Trump Resisted the Fascist Impulse of COVID-19

Over the last few years we have been flooded with op-eds and messaging from partisan legacy media outlets trying to paint President Donald Trump as some form of fascist or one of the other labels from the arsenal of activist pejoratives.  However, the events of 2020, particularly the pandemic, have shown the outrage to be at minimum hyperbolic and at most pure hysteria.

While it would be disingenuous to claim that Donald Trump’s leadership style is flawless and articulate; most people from all sides of the political spectrum agree he has a tendency to be heavy-handed when attacking his critics on social media.  That in combination with a rather low tolerance for criticism makes the President seem petty at times and a man with poor impulse control.  Something the political establishment fails to understand endears him to some of his most passionate supporters, as they see most of his critics as a part of the political establishment.   

This is one area where Donald Trump has shown to have significant restraint and self-discipline. That is his resistance to grant himself excessive executive powers, powers that some Republicans, like Trey Gowdy, argued were granted to the executive branch during the Obama Administration.   

Trump’s current contemporaries have not shown the same restraint. In March Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau did what the Wallstreet Journal called “Trudeau’s Coronavirus Power Grab” when he tried to assume unilateral power until December 2021.  In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford succeeded in shutting down democracy for over a year with Bill 195.  Many other leaders across the world have done the same from Hungry, Russia, Turkey and Poland.

To many people’s surprise there are examples where President Trump showed a very cautious respect for the American concept of Federalism.  With the widespread riots across the country, mostly concentrated in predominantly left-wing areas, Trump was reluctant to send in the national guard.  Instead he allowed the municipal and state authorities handle the riots in areas like Portland and has famously said, “if they want our help just give us a call” referring to federal government intervention.  That was until local and state authorities refused to intervene in the desecration and vandalism of federal property and even then, the federal authorities only intervened when federal property was under attack.

If Donald Trump was a Fascist, as many on the far-left claim, the pandemic would have been a dream come true.  All over the world, activist groups have, in many cases, demanded their governments assume the ultimate authority to protect them, or in the minds of opponents, suppressed liberal freedoms. 

If Trump truly was fascistic he would act swiftly to expand his powers and ignore the opposition from state and local representatives who have prevented the federal government from intervening in many of the ongoing riots in cities across America. There would have been no better time for him to do so. Instead, Trump has spoken out against the fear mongering, encouraging people to not let Covid-19 dominate their lives. He has waited patiently for state and local representatives to reach out to his administration and the federal government for help.  

In the matter of Covid-19, Donald Trump’s respect for the democratic process is the exception not the rule.  Donald Trump is not a president many would like emulated mainly due to his messaging tactics and off the cuff remarks. However, on the matter of respect for the constitutional hierarchy for government institutions, he is the exception most other centralized governments leaders could learn from.