The Current - Has the U.S. fallen into ‘competitive authoritarianism’?

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Donald Trump has handed broad powers to unelected billionaire Elon Musk, tried to intimidate political opponents and attempted to suppress critical media coverage — all in his first month as president. One academic says this all adds up to “competitive authoritarianism,” a massive abuse of democracy.

Larry Driscoll confessed to a murder that he swears he did not commit. And yet in 2015, Driscoll found himself in a police station describing the crime. And there was a confrontation in the vehicle. I think she was trying to take my billfold and I went to defend myself to try to push her out of the car. I'm Kathleen Goltar and this week on Crime Story, the interrogation that sent an innocent man to prison. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC podcast. Hello, it's Matt here. Thanks for listening to The Current, wherever you're getting this podcast. Before we get to today's show, wonder if I might ask a favor of you if you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using There is a lot of news that's out there these days We're trying to help you make sense of it all and give you a bit of a break from some of that news, too So if you already follow the program, thank you

And if you have done that maybe you could leave us a rating or review as well The whole point of this is to let more listeners find our show and perhaps find some of that information That's so important in these really tricky times. So thanks for all of that Appreciate it and on to today's show the day before his inauguration as US president in January Donald Trump told his supporters the change was coming Just imagine all of the good things that we will accomplish together with four more years in the White House And we're gonna do a lot of things. You're gonna see something tomorrow. You're gonna see executive the good things that we will accomplish together with four more years in the White House and we're going to do a lot of things. You're going to see something tomorrow. You're going to see

executive orders that are going to make you extremely happy. Lots of them. Lots of them. In the week since then, Donald Trump has eliminated thousands of federal government jobs, tried to freeze trillions of dollars in federal funding, fired senior leaders in the military, and issued an order to change the rules on who gets US citizenship. He has empowered Elon Musk's team, nicknamed DOGE, to access government computer systems, including those that handle citizens' personal data. In many of these cases, Donald Trump has been taken to court and judges have issued injunctions or court orders against him.

In response, Elon Musk has tweeted, the judges who rule against President Trump should be impeached. All of this adds to a crisis for American democracy, according to my next guests. Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. He's in Stanford, California.

And Luke Unway is with me here in studio. He's a distinguished professor of democracy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Good morning to you both. Good morning. Good morning. Larry Diamond, when you take a look at what's going on

in your country right now, what suggests to you that US democracy is in trouble? Well, first of all, Trump has defied several court orders, not openly, but in the administration's behavior. Chief Justice Roberts let him off the hook a little bit in saying that he could continue to essentially starve to death the US Agency for International Development. But in fact, he's doing so with a technique called impoundment of congressionally appropriated

funds, which the Supreme Court ruled in 1974 is unconstitutional. And it's also illegal in terms of a law that the Congress passed against it in 1974. Beyond that, to give this one oligopolistic tyrant, Elon Musk, the control of the entire US budget, really, as a kind of geek terror squad of postmodern brownshirts descending on one department after another, firing people, cutting off money. And to my mind, as worrisome as anything else, capturing the data of individual Americans and of all the programs we're funding to an extent that we don't know, to an extent that at least one court has ordered to stop, that has no ability to monitor whether Musk and his geek squad have complied with the order to purge the data from their computers. I mean, it's really

kind of a postmodern governance nightmare. It can be alarming, but how does it threaten US democracy, do you think? They've already declared their intention to weaponize the federal government by going after individuals who they don't like. Many of their plans about the need for a imperial presidency, the theory is called the theory of the unitary executive, have been laid out in project 2025 of the Heritage Foundation You just look at the pattern of what they're doing. They enter government and they fire 18

inspectors general almost immediately who will scrutinize wrongdoing and Corruption you look at the recent firings and the apparent effort to politicize the United States Armed Forces in the service of a man who is president and demands absolute personal loyalty. A lot of this adds up to a looming crisis because of the entire context of the situation and what they've already signaled they want to do. Luke and Wei, you have said that what we're seeing right now In the United States can no longer be defined as democracy. You say it looks like competitive authoritarianism

This is serious statement to say that it's no longer a democracy. What do you mean by that? So what we mean by competitive authoritarianism competitive authoritarianism or political systems in which there are elections occur regularly There's opposition sometimes opposition even wins elections However, the these are cases in which leaders engage in massive abuse of democracy are targeting for harassment opposition intimidating media and More broadly and this is really important to understanding what's going on right now Creating a system of biased

important to understanding what's going on right now, creating a system of biased government agencies. Essentially, competitive authoritarian regimes are like having a soccer match in which the referee or the umpire systematically favors one team over the other. And that's what you see happening in the United States right now? Absolutely. So, you know, what we see already now, I mean, we're not even, I think we're, I think even saying it's in a crisis isn't somewhat too optimistic in the sense that we've already transitioned in the United States to a competitive authoritarian regime.

We already see systematic attacks on media, which has motivated them to engage in widespread self-censorship. The Federal Communications Commission, which is supposed to be a nonpartisan agency to regulate media in the United States, is already acting in ways that is systematically favoring pro-Trump outlets. It's revived investigations of independent media, PBS, NBR, CBS, NBC, but has treated Fox News, which is pro-Trump, with kid gloves. You've also said that one of the constraints in authoritarianism is a professional military

and there have been threats to that as well. Last week, Donald Trump fired the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the three top lawyers in the United States military were also dismissed. So in the context of what you're talking about, what does that say? Well, that tells you that he wants a military

that's gonna do his bidding. So in this first term, he ordered the military to fire on protesters. They refused. I think if presented with such a situation right now, I would not have any confidence that the military would exhibit the kind of resistance it did in the first term.

So I think we're really in trouble. Resistance is an interesting word. I wanna play you something. This is an exchange between the president and the governor of Maine, Janet Mills. President Trump was talking about an executive order banning trans people from competing in women's sports and whether state Governments would comply with his order have a listen to this is Maine here the governor of Maine

Are you not going to comply with it? Well, I'm we are the federal law Well, you better do it You better do it because you're not going to get any federal funding at all if you don't and by the way Your population even though it's somewhat liberal although I did very well there Your population doesn't want men playing in women's sports So you better come you better comply because otherwise you're not getting any any federal funding Every state good. I'll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one and Enjoy your life after governor because I don't think you'll be in elected politics.

Larry Diamond, what do you make of that exchange? Well, in both language and tone and facial expressions, it sounds like a mafia don in a thug-like exchange. You better comply. Well, have a nice life after. I mean, this is the way that autocrats or organized crime figures threaten people who get in their way.

Look, all of this is gonna play out in court. We have dozens of cases that have already been filed, and usually they have to work through several rounds of judicial decisions. But you heard there the tone, the style, the attitude of an imperial president who, as the economist portrayed on its most recent cover of its magazine, wants to be king. Can I ask you just about the threats there? Because you've written,

the most underestimated element in the current crisis of our democracy is the degree to which many politicians fear for their lives if they do anything to cross or defy President Trump. This isn't Russia where people are falling out of windows, but what do you mean, who do you think Larry is afraid of President Trump?

Who fears for their lives? Larry Sussman I think certainly electoral officials who received an unprecedented volume of death threats in the last two electoral cycles, members of Congress who have received unprecedented levels of death threats. And this has happened in a context where violent actors who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, many of them attacked policemen. Many of them were asking, kind of drooling with the desire for revenge,

where's Nancy? Meaning Pelosi. And who wanted to hang Mike Pence. These people have all now been granted pardons or clemency, and many of them are heavily armed. And when you're getting written death threats at a rising pace, knowing that these extremist groups are around and feel empowered and exonerated, it's intimidating. Luke, and how are you seeing this play out? Because one of the things that you've said is that under that idea of a competitive authoritarianism,

the cost of public opposition, of speaking out publicly, goes way up. Absolutely. So until now, in the United States, as in Canada, opposition has been able to operate without cost. But now we're entering a system where it's likely that if you give to the Democratic Party, you're going to increase your chances of being audited by the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service. That if you're a businessman who gives or business person who gives to a Democratic

cause, that you're going gonna lose major business opportunities. That if you include on your board member people who are pro-democratic, who are given to democratic causes, that's gonna ruin your business. We're really entering an era in which engaging opposition is enormously costly. And yet, for many Americans, I mean, aside from the cost of eggs, for example,

life goes on as normal, right? Life, life, these things are happening, but for most people, you know, the sun still rises, they go to work and what have you. So how difficult does that make it for you to tell people that something is happening when their daily life is still their daily life? That's right.

Now it's still early stages. And as Larry said, I think it's about to get worse. But I think, you know, I think what we can do is sort of tell people what it's going to be like, because the whole nature of opposition is going to have to change. So in a democratic system, you operate entirely through institutions. You run for office, you're doing as the Democratic Party is doing now, going through the courts, which is absolutely the right thing to do. But in a competitive authoritarian regime, you also need to engage in extra institutional activity. You know, that includes protests, civil disobedience.

And I think that's, you know, what we need to get prepared for. But I guess the point is, do you see that urgency in the average American is kind of a loaded phrase, but in the United States right now? Well, I think, you know, I think you actually do now. I think for a while there was some sort of passivity, but you've seen the level of anger in town halls that is definitely increasing, even in Republican districts. There have been protests in front of moderate Republican offices.

You've also seen increasing resistance from federal bureaucrats. You've seen splits within the sort of Trump administration. That's a number of DOJ, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is MUST agency or whatever it calls it, have resigned. So I really think you're already beginning to see a wave of resistance.

Have a listen to the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who is a defender of what Donald Trump is doing. President Trump is taking legitimate executive action to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in all these federal programs. That's what the American people demand and deserve. President Trump is taking legitimate executive action to root out waste, fraud and abuse in all these federal programs. That's what the American people demand and deserve.

That's what they voted for. And the only people who take issue with it are these same congressional Democrats who never before had any issue with unelected staff or even bureaucrats running the White House for the last four years. Larry Diamond, Donald Trump does have popular support for his agenda from what was a free and fair election. And so what do you say to people like Speaker Johnson who say that this is sour grapes from people who lost the election? I say first of all that he already lacks majority support for what he's doing.

He's down in the public opinion polls to something less than the nearly 50% of the electorate that supported him, 43 to 45%. And on many of his initiatives, particularly the scope of the arbitrary firings of people and the threats to cut vital services and support programs, potentially even Medicare, he doesn't even have 40%. And we'll see how it plays out. But whatever your electoral mandate, you don't get to violate the law and the Constitution. You don't get to arbitrarily and illegally fire people who are supposed to be counters

to political and administrative abuse. You don't get to empower a private citizen who is coincidentally, but very significantly, the richest man in the country and indeed the world to download vast troves of sensitive federal government data including the personnel files potentially of vast numbers of federal workers and even potentially he wants to get into the tax returns of individual Americans What on earth does he need that for in order to? Americans. What on earth does he need that for in order to, you know, assess the efficiency of government departments? Lukan, what do you make of that issue of popular support? How does that fit into that?

Well, you know, that is, in a sense, completely irrelevant to democracy. Sorry, what do you mean? Well, in a sense that just because you're elected doesn't mean you're allowed to engage in anti-democratic actions. And so what's going on right now, I mean, I would even go further in terms of describing Musk's action as what in political science we call a self-coup. So we typically think of coups as military takeover of the government, but there's also equally dangerous for democracy, something called a self-coup, where elected government

sees power from competing branches of government, such as Congress or the courts. And we see this in Musk, you know, basically essentially raiding the Treasury Department, cutting expenditures that have already been appropriated by the Congress. He's eliminated the USID, which was created by Congress. So he's basically seizing power from Congress. I mean, we're still in early stages, it's still an attempt, but it is truly unprecedented, at least in modern American history. I'm Nicola Coughlin, and this is history's youngest heroes, Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope.

I think of home a lot. I think of running into Vancouver and running into where I'm going to finish on the ocean. And all you got to do is take another step and keep on going. He planned to run 5,300 miles across the second largest country in the world. Makes you believe in the human race again. Join me, Nicola Coughlin, for History's Youngest Heroes, wherever you get your podcasts. Clara, you said that the last, you've written that the last line of defense in some ways is civil society. Where do you see the potential for resisting what's going on in your country?

Well, as Lucan said, we're starting to see it in the flooding of congressional offices with phone calls from angry citizens and in the flooding of their congressional town halls, again, with citizens who want answers, want accountability, and want the Congress to fulfill its obligations under the Constitution to be a co-equal branch of government. How do you think that's going to be hobbled by what is happening with the media right now where the president is choosing who can be in, for example, the Oval Office documenting what's going on? You have the Washington Post editorial board, which is now saying that it will support,

or it'll just be writing about free markets and personal liberty just on the editorial side of things. That's not the editorial board really speaking. That's another mega oligopolist, Jeff Bezos. He truly is nearly a monopolist in the way Amazon operates. And he's worried about the bottom line, and he's violating the first rule of Timothy Snyder's brilliant book on tyranny, do not comply in advance. But the editor of the editorial page, David Shipley, resigned in response. That's another kind of thing that people can do. I think we are already starting to see a consumer boycott of Tesla.

There's a lot that individuals can do. Your clip of Governor Janet Mills of Maine was very important. She's not the only governor who's standing up to Trump. Most of the Democratic governors are as well. And when it hurts their constituents of their state, even some Republican governors will. And we have not seen the big other shoe drop, and we may never, but the big other shoe is when just a few Republican senators,

it will only take four of the 53, stand up and say, no more, we're not gonna cooperate in this any longer looking you were nodding as you were saying Well, I think there are numbers of you know, we're in a very dangerous moment at the same time Trump is incredibly vulnerable on a number of fronts for one as you mentioned He's relatively unpopular the average popularity for for an incoming elected president is about 60% He's about about 45 percent. That's quite low. The other thing is that in Congress, the Republican majority is incredibly thin, and it would

only take a few Republicans to really kind of halt this process. Can I just ask you finally, Lucan, before we go? I mean, we're watching this here in Canada for a bunch of different reasons. One is because it's the United States, powerful who are right next door and what happens there I mean we're seeing this with the threat of tariffs and the potential You know destruction of parts of our economy what happens there impact us directly so what are the implications for us in this country if American democracy falters or fails well, I think there are enormous implications

I mean I think we were sort of entering a whole new world in which we have to spend much more on military to defend ourselves because we can no longer rely on the United States to defend Canada. I think we also have to worry about the spread of kind of Trump-style middle finger, what they call middle finger politics up north. I think you've already seen that in the truckers. I think you've seen that in a number of cases.

But we also have to do things to preserve core democratic institutions above all, I would say, the media. Democracy relies on a fact-based media. Democracy cannot survive, as in the United States, when people do not agree on basic facts like who won the election. So, so far in Canada, we have that. We have the CBC. We have the establishment media that spends money on fact checkers that does not print outright lies. We need to preserve that. So, I think all of us need to start paying for our media. It is really worth it.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm in the offices of the CBC, but we really need to preserve the CBC, which is an important Canadian institution. Larry, do you find any optimism in the hint of resistance that you're seeing right now but we really need to preserve the CBC, which is an important Canadian institution. Larry, do you find any optimism in the hint of resistance that you're seeing right now or the growing resistance? You mentioned Tim Snyder's book, and one of the things in talking to him is that he wrote this and now feels as though

he has been proven correct. And I don't think he takes any pride in that. It's not something that as a historian he wanted to see happen. Where and if are you able to find any optimism in that. It's not something that as a historian, he wanted to see happen. Where and if are you able to find any optimism in this? Well certainly from re-energized civil society that is organizing, mobilizing, raising money and pushing back with their voices to a degree that's only now beginning to gather, but I can feel the passion, the energy, the outrage, and the intelligent analysis that are mobilizing.

I know that there are members of Congress on the Republican side who are deeply, deeply troubled by this, and I retain some hope that there's going to be a moment of more flagrant and explicit, and I think inevitable, violation of the Constitution and the rule of law where they will stand up. And the courts as well, I'm very confident, in the federal judiciary will find at least some of what he's doing illegal and unconstitutional. The question is whether the Congress will act and whether it will be too late. Larry Diamond, good to speak with you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. And, Lucan, good to have you here again. Thank you. Thank you. Lucan Way is a distinguished professor of democracy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.