How extraordinary, in the context of American history, is Donald Trump? A decade into a political career that once seemed unfathomable, the answer seems to be very. His second term is disturbing and bizarre in many aspects, from his attempts to deport legal, law-abiding residents to the immolation of the federal bureaucracy. For DOGE alone, Trump is unique, and we’re only in the first months of a four-year stretch. A tariff policy like this one hasn’t been seen since at least the 1930s, and the blatant attacks on the Federal Reserve chair are bound to lead to further market chaos. When it comes to democracy itself, we inhabit a tenuous moment: Trump has shown contempt for the courts and veers ever closer to triggering a true constitutional crisis. If Trump can successfully deport people who have committed no crimes — the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case is the Rubicon the 47th president has already crossed — there’s no telling, really, what might be next.
But even now, with Trump threatening to steamroll the democratic institutions we have left, it’s important to retain some perspective. America, in fact, has been here before, and it wasn’t very long ago. If some of the anti-Trump Republicans and conservatives in the media would like to pretend otherwise, there was another recent president who flirted with authoritarianism — and may have come far closer than Trump ever will. Though he was president less than two decades ago, George W. Bush feels like a relic of another age. He was a Republican who carried himself with a degree of gentleness and even grace when he wasn’t, in somewhat amusing fashion, tripping over his own words. After 9/11, he spoke forcefully about Islam being a religion of “peace” and never denounced any particular race or ethnic group. One had the sense that Bush was, at his core, a fundamentally decent person, a kind father and husband, an earnest churchgoer. Yet on the substance — what he brought to bear in eight years in the White House — he may have been the most destructive president in modern times.
Trump’s blatant violations of civil liberties and human rights owe much to Bush. The antidemocratic machinery that Trump wields today was built in the shadow of 9/11, when Bush was far more popular than Trump will ever be and enjoyed a degree of political clout that no president may ever know again. There were the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, launched with the firm backing of Congress, which would slaughter hundreds of thousands abroad and greatly destabilize the Middle East. If Trump longs to imprison, in El Salvador, many more legal residents who have offended him in some manner — dooming them all to hellish prisons in a nation devoid of human rights — all he needs to do is follow the Bush example. Under Bush, the U.S. detained hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and dozens of other countries. The war on terror offered Bush enormous latitude: Many suspects were jailed without trial, with no tangible way to challenge their detention, and without the International Red Cross site visits required under international law. A large and unknown number of people around the world were tortured or mistreated by the CIA, federal contractors, and allies of the U.S.
Whatever Trump manages in El Salvador, it will likely never match the breadth and horror of Guantanamo Bay, which subsequent presidents failed to close. The military detention camp in Cuba could conveniently disregard the right of habeas corpus normally granted to prisoners because it had been established on foreign soil. It’s easy to forget now how genuinely extraordinary and dark this all was: By 2003, nearly 700 people were detained in Guantanamo without any formal charges. The Geneva convention and the Constitution meant nothing there; detainees were systematically abused and tortured. When Trump took office again in January, he was eager to put some of the old tools of the Bush regime to work, signing a memorandum to begin expansion of the Guantanamo Migrant Operations Center, which could house up to 30,000 migrants under detention, separate from the military prison. (The Bush administration had hoped to keep secret the identities of those held in Guantanamo, but attempts to defy a Freedom of Information Act request from the Associated Press were eventually defeated.)
On immigration, Trump appears to be learning from Bush, too. After 9/11, the Bush administration expelled immigrants as part of its nebulous war on terror. A 16-year-old girl who had emigrated from Bangladesh at the age of 5 was deported when the FBI found she was visiting an internet chat room containing sermons from a London imam encouraging suicide bombing. Federal authorities wielded the threat of deportation to force immigrants to become informants. One 24-year-old Moroccan permanent resident who had immigrated legally was blocked from returning to America and had his green card suspended. He was told he would be detained if he did not inform against alleged terrorists.
It’s important to be both horrified by what Trump is doing now and understand that none of it came out of thin air. He is not the first president to have contempt for the Constitution, and he won’t be the last. (Barack Obama’s drone strikes even inadvertently killed U.S. citizens.) He is a reminder, most of all, of how vital it is to safeguard civil liberties during any administration and in any and all contexts.
Bush justified his surveillance, deportation, and torture regime by claiming it was all required to keep Americans safe. Trump, echoing Bush, has concocted “emergencies” around immigration and antisemitism, wielding the might of the federal government to punish the most vulnerable in this country. The U.S., despite claims to the contrary, will survive Trump, just as it did Bush. But it will matter what legacy Trump leaves behind. If he manages to create any durable institutions and laws like Bush did — Guantanamo, the Patriot Act — we will have suffered irreparable damage.
