Maureen Dowd
Fail, Caesar!
Feb. 22, 2025, 7:00 a.m. ET
By Maureen
Dowd
Opinion Columnist,
writing from Washington
“Remember,
I can do whatever I want to whomever I want.”
It
sounds like President Trump, to the world. But it was Caligula, to his
grandmother.
At
least America’s Emperor of Chaos has not made his horse a consul. Yet.
A
horse might be better than some of the sketchy characters surrounding Trump.
After
pillaging and gutting the U.S. government, the Western alliance and our
relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump is thinking of himself as a king
and cogitating on a third term. He basks in the magniloquent rhetoric of
acolytes genuflecting to an instrument of divine providence.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference this week,
a group calling itself the “Third Term Project” erected a sign depicting Trump
as Caesar. A wag on X wondered if they knew what happened to Caesar.
America
was forged in the blood and fire of rejecting tyranny; its institutions were
meticulously formed around the principle that we would never be ruled by a
king.
Yet
Trump delights in reposting memes of himself as a king and as Napoleon, with a
line attributed to the emperor: “He who saves his country does not violate any
law.”
After
tangling for years with a legal system he claimed was out to get him, Trump is
jonesing to be above the law. (The Supreme Court slapped him back Friday, at
least temporarily, for firing a government watchdog.)
His
dictatorial impulses were clear when he refused to accept the results of the
2020 election and egged on a mob to disrupt the certification of the election,
even if it meant that his own vice president might be hanged. And now he has
added imperialistic impulses, musing about taking over the Panama Canal,
Greenland, Canada, Gaza, D.C., and mineral rights in Ukraine.
His megalomania has mushroomed. His derisive behavior
toward Zelensky — how can a modestly talented reality show veteran mock
Zelensky as “a modestly successful comedian”? — shows Trump can’t abide anyone
saying he is doing anything wrong.
When
The Associated Press refused to go along with his diktat to call the Gulf of
Mexico the Gulf of America, the news organization was barred from covering some
events with the president in the Oval Office and on Air Force One.
The
A.P. sued Friday afternoon. “The press and all people
in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be
retaliated against by the government,” it said, adding,
“Allowing such government control and retaliation to stand is a threat to every
American’s freedom.”
Also
on Friday, at a meeting with governors in the White House, Trump stopped
abruptly to chide Gov. Janet Mills of Maine for resisting his executive order
barring transgender athletes from women’s sports.
“You
better comply, because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding,” the
president warned the Democratic governor.
“See
you in court,” she shot back.
Of course, Trump needed the last word. Of course, it had to
be nasty. “Enjoy your life after governor,” he said, “because I don’t think
you’ll be in elected politics.”
As
Shawn McCreesh wrote in The Times, nobody had seen such a moment
since Trump came back to the Oval: “Somebody defied President Trump. Right to
his face.”
I’ve
been reading a book called “How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly
Terrible Leaders,” written by Suetonius and translated by Josiah Osgood. Osgood
writes of Caligula’s “propensity to give in to every whim and the relish he
took in putting down others with cruel remarks.”
As
Suetonius noted about Caligula, “To the Senate he showed no more mercy or
respect. He allowed some who had achieved the highest offices to run alongside
his chariot in their togas for several miles or to stand, dressed in a linen
cloth, at the head or the foot of his couch as he dined.”
Sound
familiar?
Some
Republican lawmakers spoke up about Trump, JD Vance and Pete Hegseth caving to
Russia — going against a long history of Republicans treating Russia as the
“Evil Empire” — or at least with a healthy skepticism. When George W. Bush, as
president, said he could look into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and see his soul, John
McCain warned that Putin was a “thug” and a “killer,” noting that when he
looked in Putin’s eyes, he saw “a K, a B and a G.” But those who spoke up
against Trump did not seem ready to do much about it. They’re still cowering
before him. As Politico reported, Trump
allies moved quickly to stifle dissent with the party’s defense hawks: “Vice
President JD Vance and several administration officials who are close to Donald
Trump Jr. have been central to the effort to sideline those with traditional
conservative foreign policy views.”
After Trump ranted that Ukraine had “started” the war and
that Zelensky was a “dictator,” the normally doting New York Post felt the need
to put Putin on the front page with the headline: “President Trump: This Is a Dictator.”
The
most vivid image of the week was an elated Elon Musk waving a chain saw at
CPAC. That glee in the face of pain may come back to haunt Trump. As The
Washington Post reported, many
lawmakers got an earful from angry constituents about layoffs, freezes and
jagged cuts, a hollowing out of government with no sense of logic or heart or
safety.
Many who had hoped to tune out Trump this time realize they
don’t have that luxury. It’s far more dangerous now. There are frightening
moments when our 236-year-old institutions don’t look up to the challenge. With
flaccid Democrats and craven Republicans, King Donald can pretty much do
whatever he wants to whomever he wants.
