Editor David Remnick argued in an article published in The New Yorker Sunday that President Donald Trump has turned a campaign ethos of division — “us” vs. “them” — into a governing strategy premised on fear and control.
In vivid language drawn from Trump’s early persona and his meteoric rise in real estate and reality TV, Remnick traced this continuity from humiliation as a game-show host to intimidation as Executive in Chief.
“Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear,” Trump once told Bob Woodward, a quote Remnick uses as the philosophical anchor for his argument.
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The author further emphasized observations from Marc Fisher, who co-wrote the book “Trump Revealed,” an early biography that delves into Trump’s character. Fisher shared with PBS that, during his cadet years, Trump “used a broomstick as a weapon against classmates who didn’t listen to him when he told them what to do. He was in part enforcing the rules of the academy, but he was equally so enforcing the rules of Donald Trump.”
Remnick wrote: “In any case, Trump was, from his formative years, a spoiled bully.”
He noted that six months in, the Trump administration’s policies, ranging from sweeping mass deportations to aggressive wage settlements, punitive subpoenas, and political harassment — have targeted a broad and “unnerved” coalition: immigrants, university leaders, librarians, artists, scientists, trans people, federal employees, and cultural institutions. Many, he asserts, are skirting the law merely to survive.
“In Congress, fear keeps the Republican majority in line and causes all too many Democrats to mind their language. Trump once derided his own Secretary of State and national-security adviser as ‘Little Marco,’ and he has been an entirely obedient satrap ever since. The Cabinet is a quivering collection of yea-sayers,” Remnick noted.
Remnick also drew parallels with foreign autocrats, with some critics likening Trump’s second-term trajectory to what political scientists call “competitive authoritarianism.”
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