I think Mimi Rocah is right.
We have now fully entered dictatorship territory. https://t.co/Vot8e9rmLL
— Mimi Rocah (@Mimirocah1) August 15, 2018
This is dictatorship territory, and we are now in it. This is bad.
In adding John Brennan to his enemies list, Trump demonstrates again how deeply insecure and vindictive he is — two character flaws dangerous in any President.
An enemies list is ugly, undemocratic and un-American. I also believe this action to silence a critic is unlawful. https://t.co/bfOhThIWfq
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) August 15, 2018
Boy, it sure feels like the president is slowly purging the nation's security apparatus of people he considers personally disloyal https://t.co/mnDaElRaOC
— Matt Ford (@fordm) August 15, 2018
Which should not be the criterion. It should not be a criterion; it should play no role at all.
Fmr. Deputy National Security Adviser to President Obama, Ben Rhodes tells @AliVelshi that what John Brennan says on his Twitter account "should have absolutely no bearing on his fitness to maintain his security clearance." pic.twitter.com/vG0i2IFyON
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 15, 2018
“Authoritarianism in its purest form,” Ben Rhodes says.
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5 responses to “Another giant step”
Tricky Dick Nixon also had just such a list. I think it was the journalist Mary McGrory who said “to be on Nixon’s list is to stand with the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.”
The actor Paul Newman was on it too, and “was thrilled, friends said, when he heard that he had made President Nixon’s enemies list.” He referred to it as an “award.”
As indeed it was.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-paul-newman-20080928-story.html#
The potential for corruption is massive. Consider two huge contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman competing to see which of the two will build some new multi-billion dollar weapon system. If POTUS could arbitrarily remove people’s clearances (and possibly their fitness to hold a clearance), then POTUS could effectively award the contract to one contractor by removing clearances from key people in the other contractor at a critical time in the competition. And POTUS could do that with a Tweet.
He’s probably doing it as we speak.
We’re going to need a name for this new style of autocracy, though–it’s not really a classic dictatorship, in part because, try & cry as he might, Trump can’t just make all the things happen that he wants to. He’s gotten away with far more than he should, of course, and there needs to be a reckoning once all this is done, swinging the power away from the Executive.
But I’m thinking “Egocracy” would fit the bill. It’s all driven, not even by his demands, but by his ego.
Narcissocracy? Seems a little easier to pronounce on sight – with “egocracy” we’d be unsure whether the o was long or short. Long sounds too odd, short loses sight of the ego bit. It’s possible I’m overthinking this.