Who is ‘the state’? That is one question ex-United States President Donald Trump must have chewed upon and resolved in his own favour, even when he’s no longer in office. Effectively, it is sheer grandeur of delusion; but it isn’t something to put past the former leader who had shown a disposition to imperial power like never before seen in that bastion of democracy.
Trump, last weekend, branded current President Joe Biden an “enemy of the state” and slammed last month’s search of his Mar-a-Lago, Florida resort by the FBI. Speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania, his first public outing since the 8th August FBI raid, he described the search as a “travesty of justice” and warned it would produce “a backlash, the likes of which nobody has ever seen.” People familiar with the workings of the American governance system say Department of Justice and the FBI acted independently of the White House in the raid, but Trump dubbed it an “egregious abuse of the law,” telling cheering supporters: “There can be no more vivid example of the very real threats to American freedom than just a few weeks ago, you saw, when we witnessed one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history.”
The former president, who is mulling another run for the White House in 2024, also hit back at Biden’s recent speech in which the incumbent said his predecessor and Republican supporters “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” Trump accused Biden of having given the “most vicious, hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president,” telling supporters: “He’s an enemy of the state. You want to know that.” Alluding to his ‘Make America Great Again’ movement, he added: “Republicans in the MAGA movement are not the ones trying to undermine our democracy. We are the ones trying to save our democracy, very simple. The danger to democracy comes from the radical left, not from the right.”
When Trump branded Biden an “enemy of the state,” he perhaps considered himself an embodiment of the state. That possibility is not too far-fetched in view of his acutely imperial inclination. He did not put it exactly into words, but that might only be from a tinge of modesty when compared with French King Louis XIV who was said to have in 1655 declared to the parliament of Paris: “I am the state.” Trump wasn’t a monarch, but during his presidency he acted much like one against the broad canvass of republicanism that characterises the American political culture. It is one disposition that obviously isn’t easy to shake off.