London: Last Monday, President Donald Trump gave a press conference in the White House in which he criticised the pain killer Tylenol, also known as Paracetamol, claiming without any evidence that pregnant women should avoid the drug due to an unproven link to autism. Standing alongside his Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, whom many health experts consider to be somewhat deranged and detached from reality, Trump advised women to “fight like hell not to take it,” unless for an extremely high fever. He also reiterated previous unfounded conspiracy theories related to vaccines. “Children get these massive vaccines like you give to a horse; they sometimes have 80 different vaccines in them, it’s crazy,” he said, echoing Kennedy, a well-known vaccine sceptic. Public health authorities around the world reacted in horror at Trump’s weird and unfounded statements, worried that coming from a political leader they could undermine trust in medical guidance.
This press conference was just the latest example of Trump, who in just eight short months after being installed in the White House for the second time, is causing mayhem and confusion in America and around the world. In this instance it was just a case of misleading his followers into something that could harm children and mothers. Dangerous enough perhaps, but more serious is the unprecedented way he has expanded his powers and punished his critics more than any president since America’s founding 250 years ago. Many consider American democracy, always fragile and imperfect, to be at a crisis point.
Since being sworn in last January, President Trump has upended basic tenets of the US constitutional system and seized control in a manner that dwarfs that of any other US president in history. The US fourth president and “Father of the Constitution”, James Madison, warned in 1810 that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary may be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” This was an uncanny prediction of someone like Donald Trump. With the loyal backing of a compliant and supine Republican-led Congress and validated by the conservative majority of the prostrate Supreme Court, Trump has veered proudly and loudly into unprecedented territory in many areas. The Founding Fathers never envisioned a federal government this big or this powerful—or a president this unchecked, amassing to himself tyrantlike power.
In exercising this political muscle, Trump has bypassed Congress by the simple trick of declaring “national emergencies”, stretching the definition of “emergency” in creative and aggressive ways. Over the past 50 years, US presidents have declared an average of 7 national emergencies in a four-year term of office. Trump, on the other hand, has declared 9 in his first 8 months. Similarly, his 142 executive orders in his first 100 days, covering a wide range of issues, such as immigration, gender and identity, health and reproductive policy, energy and environment etc, is the highest on record.
Donald Trump has also broken all records in his aggressive campaign against mainstream media, stripping funding from public outlets, and pushing the Federal Communications Commission to revoke broadcast licences of those outlets that dare to criticise him. He has personally sued The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for negative coverage and in July Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a voter interference lawsuit filed by Trump last October, even as press freedom advocates warned the company was buckling to political pressure. CBS struck a similar deal in December paying $16 million to settle Trump’s defamation lawsuit, following the claim of the Trump-appointed FCC chair, Brenden Carr, that it had violated its “news distortion” rules. No modern president has deployed such a mix of lawsuits and regulatory muscle, and Trump has now set a precedent for future US presidents to use similar regulatory threats and funding pressures to bring the independent media to heel. Advocates of free speech in America are horrified and in despair.
If there’s one word that will always be associated with Donald Trump, it’s tariffs—the “most beautiful word in the dictionary,” he claims. Ever since the Great Depression, following the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, US presidents have used their delegated powers on tariffs narrowly. But not the Donald. Trump has effectively seized the authority over tariffs that the Constitution gives to Congress, wielding them to reshape global trade and punish countries for political or economic disputes. Yet again, Trump is the first president to use emergency authorities to impose broad tariffs without new congressional legislation, setting a precedent for future presidents to unilaterally set tariff policy, erasing one of the legislator’s core constitutional powers.
The US Justice Department has not escaped Trump’s attention. Designed to be independent, the Department has been leaned on in the past by a number of American presidents to achieve their aims, but nothing to the extent displayed by Trump. Richard Nixon schemed to use the Justice Department against his enemies, until the Watergate scandal exposed him, and George Bush junior was accused of firing 7 US attorneys for political reasons. But Donald Trump has gone way beyond both Nixon and Bush by declaring himself America’s “chief law enforcement officer”. He has publicly asserted direct authority over prosecutors in a way no modern president has dared, claiming the right to personally dictate prosecutions and order investigations to punish his political opponents. Last week, former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump called “one of the worst human beings this country has ever been exposed to”, was indicted on 2 charges of obstruction and making false statements, without a single piece of evidence. Trump is also seeking to oust Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over unproven mortgage fraud allegations. Other targets are believed to include billionaire George Soros and former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Trump, himself a convicted felon, clearly wants payback against all those who offended him during Trump 1.0. All the guardrails have been removed and all the norms and traditions of American justice are being destroyed.
It’s not just Congress, the media and the Justice Department that have become Trump targets. Other important organisations affecting American life have also been seriously impinged by him. The Federal Reserve Board is in danger of becoming an arm of the White House, enabling Trump to determine US interest rates. Having invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members without hearings, Trump is the first US president to wield war powers domestically and abroad in peacetime without legislative cover. He has also used the powers of the state to extract equity, revenue and political concessions from private companies as a price of doing business. He has weaponised government power to intimidate lawyers, deterring them from representing clients who challenge his administration, and has used federal dollars to police academic speech and independence, re-shaping universities to align with his agenda.
Donald Trump’s breathtaking start to his second term has been characterised by a hugely aggressive policy agenda with an emphasis on executive authority, deregulation, border control and reshaping relations abroad. Not unnoticed, however, has been the accompanying massive increase in his personal wealth. Since January, the Trump family is believed to have made billions of dollars through massive crypto deals, real estate ventures and brazen access plays. Although Trump’s finances are shrouded in mystery, his estimated net worth, according to Forbes, has risen from just under $4 billion at the end of 2024 to about $7.3 billion today, an increase of just over $12 million per day—or nearly $9,000 per minute! Not bad for someone who presided over 5 corporate bankruptcies.
So, is Donald Trump out of control? Most certainly, say his critics, citing his defiance of court orders, incendiary rhetoric and attempts to undermine institutions, putting American democracy at risk. No, insist his supporters, arguing that he’s fighting back against a corrupt system and is simply in control of his political agenda.
The jury is currently out on this question; but evidence suggests that more and more observers of Trump’s behaviour are moving into the “yes” camp.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth.
