“Remember, I can do whatever I want to whomever I want.”
It sounds like President Trump, to the world. But it was Caligula, to his grandmother.
At least America’s Emperor of Chaos has not made his horse a consul. Yet.
A horse might be better than some of the sketchy characters surrounding Trump.
After pillaging and gutting the U.S. government, the Western alliance and our relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump is thinking of himself as a king and cogitating on a third term. He basks in the magniloquent rhetoric of acolytes genuflecting to an instrument of divine providence.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, a group calling itself the “Third Term Project” erected a sign depicting Trump as Caesar. A wag on X wondered if they knew what happened to Caesar.
America was forged in the blood and fire of rejecting tyranny; its institutions were meticulously formed around the principle that we would never be ruled by a king.
Yet Trump delights in reposting memes of himself as a king and as Napoleon, with a line attributed to the emperor: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”
After tangling for years with a legal system he claimed was out to get him, Trump is jonesing to be above the law. (The Supreme Court slapped him back Friday, at least temporarily, for firing a government watchdog.)
His dictatorial impulses were clear when he refused to accept the results of the 2020 election and egged on a mob to disrupt the certification of the election, even if it meant that his own vice president might be hanged. And now he has added imperialistic impulses, musing about taking over the Panama Canal, Greenland, Canada, Gaza, D.C., and mineral rights in Ukraine.
His megalomania has mushroomed. His derisive behavior toward Zelensky — how can a modestly talented reality show veteran mock Zelensky as “a modestly successful comedian”? — shows Trump can’t abide anyone saying he is doing anything wrong.
When The Associated Press refused to go along with his diktat to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, the news organization was barred from covering some events with the president in the Oval Office and on Air Force One.
The A.P. sued Friday afternoon. “The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” it said, adding, “Allowing such government control and retaliation to stand is a threat to every American’s freedom.”
Also on Friday, at a meeting with governors in the White House, Trump stopped abruptly to chide Gov. Janet Mills of Maine for resisting his executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports.
“You better comply, because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding,” the president warned the Democratic governor.
“See you in court,” she shot back.
Of course, Trump needed the last word. Of course, it had to be nasty. “Enjoy your life after governor,” he said, “because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”
As Shawn McCreesh wrote in The Times, nobody had seen such a moment since Trump came back to the Oval: “Somebody defied President Trump. Right to his face.”
I’ve been reading a book called “How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders,” written by Suetonius and translated by Josiah Osgood. Osgood writes of Caligula’s “propensity to give in to every whim and the relish he took in putting down others with cruel remarks.”
As Suetonius noted about Caligula, “To the Senate he showed no more mercy or respect. He allowed some who had achieved the highest offices to run alongside his chariot in their togas for several miles or to stand, dressed in a linen cloth, at the head or the foot of his couch as he dined.”
Sound familiar?
Some Republican lawmakers spoke up about Trump, JD Vance and Pete Hegseth caving to Russia — going against a long history of Republicans treating Russia as the “Evil Empire” — or at least with a healthy skepticism. When George W. Bush, as president, said he could look into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and see his soul, John McCain warned that Putin was a “thug” and a “killer,” noting that when he looked in Putin’s eyes, he saw “a K, a B and a G.” But those who spoke up against Trump did not seem ready to do much about it. They’re still cowering before him. As Politico reported, Trump allies moved quickly to stifle dissent with the party’s defense hawks: “Vice President JD Vance and several administration officials who are close to Donald Trump Jr. have been central to the effort to sideline those with traditional conservative foreign policy views.”
After Trump ranted that Ukraine had “started” the war and that Zelensky was a “dictator,” the normally doting New York Post felt the need to put Putin on the front page with the headline: “President Trump: This Is a Dictator.”
The most vivid image of the week was an elated Elon Musk waving a chain saw at CPAC. That glee in the face of pain may come back to haunt Trump. As The Washington Post reported, many lawmakers got an earful from angry constituents about layoffs, freezes and jagged cuts, a hollowing out of government with no sense of logic or heart or safety.
Many who had hoped to tune out Trump this time realize they don’t have that luxury. It’s far more dangerous now. There are frightening moments when our 236-year-old institutions don’t look up to the challenge. With flaccid Democrats and craven Republicans, King Donald can pretty much do whatever he wants to whomever he wants.
