As Donald Trump openly promotes his authoritarian plans, his political party is following his lead.
Trump, who says he’d be a “dictator for one day” if he returns to the White House, has introduced a style of personal and petty illiberalism that conservatives seem to relish.
And just as Trump has vowed to crack down on the free press, right-wing officials — from a party that purports to champion “free enterprise” — look increasingly eager to do the same with other private businesses that they see as enemies.
Last week, South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis told CNBC that “it ought to be illegal” for companies to boycott X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Several companies have suspended advertising on the site after owner Elon Musk promoted a version of the racist and antisemitic “replacement theory.”
“This whole idea that these billionaires gang up like hooligans and try to destroy a licensed, taxpaying company, a company that has employees — that’s just wrong,” Loftis said, adding that he was standing up to the “billionaire class.”
To state the obvious, Musk is also a billionaire. And what Loftis says is hooliganism — aka businesses choosing not to advertise on X — could also be described another way: free will.
"This whole idea that these billionaires gang up, like hooligans, and try to destroy a licensed tax-paying company, a company that has employees. That's just wrong," says @TreasurerLoftis after vowing to no longer invest in $DIS. "They pushed around their weight long enough." pic.twitter.com/P12IbJQwy8
— Last Call (@LastCallCNBC) December 8, 2023
But the South Carolinian isn’t alone in his illiberal ponderings.
After Trump confidant Kash Patel vowed to go after news organizations if Trump regains the presidency, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, said on CNN that members of the media have indeed earned scrutiny for their “collusion” with Big Tech before the 2020 presidential election — a point corrected by Jake Tapper.
Vance and other Republicans have baselessly alleged that tech companies’ moderation of conspiratorial content related to Hunter Biden in the lead-up to the 2020 election amounted to government censorship — and have suggested this is why Big Tech should be regulated, the underlying suggestion being that private companies should be compelled to share content they deem unfit for their users.
After JD Vance complains that Trump was the victim in 2020 of collusion "between the government and journalism," Tapper has to point out to him that Trump was in fact president at that time pic.twitter.com/IksVwUCD6t
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 10, 2023
We also can see this attack on free enterprise in the right-wing legal assault on private investment firms known to invest in Black and brown people, such as the Fearless Fund. (The crusade has extended to law firms, too.)
And as if to show there’s no spat too small for Republicans in their lurch toward authoritarianism, I wrote last week about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., using their official powers to target the College Football Playoff after its selection committee declined to invite Florida State University to this year’s postseason tournament.
But don’t let the immaturity in that distract from the seriousness: Authoritarianism is government led by the whims of an isolated few — no matter how ambitious or superfluous those ambitions may be.
And the fact that Republicans are openly flouting their supposed belief in free enterprise continues a disturbing trend that seems to be increasing in frequency.
