governing body than a professional cheering section.
Cai reviewed over a dozen hours of footage and found that, on average, at least one of every six sentences spoken by cabinet secretaries flattered the president, attacked his political opponents or gave him credit for their work. Some cabinet members, like Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, lavished the president with adulation in their comments. Vance attacked the Democrats.
“One of the most striking features of Mr. Trump’s cabinet meetings this term is the extent to which his leadership has been praised as unparalleled,” Cai wrote.
Allison Schuster, a White House spokeswoman, told the Times in an email that the president’s Cabinet is using these televised meetings to “highlight the exhaustive list of accomplishments they have delivered on behalf of the American people.”
When the cabinet met with Trump on May 27 at the White House, on the agenda was the president’s war against Iran, construction projects in Washington, D.C. and the economy. But the bulk of the meeting was spent praising Trump. Hegseth took the lead, comparing him to Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, “two men that faced monumental tasks and stood up in historic fashion and delivered for the American people.”
Other cabinet members dutifully followed. Kelly Loeffler, the administrator of the Small Business Administration, was especially fawning. “Mr. President, you have made us a nation of builders again,” she said. “You’re leading us to the greatest economy that the world has ever known . . . I hear it everywhere I go: ‘Please thank the president for putting us back on track. Thank you.’ They love you.”
What Wednesday’s scene at the White House revealed is an America that is not “the world’s greatest democracy,” but a kakistocracy, a system of government administered by a country’s worst and least qualified people
Presidents not only symbolize and embody the values of the nation — they reveal them. What Wednesday’s scene at the White House revealed is an America that is not “the world’s greatest democracy,” but a kakistocracy, a system of government administered by a country’s worst and least qualified people where those at the highest level of governance are competing for the leader’s approval rather than governing effectively. This is a profound crisis of leadership and legitimacy.
Trump increasingly exists within a solipsistic reality of his own creation. He believes that he is beloved — the most popular president in history who has earned a place on Mount Rushmore. His America is the greatest country on earth, where there is too much winning and the economy is amazing.
In reality, Trump’s approval has fallen to a historic low of 34% in a new Economist/YouGov poll. America’s prestige and power have declined rapidly during his first year back in office. The economy is stagnant and getting worse for average Americans, and the public believes that the country’s best days are behind it. The Republican Party looks likely to lose the November midterms, giving Democrats some check on Trump’s power. Abroad, America’s prestige and respect are collapsing. The president’s failed war against Iran has exposed the limits of American power.
This has appeared to cause at least some measure of reality to break through Trump’s manufactured world. His Cabinet, staff and right-wing propaganda machine are losing their ability to insulate him from it. What will happen when the reality the president has constructed finally collides with the one that actually exists?
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Trump’s White House will go into bunker mode. He will burrow down even deeper, likely retreating even further into his fictions and fantasies. The egomania and the fabulism are coping mechanisms that will grow more extreme under pressure. But the deeper danger is not the flattery itself — it is what this cabinet will do when the country faces a genuine crisis.
Will they tell him “no” if he were going to take some action that would cause serious harm to the nation? Will they risk their political careers — and potentially far more than that — to oppose him in an effort to protect the country? And if Trump became unable — either physically, mentally or emotionally — to discharge his duties, will this cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment?
The mostly likely answer to each of these questions is a resounding “no.”
During the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, several members of Trump’s first-term Cabinet held discussions about invoking the 25th Amendment. It was not the first time. But given what we know of this cabinet’s loyalties, it is difficult to imagine a single secretary having that conversation.
People and countries get the leaders they deserve, and tens of millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump across three presidential elections. This is a damning indictment of them, and our larger culture and society. But it also points to a serious structural issue.
“Whatever specific interventions are adopted, a big part of the battle is acknowledging a core problem: those who shouldn’t be in power are more likely to seek it,” wrote political scientist Brian Klaas in his book “Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us.” “We need to design every system to try to screen out the corruptible, power-hungry candidates.”
The cabinet Trump has assembled around him is the inevitable result of this: men and women selected not for competence or character, but for loyalty to a man who has made no secret of his authoritarian dreams.
When the crisis comes — and it will come — will there be anyone in that group willing to place the nation before the king?
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by Chauncey DeVega
