Trump suggests Americans ‘like a dictator’
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Mr Trump complained that he was not getting credit for his National Guard-backed crackdown on crime and immigration.
PHOTO: AFP
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WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump on Aug 25 suggested Americans would like a dictator, as he signed orders to tighten his federal clampdown on the capital Washington and to prosecute flag burners.
In a rambling 80-minute event in the Oval Office, Mr Trump lambasted critics and the media as he complained that he was not getting credit for his National Guard-backed crackdown on crime and immigration.
“They say ‘we don’t need him. Freedom, freedom. He’s a dictator. He’s a dictator’. A lot of people are saying: ‘Maybe we like a dictator,’” Mr Trump told reporters.
But he then insisted: “I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person.”
Mr Trump – who attempted to overturn the results of his 2020 election defeat by Mr Joe Biden at the end of his first term – said before winning a second term in November 2024 that he would be a “dictator on day one”
He deployed the National Guard to Washington earlier in August to counter what he alleged was an out-of-control crime problem, also taking federal control of the city’s police department.
‘Sick’
The Republican President said he was considering whether to send in the military to the cities of Chicago and Baltimore as he targets a series of Democratic strongholds. He sent the National Guard to Los Angeles – against the mayor’s and governor’s wishes – in June.
He was particularly disparaging of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a vocal opponent who has strongly rejected any move to send in troops to Chicago.
“When I see what’s happening to our cities, and then you send them, and instead of being praised, they’re saying, ‘you’re trying to take over the Republic’,” said Mr Trump.
“These people are sick.”
Mr Pritzker, a billionaire businessman like Mr Trump, launched his own broadside at the President in a press conference on Aug 25, calling him “a wannabe dictator” who “wants to use the military to occupy a US city, punish his dissidents, and score political points”.
Mr Trump further tightened his clampdown on Aug 25 by signing an executive order to investigate and prosecute people who burn the American flag – despite a 1989 ruling by the US Supreme Court saying the act is protected by freedom of speech laws.
“If you burn a flag you get one year in jail – no early exits, no nothing,” Mr Trump said.
He announced new measures tightening his grip on security in Washington,
He also indicated that he would soon be changing the name of Mr Hegseth’s department to the Department of War, its name from 1789 to 1947.
“Defence is too defensive,” Mr Trump told reporters.
‘Violent fish’
Democrats have repeatedly accused Mr Trump of pushing presidential power way past its constitutional limits, most recently by deploying the National Guard in the US capital.
Mr Trump has also clamped down on everything from the federal bureaucracy and “woke” politics to his political opponents.
But the 79-year-old rejected all the criticisms in his angry and wide-ranging diatribe in the Oval Office, speaking for more than 45 minutes before taking reporters’ questions.
He rejected opponents who have called him racist by proclaiming “I love black people” – before describing a Salvadoran man who is set to be deported to Uganda in an immigration row as an “animal”.
He went on a long detour about what he called a lack of gratitude from Mr Pritzker about measures to tackle an invasive fish species in the Great Lakes.
“We have a very, pretty violent fish that comes from China. China carp, Chinese carp. You see them jumping out – they jump into boats and they jump all over the place,” he said.
Mr Trump also called his Democratic predecessor Biden a “moron” and dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal 2022 invasion of Ukraine as being the result of “big personality conflicts”.
The US President later repeatedly expressed his admiration for another strongman leader – North Korea’s Mr Kim Jong Un – during a meeting with South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung in the Oval Office.
“I’d like to have a meeting. I get along great with him,” Mr Trump said of Mr Kim, whom he met three times in his first term. AFP
