I don’t know that firsthand—I just know that when you get hundreds of phone calls all using the exact same words in the exact same order to demand the exact same thing, there’s probably an advocacy group involved somewhere. I had the authority to investigate the president-elect in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s catastrophic defeat. Reporters who had ignored our substantive investigations of the Obama administration for years suddenly came out of the woodwork to inquire about even the most far-fetched or benign allegations against Donald Trump.
The calls pouring in from the public included dire warnings about the “authoritarian” or “fascist” America had just elected. Over and over again those two words came up—authoritarian, fascist. Believing those words were accurate, Democrats demanded Congress intervene to prevent this man from being sworn in as president.
They weren’t accurate. A common definition of an authoritarian is someone who enforces strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. That’s a serious charge. The definition of fascism is more flexible, but the textbook definition of fascism is a system characterized by the following: centralization of authority, dictatorship, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
It’s hard to see how a philosophy of smaller government, deregulation, federalism, and tax cuts can be depicted as aligning with a fascist agenda. Many of the allegations against President Trump hinged on the nationalism component of the definition. Because Trump had an America-first agenda and campaigned on border security, that allegedly made him a racist xenophobe.
What did Blue America most fear a President Donald Trump would do? Believe it or not, the most common warnings from callers to my office predicted that he would curtail the freedoms of LGBTQ people and people of color. The callers we heard from were also certain he would use the power of government to take out his political enemies (particularly Hillary Clinton), feather his own nest, destroy our free press, crash our economy, and take us into needless wars.
To date, none of that has happened. The predictions were not even remotely close to the truth. Though President Trump undeniably makes comments that are construed by leftists as nationalistic (as when he prioritizes illegal immigration and putting America first), those comments align with the views of many past presidents from both parties. He has not in fact governed like a fascist at all. In fact, President Trump has done more or less the exact opposite of most of the things fearmongers told us we should be worried about.
Whatever a person may think of Donald Trump’s personality, weighing his results against the presumed agenda of a fascist dictator reveals few similarities. Law-abiding Americans have not had their freedom curtailed under this president. To the contrary, the forces of oppressive government have been lightened. On the other hand, Democrats have promoted an agenda heavy on force, willingly exacting a price in personal freedom.
As for the LGTBQ community, their freedoms remain intact under a Trump presidency. Some LGBTQ activist groups would certainly prefer someone who, like President Obama, puts more restrictions on the freedom of those who disagree with them. They would like more Obama-era restrictions on vulnerable women who don’t want to be forced to share public bathrooms with transgender women. They would prefer restrictions against health-care workers with a religious objection to performing sex reassignment surgery. But those policies do not restrict freedom of LGBTQ people—they protect the freedoms of others. Furthermore, we have to acknowledge the work of this administration to decriminalize homosexuality in seventy-one countries. The U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, the highest-ranking openly gay official in the history of Republican administrations, leads the global effort.
Much to the chagrin of some Republicans, Trump hasn’t reflexively targeted and jailed his political adversaries, even when his administration could have justifiably done so. Nor has he pardoned political allies who have been charged with criminal offenses. He didn’t use his authority to put a stop to the special counsel investigation, instead providing extensive access to privileged documents needed to reach an accurate conclusion. It’s possible we will yet see prosecutions and pardons, but given the level of evidence coming forward regarding the origins of the Russia collusion hoax, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse, and disparate treatment of Clinton operatives and Trump operatives by the Justice Department, those investigations are warranted.
Far from feathering his own nest, President Trump has donated his salary each quarter, taking just one dollar a year in pay. He may be seeing an uptick in the number of people who patronize businesses that bear his name, much as President Obama saw an uptick in sales of his books during his administration. But there is no evidence to suggest Donald Trump has cashed in on his presidency.
Where is this fascism we were told to expect? If we use freedom and force as our metric, whose freedom has been restricted by this presidency? Perhaps drug cartels, human traffickers, and coyotes could make such an argument. But their increasing presence in this country impinges on the freedoms of every American. Too many of the people crossing our borders illegally have criminal histories or are engaged in criminal enterprises. Settling criminals in our communities does not make us more free.
The media continues to gleefully bash the man and his administration without restraint, so it’s difficult to make a case for suppression of speech unless you consider Trump’s insults and name-calling a serious threat to the First Amendment. Some people do. But where have those threats been followed up by any actual restriction of freedom or imposition of force?
There are disturbing threats to free speech in this country, but they are not coming from President Trump. They are being imposed by college faculties, social media giants, internet browsers, and activist mobs. They are even embedded in House-sponsored legislation promoted by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
We are enjoying the strongest economy in decades, complete with record low unemployment and strong wage growth. Progressives may argue that presidents don’t get credit for good economies, but these are the same people who warned that Trump would be the one to crash the economy if we allowed him to be sworn in.
Perhaps the most obvious contrast between the predictions about a Trump presidency and the reality of it is in foreign policy. This president is extracting us from war zones, not entering them. Far from instigating new wars, Trump is preparing to exit Syria and Afghanistan, going to great lengths to facilitate peace with longtime enemy North Korea, and cutting off the Obama administration’s financial support of Iranian terror operations. Arguably there is potential for U.S. military involvement in Venezuela, but the administration’s support of grassroots regime change efforts in that country have thus far yielded more successes and fewer risks than President Obama’s failed Arab Spring strategy. That disastrous policy destabilized Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain.
I suppose one could argue that President Trump is taking advantage of centralized power—but he does so in the same way that President Obama did before him. And unlike the Obama administration, this administration has also restrained the power of the federal government through massive deregulation, federal income tax cuts, and policies empowering states. For example, President Obama’s Affordable Care Act used force to require states to expand Medicaid while giving them no flexibility to defend their budgets against proliferating health-care populations and costs. Fortunately a Supreme Court ruling restored freedom to states to opt out of the program. Recently the Trump administration approved a waiver for my state that will enable Utah to provide expanded health-care coverage and still maintain control of costs. Honoring the freedom of states to innovate and the flexibility to revise federal programs is not fascism. It is not force. It is an expansion of freedom that enables states to experiment with real solutions without risking their ability to educate their kids, invest in infrastructure, or provide other programs and services.