As Donald Trump’s second term as president unfolds, his authoritarian tendencies and autocratic proclivities are increasingly cast into sharp relief.

Where his first term was marked by idiosyncrasies and incompetence, his second term is casting a darker political shadow.

The US was formally classified as a “flawed democracy” prior to the second time Trump was elected, but his leadership has since pushed the US’ democratic decline into overdrive. In particular, Trump has fundamentally damaged the democratic cornerstone of the separation of powers of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.

This has most recently been exemplified by Trump calling on the US Attorney-General Pam Bondi to more aggressively investigate his political opponents. The persecution of political opponents is a clear sign that democracy is in the process of being abandoned.

Trump’s unprecedented judicial intervention is focused on investigating former FBI director James Comey, who brought fraud charges against Trump and his company, New York Attorney-General Letitia James and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, who oversaw his first impeachment trial. “They’re all guilty as hell,” Trump said in a social media post.

Trump said he would nominate “tough prosecutor” Lindsey Halligan “to get things moving” on these investigations. Halligan was one of Trump’s personal lawyers and currently works in the White House as special assistant to the president. Halligan will replace Erik Siebert, who resigned last week after Trump said he wanted him removed from his job as US attorney for East Virginia. Siebert, who had previously been interim attorney-general, said he did not believe there was sufficient evidence to bring charges against Comey, James or Schiff.

A lawyer for James, Abbe Lowell, called Siebert’s removal a “brazen attack on the rule of law”.

“Punishing this prosecutor, a Trump appointee, for doing his job sends a clear and chilling message that anyone who dares uphold the law over politics will face the same fate.”

Trump and his allies have also called for the impeachment of 11 “radical left” federal judges, whose families have also faced threats of violence and harassment after they ruled against the new Trump administration. These attacks are part of a wider intimidation campaign directed at federal judges who have stood in the way of Trump’s moves to dramatically expand presidential authority.

Trump’s brazen judicial intervention follows a string of other anti-democratic measures. These included pardoning almost 1600 people convicted of, or awaiting trial for, offences related to the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol Building in an attempt to stop the certification of the election result, and ordering the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries to ensure a Republican majority in the mid-term elections, undermining the key democratic tenet of one vote-one value.

Further, a key attribute of autocracy is rule by decree. On this, Trump has repeatedly issued “executive orders” to enact laws without the approval of Congress. One of those executive orders was to target law firms that had investigated him.

In a similarly authoritarian vein and in contravention of the US Constitution’s First Amendment, Trump has used the authority of his office to quell criticism from both individuals and the news media.

Trump openly regards the Democrats as the enemy. “I hate my opponents,” he said at the funeral-cum-political rally for slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, “and I don’t want the best for them”. Hating his opponents has included accusing former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden of “treason”.

Trumps’ executive overreach has come at the cost of cowering the US civil service, which accelerated following appointments based on personal loyalty rather than executive competence while swathes of “disloyal” employees have been sacked. This included the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn’t like the statistics they reported, and the head of the Defence Intelligence Agency which refuted his narrative on Iran.

Trump has attempted to hobble the US media, through lawsuits against print media and threatening to revoke the licenses or funding of news outlets that are critical of him. Loyalty to the person rather than to the office and the punishment of alternative views are hallmarks of autocracy.

While Trump has been busy pursuing revenge against his political opponents and silencing his critics, he has also used the presidency to enrich himself and his family. Trump launched his Trump meme coin ("$Trump") three days prior to taking office, after which he deregulated the cryptocurrency industry which saw his cryptocurrency substantially increase in value. Added to a “private” dinner hosted by Trump for the top 220 holders of his cryptocurrency, its value has leapt by more than 50% and he realised a profit of more than US$1 billion by mid-year. He also greenlit the sale of restricted semiconductor chips to the UAE only after they invested US$2 billion in a Trump business, along with personally accepting a US$440 million jet from Qatar.

Such brazen conflicts of interest — corruption — are more commonly the purview of dictators who, by the nature of their office, are politically immune to prosecution. Trump still has more than three years in office to secure his immunity.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.