Trump now runs the Imperial Presidency as a dictator

By Donald A. Collins | 12 May 2026
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

Be sure to look up Arthur Schlesinger Jr’s 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Imperial Presidency which serves as the basis for the title for Fareed Zakarri’s program on CNN on Sunday, May 10, 2026, about how Trump is now running the imperial presidency as it has been evolving since its growing power began with Ronald Reagan. Zakaria’s masterful program will be replayed, I hope, and I urge you to see the program because it explains it far better than I can in the short op-ed piece.

The May 10 CNN program gave us the history of this evolutionary process, which has also been described in the new book by Stephen Levitsky, entitled “How Democracies Die”. Zakaria brings us up to date with frightening reporting!!!

The Levitsky book was a New York Times bestseller, which offered an incisive guide to the forces that have undermined democracies across the globe, including the United States. Specifically, the Times review said it was “comprehensive, enlightening and terrifyingly timely”.

Zakaria begins showing an interview with Nixon after his departure from the Presidency in which Nixon stated that anything the president does is legal.

This has set the stage for a continued evolution to autocracy, which began with the election of Ronald Reagan, who told us that the Federal government was the problem. He basically used the presidency to demonstrate what his successor would claim –– that whatever the president did was legal as Nixon had claimed.

Dick Chaney greatly influenced George W. Bush to use such full power and no one since Franklin Roosevelt had gotten permission from Congress to initiate a war, which of course was a right specifically granted to the Congress.

When 911 took the NYC twin Trade Towers occurred on September 11, 2001 Bush took us into war in Iraq, again without congressional approval just as we had entered into Korea and Vietnam.

When Obama was elected for two terms, he constantly used executive orders as a way of promoting his wishes, again bypassing at Congress on many occasions. Biden acted similarly and of course, when a Trump was elected, he refused to accept Biden‘s election and attacked the US capital and committed many other acts which were unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court of the United States has since made the decision that anything the President does while in office makes him immune from prosecution.

Thus Trump has already achieved making this an authoritarian government. Frighteningly it seems increasingly likely Trump may even get away with undermining the voting system so we could even see the Democrats failing to get control of the Congress even in the US House of Representatives in the midterm elections!

This authoritarian process is already in place and likely will not be stopped now or in the future unless we can somehow overcome the falsity of the billionaires and the GOP which have shown no courage, no integrity, foresight or regret they have sought to destroy our democracy and may well have already succeeded.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Los Angeles, CA, has spent over 60 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of 15 books: “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk”, “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?”, “Trump: Pardon or Punish?: The Nixon Precedence Was Not A Trump Coup Denied!”, “Common Sense: When will Trump be Impeached, Indicted, and Exited?”, “Trump–unrestrained dangerous liar!”, “Our Ethnic Mix May Save Us!” and “Trump will be gone before November 3, 2026!”.

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