A lot of Americans embrace Trump’s authoritarianism

Trump’s plans should he be inaugurated on that day, plans that are often unvarnished embraces of an authoritarian use of power. Trump plans to root out disloyal bureaucrats and install ideologically sympathetic ones. He’s speaking openly of using the Justice Department to target his opponents, including to hobble possible political opponents. And that’s just to name two recent examples.

During his first term, Trump’s administration was staffed in part by people with long track records in government who understood the balance of power between the branches and the limits on presidential authority, however acquiescent they were to Trump’s pushing those limits. Some of those who played such enabling roles have been increasingly vocal in their opposition to Trump’s efforts to regain power. But this is why Trump plans to ensure that a second administration has no one in it, at any level, who will stand in his way.

Given all of this, given Trump’s increasingly explicit rhetoric about shifting the chief executive position toward authoritarianism, it seems difficult to understand how he’s still running even with President Biden in early polling — or, in some cases, leading him. A bevy of possibilities emerges: Is the media failing to inform voters? Are Trump-supportive voters tuning out media that’s reporting on his intentions? Is he simply seen as the lesser of two evils?

Parts of each of those are probably correct. But there’s a broader, simpler explanation, too: For many Americans, a turn toward authoritarianism isn’t seen as a negative. Many Americans support that idea.

Last month, PRRI released the results of its annual American Values Survey. The pollsters asked respondents a slew of questions measuring their views of the country and its politics in the moment. Included among the questions was one that specifically addressed the question of authoritarianism: Did they think that things in the U.S. had gone so far off track that we need a leader who would break rules in order to fix the country’s direction?

About 2 in 5 respondents said they did. That included nearly half of Republicans.

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