The word most often associated with Trump is “authoritarian”. From the New York Times, Atlantic and Economist to the Guardian, Vanity Fair and Politico, we are told, with ritual repetition, that Trump is the second coming of Hitler or Mussolini, an aspiring dictator eager to herd his opponents into the great American gulag. Naturally, people panic. I want to calm them down. Using as few words as possible, I’m going to show that the combination of Trump and authoritarianism is an impossibility. …

Trump never dealt with a permanent bureaucracy before his election. Far from being a Machiavellian, he proved to be something of a simpleton — or if we want to be kind, a naif — who was constantly tripped up and outmanoeuvred by his own bureaucrats. Even if you are one of the 10 humans on earth who still believe the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian hack, you have to admit that failure to kill that narrative reflects poorly on Trump’s conspiratorial skills. …

So relax. Trump is too old, too isolated, and too ADD to have a shot at dictatorship — and if he tried, the result would be comedy rather than tyranny.

[The rational argument against Trump is not that he will seize power he doesn’t have under the Constitution, but that he won’t use the authority he *does* have. Far from ‘draining the swamp,’ Trump mainly let it fester by ignoring the political appointments necessary to first controlling it and then dismantling it. The worst of these examples is the COVID-19 pandemic, where Trump allowed the bureaucrats to impose *actual* authoritarian measures while trying to avoid conflict with Fauci and the love the media showered on him. — Ed]