Aspiring dictator brags about his popularity, asks who needs elections?
Dictator-in-the-making Donald Trump says that authoritarian rulers Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin would envy his popularity among the American people. That is of course, if the Italian and Russian dictators were still living, breathing organisms.
Trump cited public opinion polls showing that “like 93 percent” of Americans say they were better off during his presidency than during President Joe Biden’s time in office. Which polls Trump was talking about he didn’t say. News commentators said they could find no polls measuring whether people would “feel better off” when Trump was in power. But Trump apparently doesn’t care what the “enemy of the people” news media says. “It’s all fake news with them anyway,” he said.
Trump told reporters that after he becomes Dictator on Day One of his presidency in January, the other 7 percent of Americans who didn’t support him would soon find themselves relocated to reeducation camps. There, they will learn how to love and revere him, “maybe even more” than the way Mussolini and Stalin were worshipped in their countries.
Because of his popularity among Americans, who all want him as their leader, Trump said that there is no need to hold U.S. elections for president anymore. “Forget about it,” Trump said.
Joseph Stalin, affectionally known as “Uncle Joe” for being so nice serving as dictator to his fellow Russians, was reported to be backed by 99.3 percent in obviously free and fair elections in the Soviet Union. We can imagine the other .7 percent who didn’t favor him somehow ended up in a Soviet-style gulag in the far reaches of Siberia.
Like Trump, Stalin rhetorically asked, why even bother having elections when the people love him so much? Or if there is an election, it’s a done deal anyway. To put it another way, Stalin said that, “it’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.”
Benito Mussolini’s popularity wasn’t quite as high as Uncle Joe, in that his Fascist Party only got 98.8 percent of the vote in 1929 elections. Mussolini, with the support of his Blackshirts, took the title of Il Duce (Leader) to elevate himself as the omnipotent and unrivaled head of state in Italy.
Other contemporary supreme leaders where elections might not be deemed necessary in their countries include North Korea’s ruler Kim Jong-un where the rubber-stamp parliament gave him 100 percent of their votes.
Then there’s Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad who secured 97.6 percent of votes in a presidential referendum.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was somewhat of a slouch when it comes to overwhelmingly winning elections. He only got 88 percent of the vote in the March 2024 Russian presidential election. Still, Putin hailed the results as an indication of the Russian people’s “trust” and “hope” in him.
Meanwhile, Trump recently told a crowd of supporters, “Get out and vote! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore!” He added that after four more years, “You know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”
The question remains of course, what exactly did Trump mean when he said, “it’ll be fixed?” Trump said, as if this really cleared up the matter, that under his great leadership, “frankly, we will have such love” in the country, “if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s okay.” Yes, that really makes sense.
Trump’s critics denounced his statement about no longer needing elections in America. They described it as evidence that Trump planned to demand a change in the U.S. Constitution regarding presidential terms or elections so he could remain in power.
Some might say if Trump doesn’t win the election, it might not matter anyway, since he could try to overturn it on the basis the vote wasn’t fair.
In what sounded like more than a subtle threat to mobilize his supporters again, ala January 6, 2021, Trump said that, “If we don’t win, you know, it depends” on whether he’d accept the results. “It always depends on the fairness of the election.”
Trump added, “The primary focus is not to get out the vote. It is to make sure they don’t cheat. Because we have all the votes we’ll need.”
Who the “they” is is left to your imagination.
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