Peggy Noonan has been a voice of conservative reflection for The Wall Street Journal since leaving the Ronald Reagan administration as his primary speechwriter. Five of Noonan’s books have been New York Times bestsellers. Consuming every word of her weekly column keeps me politically balanced.
In her June 14-15 column titled “America is losing sight of its political culture,” she referred to and elaborated on our 47th president being America’s Mr. Tinpot Dictator. This phrase, often used to describe a leader who acts like a dictator, with delusions of grandeur and authoritarian tendencies, struck a chord. Following the title about Mr. Trump, I pursued investigative research on the topic.
A Historical Lens on Authoritarianism
My research led me to study Jeane Kirkpatrick, who played a major role in the foreign policy arm of the Ronald Reagan administration. She was an ardent anti-communist and became the first female to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations. In Kirkpatrick’s 1982 book, “Dictatorship and Double Standards,” she described two kinds of dictatorships: traditional autocracies (Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and the United Arab Emirates) and tinpot dictatorships (Nicaragua, the Philippines, Syria, and Panama).
Kirkpatrick argued that dictators remain in power by using the tools of repression, domination, and fear. In a Perplexity AI research-based search, 15 documented examples of Donald Trump exhibiting behaviors commonly associated with a tinpot dictator were revealed. The examples – noted below -- are referenced by nine different sources and align with patterns seen in authoritarian regimes, where leaders undermine democratic institutions, target minorities, silence dissent, and concentrate power to the point where they feel and act like a king.
A Democracy in Decline
Since January 20, Americans have witnessed a disturbing pattern:
- Disregard for court orders
- Attacks on the press
- Suppression of protests
- Expansion of executive power
- Demonization of political opponents
- Undermining of elections
- Weaponization of law enforcement
- Dehumanization of minorities
- Termination of asylum protections
- Mass deportations
- Erosion of the rule of law
- Marginalization of LGBTQ+ and racial communities
- Spread of disinformation
- Invocation of emergency powers
- Threats against political adversaries
- Promotion of fear and division
In just 160 days of Trump’s 2.0 administration, Trump’s actions have closely mirrored classic authoritarian tactics such as labeling media as “enemies of the people,” downgrading valid research-based polls that show America’s disapproval of him and his cabinet members’ actions, quashing states’ rights, using force against protestors by calling in the military to quell his definition of civil unrest, undermining Congressional and judicial institutional checks, demeaning people. Even members of his own party who dissent are publicly demeaned
A Dictator’s Stunt
Thom Hartman, columnist for the independent news outlet Common Dreams, noted in his June 23 op-ed regarding Trump’s decision to bomb Iran, “By defying the law – the Constitution, the War Powers Act, and the AUMF (Authorization to Use Military Force) – and simply bombing Iran without any consultation whatsoever, he’s also pulling a dictator stunt … .”
Constitutional scholars concur that, as a minimum, Trump should have consulted the bipartisan congressional Gang of Eight that U.S. law (50 U.S.C. 3093) requires before he bombed Iran. Trump’s self-presentation, non-consultation, and unlawful action on June 22 were a model authoritarian narrative where one person tries to demonstrate that he alone is the king. Trump’s actions against Iran opened up a Pandora's box for 340 million Americans plus our allies, and no one, not even the tinpot dictator, knows what consequences this may lead to.
Knowing that fair-minded Americans have witnessed the earlier cited 15 actions by their president in only 160 days and realize they’ve 1,300 more days before Trump 2.0 ends, there are several pillars that are at risk for Americans. They include:
- the rule of law
- judicial independence
- free press
- freedom of expression
- civil rights
- anti-discrimination protection
- environmental protection
- scientific research integrity
- multilateral alliances
- international cooperation
- domestic and international human rights
- migration and refugee protection
- whistleblower protection
- public health safeguards
- economic stability
- minority and vulnerable community protection
- Congressional, legislative, and executive checks and balances
With Trump 2.0, Americans sure have a lot on our plates, don’t we? And behold, look at the calendar. Friday, July 4, kicked off the year-long celebration of America’s 250th birthday, which formally occurs on July 4, 2026. Never forget that in 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that American citizens were no longer subject to or subordinate to a dictatorial king.
A Call to Conscience:
Fellow citizens: What are you going to do between now and July 4, 2026, to protect and preserve our independence from a tinpot dictator?
So, fellow citizens, I ask you:
- Bow down to authoritarianism and normalize anti-democratic behavior.
- Reflect on the challenges facing the nation and become an advocate for policies that align with liberty, freedom, sovereignty, democracy, and the principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
This is your America. The choice is yours.
Steve Corbin is Professor Emeritus of Marketing, University of Northern Iowa, and a non-paid freelance opinion editor and guest columnist contributor to 246 news agencies and 48 social media platforms in 45 states.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.