Chaleff is a speaker, innovative thinker and the author of “ To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Political Followers to Make or Brake a Toxic Leader.” This is the fourth entry in a series on political followership.
The presidential debate has come and gone. The sittingAmerican president is rattling the saber of long-range weapons for Ukraine. The sitting Russian dictator is expelling the West’s diplomatic staff. The outgoing president of Mexico has pulled off the largest-ever change of a judicial system in a substantial democracy. The prime minister of Israel defies the populace by continuing to use bludgeons to free hostages who increasingly are freed post-mortem. The presumed winner of the presidential election in Venezuela has fled the country.
This was last week. When did politics become so consequential?
Answer: It always has been.
In each of these cases an individual who has managed to make themselves the leader of their polity through outplaying rivals in the political game is now impacting millions of lives. What of their followers? Remember, there are no leaders without followers.
In my book, “To Stop a Tyrant,” I focus on the followers while everyone else is focusing on the leaders. What do followers want? Why do they follow?
As always, the elite (who hate to view themselves as followers) act from the hubris that they can elevate and control the political leader. They do a pretty good job of this until they miscalculate, allow the leader to accrue too much power and find themselves the ones at the end of the puppet strings.
Members of the inner circle, practically drunk on the power of being able to influence the putative leader, outsmart and outmaneuver each other until the leader loses confidence in them and turns to other, more questionable confidants. Woe to the leader whose confidants stroke their fragile egos.
The vast army of bureaucrats sit warily on the sidelines, wondering who they will be answering to, calculating how much they can use the newly installed power to their advantage, or how much they can thwart threatened incursions on their well- guarded turf.
Meanwhile, the activists act. Paid or unpaid, that’s their job. More importantly, that’s their passion. Some paint their chosen person as the savior and some paint them as the destroyer of worlds.
You, dear citizen, will need to sort out which scenario is more credible.
If I were king, my one decree would be that all young people in a democracy study historic examples of how democracies die. How ruthless leaders have been elevated by people like themselves in the belief they were the answer to the country’s woes. How they missed the warning signs until it was too late and the leader had full control of the coercive power of the state. They would play simulations. Experiment with choices. See the outcomes. And prepare themselves to meet the temptations of their own era with a clear mind.
In my book, I use the term “prototyrant” to describe the political leader with the characteristics who, given the chance, can morph into a full blown tyrant. I asked a friend of mine who supports a candidate with too many of these characteristics why he is not worried about them achieving office. His answer seemed simple. The military in our country would never go along with a dictator. It sounded good. I want to believe the same thing.
Yet, the belief is almost childlike. History offers no proof that this would be the outcome. If it were, the result would just as likely be civil war or chaos. The time to interrupt the progression of a prototyrant is before they control the coercive levers of the state. If they have fooled us into giving them access to the levers, slam the brakes hard as soon as they begin to misuse those levers.
No prototyrant gets better when in power.
“Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We were told that in 1907 when it was published in a collection of Lord Acton’s letters and essays. It seems a hundred years hasn’t been enough time for us to digest this crucial observation.
I have examined the rare instances when enough individuals in the five circles of political followers work together to stop a prototyrant while they can. It may be time to consider these examples and do a bit of make-up study for the class we never took on how to keep democracies alive.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks with U.S. President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on May 27, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Trump met with his Cabinet days after saying a peace deal with Iran was“ largely negotiated” amid expectations around the re-opening the Strait of Hormuz.
The worst deal in the history of deals
As a former Republican, sometimes it’s fun to look back on the things we — I was part of a “we” at one time — criticized Democrats for, and not all that long ago.
Remember, if you will, when Republicans condemned former President Bill Clinton for pardoning his brother and his corrupt donor friend Marc Rich?
Or, remember when Republicans wagged their fingers at former President Barack Obama’s golf outings? Or his executive orders? Or his Syrian “red line”?
Or all the times Republicans went after former President Joe Biden’s gaffes?
While those criticisms may have been justified at the time, they look patently ridiculous next to our current president’s cartoonish and downright dangerous offenses.
Offenses like pardoning Jan. 6 insurrectionists — nearly 100 of whom have gone on to be arrested for, charged with, or convicted of crimes separate from the events of that day.
Or wreaking havoc on the global economy by instituting reckless tariffs on friends, neighbors, and enemies alike?
Or taking a proverbial sledge hammer to countless government agencies that have put every American in danger, whether on airplanes, in hospitals, at job sites, or in natural disasters.
That’s just a few, but nothing looks worse next to his predecessors than Donald Trump’s supposed Iran deal, at least as it’s outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding, the details of which Trump was loath to share.
And for good reason — they are shockingly bad and humiliating for the U.S.
I remember Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA from 2015 very well. I, along with many Republicans as well as a cadre of foreign policy experts, criticized that deal for its obvious and problematic concessions to a very bad actor who we’ve long known could not be trusted. But trust was what we gave the Iranian regime, as well as sudden access to a boatload of cash — $100 billion, to be exact.
All of Obama’s provisions were temporary, which would allow Iran to restart enriching uranium upon their sunset; the deal didn’t address Iran’s ballistic missiles, or its funding of terrorist proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas; the supposed “anytime, anywhere” inspections came with a 24-day delay, if Iran so chose, giving them ample time to hide any suspect materials; and it didn’t require any congressional authority.
In short, I’d argue it wasn’t a great deal. But as bad as it was, it looks like the Magna Carta next to Trump’s.
Trump’s deal would give Iran immediate sanction relief and access to $300 billion, presumably to use to fund terror proxies; it doesn’t secure any upfront limits on uranium enrichment or missile development; it allows Iran to charge for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz in the future; and it calls for Israel to stop its attacks on Hezbollah, another win for Iran.
Neither Americans nor the Middle East are safer than we were 100-plus days ago when Trump decided to pursue this folly. And in fact, our economy is weaker for it. But Iran is unquestionably stronger and more emboldened.
They’ve seen Trump’s weakness, unseriousness, and frighteningly limited appreciation for history. They’ve seen him retreat on most of his core threats to the regime, from bombing their cultural sites to ending a civilization overnight. And they’ve taken notice as he’s abandoned the promises that were supposedly central to his justification for war in the first place — regime change, liberating the Iranian people, and removing Iran’s nuclear materials.
What a waste of blood and treasure, not to mention American might and power, only so that our enemies can watch us limp desperately toward a conclusion that’s being described — by the right — as “unthinkable,” “appeasement,” and “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.