A President Who Knows No Limits – A Commentary on the Current Situation

There are moments in history when political power no longer looks outward but turns inward - against its own country, against its own citizens. In these weeks America is experiencing exactly that. Donald Trump no longer runs a conventional government, no ideological contest, no debate about programs or majorities. He is waging a campaign, a regime. And this campaign, this regime, is directed against everything he sees as weak, disloyal, or liberal. What is unfolding now resembles a creeping internal disarmament of democracy. Trump uses the instruments of “his” state, his revenge - the military, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, the justice system - no longer to protect the nation, but as tools of political retaliation. It is a form of top-down civil war, led by a president who no longer sees his opponents as political rivals but as enemies.

The path to this condition was no accident, but the result of years of preparation. Stephen Miller, Trump’s closest political adviser, never made a secret of it. At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Phoenix he spoke openly about how this government would deal with its “internal enemies”: they would be found, their money taken, their power taken and - where possible - their freedom taken. It was not a threat, it was an announcement. And it was chillingly precise. Since Kirk’s murder, the government’s political language has changed. Where unity and order were once spoken of, terms like “purification”, “cleansing”, “enemies within” now prevail. This rhetoric is not chosen at random. It serves as the ideological foundation for a systematic disempowerment of democratic institutions. Every crisis, every tragedy, every assassination becomes a pretext to eliminate the next piece of political freedom.

The list of measures grows daily. 321 energy projects - canceled. 7.5 billion dollars - withdrawn. Almost exclusively in states governed by Democrats. California, New York, Massachusetts, Oregon - all targets of an administration that has made open hostility a governing practice. Even billion-dollar infrastructure projects in New York City, including the extension of the Second Avenue subway and the new tunnel under the Hudson River, were halted overnight. Officially, because “fiscal responsibility” is the priority. In truth, because political punishment has become state policy.

The government uses the federal shutdown as a weapon - and as a laboratory. It is testing how far it can go without provoking open resistance. That is the truly dangerous thing: the destruction happens incrementally, bureaucratically, with forms and regulations. No coup, no bloodshed, no march on Washington - but a cold, administrative transfer of power disguised as government action. In parallel, a second front runs: the targeted intimidation of opponents. The Justice Department has indicted former FBI director James Comey - for alleged false statements. The legal rationale is weak, but the political effect is enormous: it sends a message. Those who contradict Trump are not criticized, they are criminalized. Only days later, the new FBI director Kash Patel fired around twenty agents because they knelt at a 2020 demonstration - a sign of solidarity after George Floyd’s death. Shortly thereafter an employee was dismissed for hanging a rainbow flag in his office.

Repression becomes routine. Trump now openly talks about using “Democrat cities” as training grounds for the military - to, as he says, combat “the enemy within.” Generals in Quantico applauded, some hesitantly, others with visible enthusiasm. For the president this is not a provocation, but a test. He is testing the loyalty of his commanders and the population’s readiness to respond. What is emerging here is a dangerous synthesis of political rhetoric and institutional violence. Research recognizes this pattern. Political scientist Ryan Enos of Harvard University describes it as a classic authoritarian strategy: a threat is exaggerated, a crisis is constructed, which then serves as justification for an accretion of power. The Reichstag fire, Enos says, is not a unique event but the best-known example of a mechanism that repeats itself across epochs - always with the same consequences: the loss of the rule of law, restrictions on civil liberties, the standardization of society.

Trump and Miller apply this principle in real time. Kirk’s murder is declared a turning point, the administration stages it as an attack on conservative America. Speed plays a central role: within hours of the attack the narrative of a “left-wing extremist threat” was in place. It was ready, as if pulled from a drawer, and it henceforth served as justification for everything - for dismissals, for police operations, for surveillance, for the militarization of public space. Social scientist Barbara Walter of the University of California describes this process as an “autocratic temptation.” Autocrats, she writes, always encounter the same limit: in democracies citizens have rights, they can influence elections, they can remove governments. Someone who wants to eliminate that power needs a pretext. Violence provides it. That is why aspiring authoritarians often provoke unrest in order to subsequently “restore order” - with emergency laws, states of exception, military presence in the streets.

Trump appears to have internalized this logic. His language already shows that he opts less for calming and more for escalation. He speaks of “enemies”, “cleansing”, “internal threat.” He presents himself as the last defender of the nation - and anyone who disagrees as a traitor. It is a dangerous self-stylization, which in history has often been a harbinger of violence. Concern is growing in academia that Trump is aiming at deliberate provocation. Political scientist Theda Skocpol of Harvard University says the administration’s goal is to incite protests only to then label them “violent” and suppress them militarily. Cities, Skocpol adds, have long been demonized in the right-wing narrative - places of decadence, crime, moral weakness. Fox News supplies the images daily. In this worldview “the city” is the symbol of threat, and the National Guard the solution.

In truth, writes political scientist Rory Truex of Princeton, it is about something else: control over the narrative. Any form of violence - regardless of who commits it - supports Trump’s claim that America is falling apart and only authoritarian strength can save it. Even accusations against him are reinterpreted by claiming the left wants to “silence” him. It is a cynical cycle: violence justifies power, power generates new violence.

In the end stands a president who no longer regards a state of emergency as an emergency but as a form of government. Bruce Cain of Stanford University calls this “pretextual authoritarianism” - rule that legitimizes itself through superficial justifications. Trump’s recent remarks about “using urban violence as training grounds” show he is well prepared to blur the line between domestic and foreign policy, between the military and society, between law and power. What makes Trump so dangerous is not his volume, but his resolve. He is not an impulsive destroyer but a strategist. He is building an architecture of fear whose pillars are bureaucracy, loyalty and intimidation. And Stephen Miller supplies the moral façade for it - a quasi-religious worldview that divides good and evil into irreconcilable opposites. At Kirk’s memorial Miller shouted into the microphone that the movement’s opponents were “envy, hatred, nothing.” It was not a political sentence but a creed.

At the other end of this spectrum stands a dismissed prosecutor, Michael Ben’Ary, who wrote on the door of his former office: he believed in the task of protecting the country, but what the Justice Department has become destroys that mission. Between these two voices - Miller’s pathos and Ben’Ary’s disillusionment - lies the whole drama of present-day America.

Some believe they are saving the nation by destroying their opponents. Others recognize that this salvation has itself become destruction.

And meanwhile a new America is beginning to emerge: a state in which any opposition is regarded as a threat, any criticism as an attack, any institution as a potential traitor. Maybe there will be no official civil war, no two fronts, no flags. But if one comes, nobody will want the war in society, and it will create dimensions that would make an outsider’s blood run cold. The division Trump has created is deep enough to dissolve the foundation of a democracy and call forth a civil war. Trump is no longer the leader of a movement. He has become its enforcer - and Stephen Miller its architect. Together they are turning what was once a republic into an instrument of retaliation. And the greatest danger is not that they might fail, but that they might succeed - without war, without a coup, merely by the power of habituation.