On his very first day in office, January 20, 2025, the re-elected U.S. President Donald Trump began his unprecedented assault on U.S. democracy like a true fascist in the mold of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Trump gave full pardons to some 1,250 of his violent fans who had been convicted of assaulting and torturing policemen and of other very serious offenses during the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021, all of them committed at Trump’s own incitement.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat has shown how autocrats use purges, pardons and privatization to enhance their power and to enrich themselves and their allies. Indeed, Trump also began a sweeping purge of his opponents from the federal government, replacing them with his loyalists. He followed the good old fascist playbook.
Trump issued some eighty anti-democratic executive orders on his very first day in office, many of which may be unconstitutional as well. One of them was an irrational and extraordinarily cruel executive order depriving U.S. born children of illegal immigrants of their birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which grants U.S. citizenship to anyone born on U.S soil who is subject to U.S. jurisdiction. Two days after the order was signed, a federal judge blocked it temporarily as “blatantly unconstitutional.” What could have led Trump to such a blatantly illegal and irrational act?
In a family with five children, three of whom are boys, sibling rivalry can be deadly. During his very early life, when he was a two-year-old toddler, Donny Trump was robbed of his birthright to his mother’s love by the birth of his kid brother Robert. At age thirteen his father kicked him out of home and school and sent him to the New York Military Academy, another violation of his birthright, as Donald felt it. His mother did not lift a finger to keep him at home.
Beginning at age eighteen, Donald robbed his elder brother Freddy of his own birthright by taking Freddy’s place as their father’s favorite son and heir and by constantly berating Freddy (as did their father) for his occupational choice (being an airline pilot), which contributed to Freddy’s alcoholism and early death.[1] Donald felt guilty about his brother’s death and it has affected his attitude to “birthright citizenship.”
Donald Trump’s mother was herself a poor immigrant (from Scotland). It was she who took away his birthright when he was a toddler. As an adult, Trump would exact a terrible revenge on poor immigrants. He would take away theri children’s birthright. Unconsciously, Trump did unto others as they did unto him.
In the United States, “birthright citizenship” is acquired by virtue of the location of birth or the citizenship of the parents. In general, citizenship can be acquired by the right of the soil (place of birth) or by the right of blood (parentage). Under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution[2] and the Immigration and Nationality Act[3] U.S. citizenship is automatically granted to any person born in the United States, regardless of his parents’ citizenship or legal status.
Trump had planned to end birthright citizenship during his first term as President. In 2018 he planned to sign the executive order that would remove the right to citizenship for children of non-citizens and illegal “aliens” on U.S. soil.[4] Such an order was unconstitutional, however, and was sure to be successfully challenged in the courts.[5] Trump knew that he lacked the legal authority to issue such an order. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed birthright citizenship, making it difficult to change through executive action alone.
Any attempt to end birthright citizenship would have faced immediate legal challenges, as it does now. The idea of ending birthright citizenship was highly controversial and lacked broad support in Congress, making it difficult to pursue through legislation. During his first term, therefore, Trump implemented other immigration policies, such as the “zero-tolerance” policy and changes to asylum rules, which may have taken precedence. Trump never gave up on this irrational idea, and on his first day in office as a re-elected President felt confident enough to sign the order.
Did Trump count on his allies on the Supreme Court, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, to uphold his unconstitutional order, or was it yet another self-destructive move powered by his hatred for poor immigrants, whose roots lay in his rage at poor immigrant mother for taking away his birthright and giving it to his kid brother when he was two years old?
Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship was not only due to his ignorance of the law, or to his unconscious rage at his mother for robbing him of his birthright to love, or to his guilt feelings about robbing his elder brother of his birthright, but also to his growing political weakness.[6] House Speaker Paul Ryan, whom Trump had publicly humiliated, derided Trump’s plan to abolish birthright citizenship.[7]
Trump attacked Ryan by “tweeting” in his usual manner, “Paul Ryan should be focusing on holding the [Republican] Majority [in the House of Representatives] rather than giving his opinions on Birthright Citizenship, something he knows nothing about!” Trump later “tweeted” the following message: “Our new Republican Majority will work on this, Closing the Immigration Loopholes and Securing our Border!”[8] I have already discussed the unconscious motives for Trump’s preoccupation with the Border Wall on this website (see Trump’s Wall).
Just before the mid-term elections of November 2018 two studies showed that Trump’s policies were widening the gap between rich and poor, hurting many Americans and damaging the Republican Party’s struggle to retain control of Congress.[9] The first study found a large gap between the wealthier competitive U.S. Congressional districts and the less wealthy non-competitive ones.[10]
The second study found that “Democrats’ top opportunities to capture Republican-held [congressional] seats are concentrated in well-educated, higher-income and preponderantly white districts. Most of these seats are centered on economically thriving suburbs around major metropolitan areas where Trump faces widespread resistance among white-collar voters, especially women.”[11]
Trump found a new ally in his former Texas rival, Senator Ted Cruz, whom he had called “Lyin’ Ted.” Trump’s new nickname for Cruz was “Beautiful Ted.”[12] Trump did not have any problem reversing his feelings about Cruz. He traveled to Texas to support Cruz against his Democratic rival, Beto O’Rourke.[13] It became clear that Trump’s Republicans were going to lose the House of Representatives to the Democrats in the mid-term election.[14]
The Democrats planned to use their newly-gained power in the House to revive their investigations of Trump’s illegal activities. The Democratic House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, who stood to regain her powerful post as Speaker of the House, pledged to use the House’s subpoena power to question Trump administration officials, saying that this power was a potent tool in the Democrats’ dealings with Trump.[15] One Republican pundit called Pelosi’s pledge “extortion.”[16] Trump himself called it illegal and threatened to take the battle all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States,[17] which he had packed with right-wing Justices.
Donald Trump has fought legal battles all his life. His father had wanted him to be a “killer” and a “winner.” His way of dealing with rivals and opponents was to try to “crush” them in court rather than to seek a compromise. Trump was involved in thousands of lawsuits, most of them filed by him, others against him.
Karl Racine, the Democratic Attorney General of the District of Columbia, had been directly or indirectly involved in no less than sixteen lawsuits against Trump and his administration.[18] In early 2017, right after Trump was sworn in as President, CREW had filed a lawsuit in the U.S. district court in New York alleging that Trump had violated the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses of the U.S. Constitution by receiving emoluments from foreign governments.
Racine’s Maryland colleague, Brian Frosh, had likewise filed a lawsuit against Trump in a federal court in Maryland alleging that he had committed “unprecedented constitutional violations” of the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses of the U.S. Constitution. In late 2017 a U.S. District Court judge dismissed the CREW lawsuit against Trump on the grounds that CREW “lacked standing” in the case.[19] In March 2018, however, a federal judge in Maryland allowed Frosh’s lawsuit to proceed. Trump’s Justice Department filed a request to “stay” the lawsuit, but in November 2018 the judge denied this request.[20]
The lawsuit slowly made its way through the federal courts. In late 2018 Trump’s Justice Department appealed the District Judge’s ruling to the federal circuit court of appeals in Richmond, Virginia. Racine angrily accused Trump of “going to extraordinary lengths to try to stop us from gathering information about how he is illegally profiting from the presidency.”[21] Thanks to his greed, as well as to his inability to yield on anything without feeling unbearable defeat and loss of self-esteem, Trump was in a mess of his own making. He was “acquitted” in 2021, after he had left office, when the Supreme court ruled that the cases against him were now “moot.”
Trump’s politics of fear and racism and his incitement to hate and violence against his real and imaginary foes had a profound effect on Americans. Due to the collective unconscious denial of Trump’s emotional illness, the abnormal had become normal, racism had become common, and violence was contagious.[22] As the U.S. mid-term elections of November 2018 approached, white Republican politicians launched racist attacks on their African-American Democratic rivals.[23]
In Georgia, a fake “robotic” telephone call to voters impersonated the African American television show hostess Oprah Winfrey calling the black Democratic Georgia politician Stacey Abrams,[24] who was running for governor, “a poor man’s Aunt Jemima.”[25] In Florida, Trump’s racist Agriculture Secretary, Sonny Perdue,[26] incited voters against the black Democratic politician Andrew Gillum,[27] who was running for governor, by saying derisively, “This election is so cotton-pickin’[28] important.”[29] Both Abrams and Gillum lost their races, partly due to Trump’s and Perdue’s incitement.
Trump followed the fascist playbook. His racist incitement infected legislators as much as common people. In August 2018, on a trip to Austria funded by an American Jewish organization, the racist Republican Representative Steven King[30] held a warm meeting with leaders of the far-right, racist and anti-immigrant “Austrian freedom party,”[31] which had historical Nazi ties, and announced that this “great” Austrian party would have been Republican had it been American.[32] The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee condemned King’s racist rhetoric, calling his comments “completely inappropriate” and saying that “we must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms.”[33] Even the conservative National Review[34] ran an anti-Steven-King editorial.[35]
Believing himself to have been victimized, Representative King asked publicly, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”[36] One Republican senator condemned King’s racism, which had tainted the reputation of the Republican Party.[37] The Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy,[38] stripped King of his House committee assignments.
The Republican campaign in the mid-term election had taken on a racist, Trump-inspired character, however, polarizing voters ever more.[39] Before the mid-term election, Congress had been a junior partner of Trump’s administration.[40] In early 2019, with the Democrats having won control of the House, some Republican Congressmen began to break ranks and to vote against Trump on the government shutdown.[41] Their leaders tried to “whip” them back into line.[42] Trump’s destructive actions would cause even more members of his own party to become his opponents and even his foes.
Trump’s self-inflicted troubles kept mounting. Thanks to him, the Democrats wrested control of the House of Representatives from the Republicans. The Republican House Speaker, Paul Ryan, announced that he would not seek re-election. Ryan had serious legal problems.[43] Before leaving Congress, he was accused of lying.[44] His would-be successor, the Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy, would lose the Speaker’s gavel to the Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi,[45] who had been Ryan’s predecessor as Speaker, and who won it again despite serious competition from within her own party.[46] McCarthy would become the House minority leader. His loss to Pelosi was a painful narcissistic wound which he had a hard time accepting.
In the U.S. presidential elections of 2016 Hillary Clinton had won three million more popular votes than Donald Trump, yet Trump had won the presidency in the Electoral College. In the 2018 elections the Democratic candidates for the Senate won twelve million more popular votes than the Republican ones, yet, thanks to the antiquated structure of the U.S. electoral system, the latter kept their control of the Senate. By November the tally was fifty-one Republican senators to forty-seven Democrats, with two races, in Florida and Arizona, still undecided.[47]
Despite his bravado at his press conference on the day after the mid-term election of November 2018, Trump’s mood had become darker, more foul and more dangerous.[48] He became furious with nearly everyone around him, prepared to fire more aides,[49] and unleashed another “tweet storm” against his real and imaginary foes.[50] The big question mark was the expected report of Special Counsel Bob Mueller on his “Russia investigation.”
Following Justice Department custom, Mueller had refrained from issuing any indictments during the sixty days preceding the election, even though he had enough evidence to issue many. Mueller was extraordinarily cautious. A former counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, thought that Mueller had “doomed the [Russia] investigation.”[51] Mueller was expected to issue several new indictments and to hand in his confidential report of the “Russia investigation” to the Attorney General, who, in turn, would have to decide whether to publish it.[52] This was Trump’s greatest fear.
After Mueller issued his report, the investigations and prosecutions of Trump’s crimes shifted to the U.S. Congress. The House of Representatives twice impeached Trump, but the Senate did not have the majority required to convict him. During the Biden administration the Justice Department investigated and prosecuted Trump, but the incredible foot dragging by Attorney General Merrick Garland wasted two precious years before Special Counsel Jack Smith was appointed to prosecute Trump.
Smith did his level best, but Trump’s lawyers were able to delay and postpone his federal trials again and again until his re-election made further prosecution impossible, U.S. Justice Department policy being no to prosecute a sitting president. The state prosecutors were more successful. By the time he was re-elected, Trump had been convicted in New York State on 34 felony charges. Incredibly, the tens of millions of Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 did not mind his criminal record. Political violence and political crime had become normal. Trump had perverted the American body politic.
His impeachments, his indictments, his trials and his criminal record do not stop Trump during his second presidential term. The Republican dominated Congress does his bidding. The Congressmen fear to lose their seats if they opposed Trump. With no guardrails to stop him, Trump now feels free to do as he pleases. He has three “Justices” on the U.S. Supreme court whom he had personally nominated, and another three conservative ones, which meant that he is always likely to have a 6-to-3 majority in his favor, unless his case is totally illegal, baseless, and unconstitutional. Like other autocrats, tyrants, and dictators, Trump constantly tests the limits of his power, how far he can go in wrecking democracy and installing a dictatorship without being challenged or stopped.
Trump’s unconscious need to redress the injustice of his birthright to love having been taken away from him by his mother and kid brother at age two, and his guilt feelings over having robbed his elder brother of his own birthright as their father’s favorite son and hastened the latter’s death from alcoholism never went away. They are the motives behind his cruel order to deprive the children of illegal immigrants of their birthright citizenship. As long as these motives remain unconscious (i.e. for the rest of his life), Trump will continue to try to enforce his inhumane plan. He may even try to get Congress to re-write the Fourteenth Amendment, or the entire Constitution. A tyrant like Trump stops at nothing and his unconscious mind never lets him cease trying.
ENDNOTES
[1] Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Produced the World’s Most Dangerous Man, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2020
[2] The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1868, after the American Civil War; it addressed citizenship rights and equal protection of the law for former slaves
[3] The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (enacted in 1968) abolished the U.S. immigration quotas that had been allocated by national origins since 1921
[4] Jonathan Swan & Stef W. Kight, “Exclusive: Trump targeting birthright citizenship with executive order,” Axios, October 30, 2018
[5] George T. Conway III & Neal Katyal, “Trump’s proposal to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional,” The Washington Post, October 30, 2018
[6] Corey Brettschneider, “Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship betrays his ignorance — and his weakness,” The Guardian, November 3, 2018
[7] Paul Ryan interview, CNN Transcripts, October 31, 2018
[8] John Wagner & Felicia Sonmez, “Trump lashes out at Paul Ryan over birthright citizenship comments, says he ‘should be focusing on holding the Majority’,” The Washington Post, October 31, 2018
[9] Greg Sargent, “Trump’s hate and lies are failing. Two new studies show why,” The Washington Post, October 31, 2018
[10] Jim Tankersley & Ben Casselman, “Parts of America Are Still Struggling Economically. They Don’t Matter Much in the Midterms,” The New York Times, October 30, 2018
[11] Ronald Brownstein, “It’s not a blue wave. It’s a realignment of American politics,” CNN Politics, October 31, 2018
[12] Arwa Mahdawi, “‘Lyin’ Ted’ Cruz is now ‘Beautiful Ted’: how a change of nickname reveals Trump’s midterm fears,” The Guardian, October 23, 2020
[13] Robert Francis (Beto) O’Rourke (born 1972), American Democratic politician from El Paso, Texas, U.S. Representative from Texas from 2013 to 2019
[14] Scott Clement & Dan Balz, “Democrats in prime position to take House, but battleground district poll shows wild cards remain,” The Washington Post, November 1, 2019
[15] Dan Merica, “Nancy Pelosi suggests subpoena power could be useful tool in negotiating with Trump,” CNN Politics, October 22, 2018
[16] Madison Gesiotto, “Beware Nancy Pelosi exploiting subpoena power to push policy,” The Hill, October 29, 2018
[17] Dave Boyer & S. A. Miller, “Exclusive: Trump says Pelosi subpoena threat ‘illegal,’ grounds for Supreme Court battle,” The Washington Times, November 2, 2018
[18] Matt Cohen, “How to Sue Trump,” Washington City Paper, August 9, 2018
[19] David A. Fahrenthold & Jonathan O’Connell, “Judge dismisses lawsuit alleging Trump violated Constitution,” The Washington Post, December 21, 2018
[20] Jonathan O’Connell, Ann E. Marimow & David A. Fahrenthold, “Judge denies Trump’s request for stay in emoluments case,” The Washington Post, November 2, 2018
[21] Jan Wolfe, “Justice Department asks appeals court to end Trump emoluments case,” Reuters, December 17, 2018
[22] Tana Ganeva, “Psychiatrist on Trump: ‘The president deserves medical standard of care, and he is not getting it’,” Salon, March 5, 2019
[23] Matt Viser, “Midterms test whether Republicans not named Trump can win by stoking racial animosity,” The Washington Post, November 4, 2018
[24] Stacey Yvonne Abrams (born 1973), African-American Democratic politician, lawyer, and author, minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017
[25] “Aunt Jemima” was a fictional “Negro” character in the vaudeville song “Old Aunt Jemima,” written in 1875; she was a stereotype of the black “mammy”; her skin was dark and dewy, with a pearly white smile, she wore a scarf over her head and a polka-dot dress with a white collar
[26] George Ervin (Sonny) Perdue III (born 1946), American veterinarian, businessman and Republican politician, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 2017 to 2021, governor of Georgia from 2003 to 2011
[27] Andrew Demese Gillum (born 1979), African-American Democratic politician, Mayor of Tallahassee, Florida, from 2014 to 2018
[28] Cotton picking was the main job of African slaves in the American South; like “nigger,” the phrase “cotton pickin’” is a racist appellation for African-Americans
[29] Matt Viser, “Midterms test whether Republicans not named Trump can win by stoking racial animosity,” The Washington Post, November 4, 2018
[30] Steven Arnold (Steve) King (born 1949), American Republican politician, U.S. Representative from Iowa from 2003 to 2021, known for his racism and bigotry
[31] Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party of Austria), far-right, populist, nationalist Austrian political party founded by a former Nazi SS officer
[32] Avery Anapol, “Steve King: Members of Nazi-linked party in Austria ‘would be Republicans’ if they were in US,” The Hill, October 29, 2018
[33] Rachael Bade & John Bresnahan, “Stivers ‘could not stay silent’ on Steve King,” Politico, October 30, 2018
[34] National Review, conservative American political, social, and cultural magazine edited by Richard Lowry (born 1968), founded by the conservative scholar William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008) in 1955
[35] Jonathan S. Tobin, “Conservatives Need to Draw the Line at Steve King,” the National Review, November 2, 2018
[36] Trip Gabriel, “Before Trump, Steve King Set the Agenda for the Wall and Anti-Immigrant Politics,” The Washington Post, January 10, 2019
[37] Tim Scott, “Why are Republicans accused of racism? Because we’re silent on things like this,” The Washington Post, January 11, 2019
[38] Kevin Owen McCarthy (born 1965), American Republican politician, U.S. Representative from California since 2013, House Majority Leader from 2014 to 2018
[39] Art Cullen, “Is Steve King’s Bigoted Act Wearing Thin?” The New York Times, November 5, 2018
[40] Paul Kane & Derek Willis, “Laws and disorder,” The Washington Post, November 5, 2018
[41] Josh Israel, “8 Republican lawmakers break ranks, vote to end Trump’s shutdown,” Think Progress, January 9, 2019
[42] Julia Manchester, “GOP rep says he doesn’t expect any more Republicans to break ranks in shutdown fight,” The Hill, January 10, 2019
[43] Mike DeBonis, “Paul Ryan’s sprint to retirement turns into a long slog with plenty of pitfalls,” The Washington Post, July 19, 2018
[44] Matthew Yglesias, “Paul Ryan is leaving Congress in the most fitting way possible,” Vox, November 30, 2018
[45] Felicia Sonmez & John Wagner, “The new Congress: Pelosi retakes House gavel as shutdown continues,” The Washington Post, January 3, 2019
[46] Mike DeBonis & Robert Costa, “Sixteen dissident Democrats vow to oppose Pelosi as next speaker,” The Washington Post, November 19, 2018
[47] Elise Viebeck, “Sinema wins in Arizona as Democrats capture a longtime GOP Senate seat,” The Washington Post, November 12, 2018
[48] Susan B. Glasser, “‘We’ll Be Further Apart as a Country’: Trump, the Midterm Elections, and Why the Really Crazy Times May Just Be Beginning,” The New Yorker, November 7, 2018
[49] Kevin Liptak & al., “Trump’s mood takes a foul turn: ‘He’s pissed — at damn near everyone’,” CNN Politics, November
[50] @realDonaldTrump, Twitter (now X), November 15, 2018
[51] Philip Allen Lacovara, “Mueller missed his market — and doomed the investigation,” The Washington Post, November 7, 2018
[52] Noah Feldman, “Now, It’s the Midterms. But Mueller Time Is Coming,” Bloomberg, November 6, 2018