Kirk’s Assassination Brings Trump’s Authoritarianism into Even Clearer Focus

By blaming his enemies, Trump seeks to mobilize his followers, discredit his critics, and justify repression.

I have long argued that Donald Trump and today’s Republican Party are the greatest threat this nation has ever faced. Greater than Nazi Germany; greater than the Soviet Union; greater than al-Qaida.

That claim may strike some as overstatement, but it is not. None of those external enemies ever succeeded in capturing one of our two major political parties. None had millions of Americans willing to surrender the rule of law, civic peace, and even basic facts to a single man. Trump has done what no foreign foe ever could: He has turned a major American party into an instrument of authoritarian power.

From the beginning, Trump has governed not as a president, but as a strongman. The institutions of government — the courts, the military, federal law enforcement — he sees not as independent guardians of the Constitution but as weapons to be bent to his will. The Republican Party has not resisted this transformation; it has welcomed it. What was once a party of limited government and traditional conservatism has become a vessel for fascism, white Christian nationalism, and the normalization of political violence.

I said these things before Charlie Kirk was murdered. They were true then. They remain true now. Kirk’s death has not changed that reality — and Trump’s grotesque exploitation of the tragedy only underscores it.

His Oval Office response to the assassination was pure authoritarian theater. With not a shred of evidence, Trump blamed his political opposition. He did not pause for facts, for law enforcement, for mourning. He reached immediately for the strongman’s first tool: scapegoating. By blaming his enemies, he seeks to mobilize his followers, discredit his critics, and justify repression. This is not a new tactic. It is the well-worn script of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Pinochet — and now, unmistakably, Trump.

We are now living through the very scenario many of us warned about. Trump has returned to power, and in his second term, he is showing us precisely what authoritarian rule looks like in America. The contempt for constitutional limits, the eagerness to turn federal power against political rivals – and the American people, the open celebration of violence as a political weapon — these are not theoretical dangers. They are the governing reality. His Praetorian Guard of congressional enablers, media propagandists, political henchmen, and state-level allies ensures there are no internal checks. The abuses of his first term look quaint and, in hindsight, like rehearsals.

And let us be clear about responsibility. It is not the burden of Trump’s opponents to soften their language or “dial back the rhetoric.” That is like saying Ukraine is at fault for resisting Putin’s invasion. The aggressor bears the responsibility for the conflict, not those who fight back. The constant calls for “both sides” to de-escalate are not just naïve; they are dangerous. They invite authoritarianism by treating resistance as equally culpable as the attack.

No — the burden lies squarely with the GOP and the political right. They have excused, tolerated, and enabled Trump’s metastasis into full-blown authoritarianism. They have provided him cover, amplified his lies, and abandoned their duty to country in favor of loyalty to a man. They are responsible for unleashing this assault on the Constitution and the rule of law. If change is to come, it is their task to bring it from within. Yet their years of servile fealty and silence tell us they will not.

That leaves the rest of us with one obligation: to resist. To resist peacefully, but relentlessly. To resist in our words, in our organizing, in our communities, in every public square that still belongs to the people. And most of all, to resist at the ballot box.

The pro-democracy majority cannot shrink from this moment. We cannot yield, we cannot retreat, and we cannot let up for even one minute. The survival of the American ideal — government of, by, and for the people — depends on our willingness to defend it against those who would destroy it from within.

History will judge how we responded to this threat. Our children and grandchildren will ask what we did when democracy was on the line. Let our answer be clear: we stood firm, we resisted, and we defeated the forces that sought to corrupt the American republic.

Jeff Timmer is a political consultant, strategist, and Warren Zevon fan. He was Executive Director of the Michigan Republican Party and served as a Republican on the Michigan Board of State Canvassers. He is a Senior Advisor to the Lincoln Project.

---