At a South Carolina rally this Saturday, Donald Trump made a basic assertion: Unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch should be accountable to the democratic will of the people. “We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States,” Trump proposed. “The deep state must and will be brought to heel.”
Defenders of democracy everywhere leapt into action: Authoritarianism was on the march once more. “Trump’s embrace of autocracy is now open and enthusiastic,” tweeted Bill Kristol. Keith Olbermann added that “Trump is openly running for Dictator” and that “all measures must be taken to stop him.” The left-wing group MeidasTouch wrote that Trump called “for an expansion of presidential power that would turn the presidency into a dictatorship. Republicans want to turn the United States into Russia.” In the Independent, author and columnist Eric Garcia decried the call for “a chilling new presidential power,” asserting there was “no evidence to support the claim” of a “deep state” out to get Trump.
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