The 'administrative coup' underway underscores Trump's anti-democratic ambitions

Editor's Note: The Firehose is a regular column in which Cog contributors provide a high-level recap of what actions the Trump administration has taken in the preceding two weeks, and help us make sense of it. An excerpt of this essay appeared in Cognoscenti's newsletter, delivered weekly on Sundays. To become a subscriber, sign up here.

Last Tuesday, President Trump announced that the United States plans to take over the Gaza Strip, deport two million Palestinians, and transform the region — decimated by war — into a beachside resort. If this sounds like the childish fantasy of a failed real estate mogul with no understanding of how national sovereignty works, you are only half right. The deeper purpose of this pronouncement was to distract the media, and thereby the American people.

The United States is not going to “own” Gaza. Nor are we going to seize the Panama Canal, or Greenland, or make Canada the 51st state. These threats are, to reclaim an Orwellian phrase, fake news. They are part of a concerted strategy, which Trump advisor Steve Bannon described years ago: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with s***.”

Zone flooding worked during the first Trump administration and now, with far more dire consequences, it is working again. For the past three days, the media has been covering Trump’s Gaza stunt wall-to-wall.

In doing so, most outlets have moved on from a far more distressing story: the fact that Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new unit headed by tech billionaire and Trump donor Elon Musk, was granted access to the federal payment system. Which is to say: an unelected oligarch with no accountability now has access to your private data. He is attempting to decide who gets paid by the U.S. Treasury and to have the executive branch exert control over the purse strings that the Constitution grants to Congress. To make matters worse, Musk's hand-picked Geek Squad included one 25-year-old man with a history of posting racist rants online.

With Trump’s blessing, Musk is engaged in what Yale history professor Tim Snyder calls an administrative coup.

Snyder, who studies how democracies die, describes the larger pattern at work amid the Trump regime’s frantic first few weeks. It began decades ago, when right wing demagogues began maligning the federal workers who provide services and enforce our laws as a “deep state.” Trump prefers to empower oligarchs such as Musk, who will dismantle the government and enrich themselves:

Think of the federal government as a car. You might have thought that the election was like getting the car serviced. Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics, who somehow don’t look like mechanics, tell you that they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money. And that this was the most efficient thing to do. And that you should thank them.

Legal scholar Peter Shane summed up Trump’s flurry of executive orders as “programmatic sabotage and rampant lawlessness.”

*Fired 17 inspector generals and multiple federal prosecutors
*Rescinded $3 trillion dollars in domestic grants
*Sought to end the Constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship
*Pardoned thousands of convicted felons, including those who assaulted police officers during the January 6 attack on the Capitol
*Took steps that signal a purge of FBI agents and employees who had a role in the January 6 investigations

Each of these efforts, taken individually, doesn’t capture the larger aim. To quote Snyder again:

[T]he aim is lawlessness: to get the police and the patriots out of the way.

For most of his career, Trump appeared relatively harmless. He failed as a real estate developer, then played one on TV. He has always been, in fact and deed, a marketer. In his prime, it was casinos. As a politician, he sells hate and hollow promises, hardly a tough sell in American politics.

Because of his grandiose persona and incoherent manners of expression, our media outlets have often struggled to grasp, and fully convey, the magnitude of Trump’s anti-democratic ambitions. They are now on full display. He is eager to destroy the federal government and replace the rule of law with a code of vengeance, while his oligarchs make off with the booty.

Because of his grandiose persona and incoherent manners of expression, our media outlets have often struggled to grasp, and fully convey, the magnitude of Trump’s anti-democratic ambitions.

Members of the press who cover Trump, those who oppose him, those who did not vote for him and those who did, must ignore his barrage of falsehoods, and focus on the actions they seek to obscure.

Step one, as Ezra Klein recommends, is to stop treating Trump as a credible source. In short, don’t believe him. Don’t repeat his lies.

The opposition party should be holding daily press briefings that focus on the real-world consequences of the administration’s agenda. They must provide a platform for those harmed, from victims of domestic violence who will lose support from non-profits  to starving children who depend on humanitarian aid to average Americans who don’t want the world’s richest man to have their social security data.

Political activists and legal advocates must redouble their efforts to thwart Trump’s rampage against the rule of law.

As individuals, we must fight our own temptation to ignore what’s happening, to retreat from civic life or react with disposable outrage. It is upon every citizen of good faith to accept the reality of what’s happening and to convert our anxiety into meaningful action.

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