Trump authoritarian methods echo Xi, Putin, and Erdoğan

Getting your

As I write this, November 3rd elections are just days away. The results may be far more important than most realize.

Democracies rarely collapse in a single dramatic moment. More often they erode, one norm at a time. As one scholar who fled Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s power in Turkey said, “We didn’t just wake up one morning in an authoritarian system, it happened very gradually.” Political scientists call this a slide into “competitive authoritarianism,” a hybrid political regime in which elections are held but incumbents abuse state power to tilt the results.

Is the U.S. under President Donald Trump sliding in that direction? His governing methods that echo those utilized by Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Erdoğan and other autocrats suggest “yes.”

Xi and Putin began their autocratic reigns and control of elections in 2012, Erdoğan in 2014. Compared to them, Trump is still a wannabe, but what a wannabe he is, following their playbooks to consolidate power:

• Purge officials and fill the civil service, military, prosecutors’ offices, and judiciary with loyalists;

• Attack the media, universities, and nongovernmental o...