The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the Trump administration has been using taxpayer dollars to pay for a series of self-glorifying advertisements featuring President Trump. In a column, L.A. Times columnist Anita Chabria said one spot repeats the lyrics "love me, love me" over fast-cut clips of Trump, and that the White House claims the ad is a call to love America.
Chabria said that taken together with two other recent developments — the banning of certain press outlets from the White House and a further purge of military leadership — experts on authoritarianism told her the country is watching a further collapse of democracy into an authoritarian cult of personality in which Trump is the state and the state is Trump.
Konstantin Sonin, an expert in authoritarianism and a professor at the University of Chicago, told the paper that leaders in authoritarian countries try to blur the line between themselves and the state function, so that being "anti-me" is being anti-state. Sonin said the Trump advertisement carries "this authoritarian scent."
Jason Stanley, a former Yale professor who moved to the University of Toronto in part over concerns about the far-right political shift in the U.S., told the paper that Trump is trying to tell Americans they live in an authoritarian society now and that he is the state. Stanley called it "pure, pure state propaganda."
Federico Finchelstein, a history professor at the New School for Social Research and author of "The Wannabe Fascists," told the paper that state propaganda serves not just as a message but also as a warning. He said it tells citizens that being against Trump is being against America. Finchelstein said painting opponents as communists or socialists — a refrain from Trump and the core of the commercials — is common in non-democracies, turning enemies of the dictator into enemies of the state and perhaps even criminalizing them. He said the ads should not be seen as just another outburst, but as a structural pattern of authoritarianism.
Finchelstein pointed to the recent White House press ban as another part of that pattern. The paper said CNN, MS NOW and Politico were recently denied access to the White House on Trump's orders, that the outlets sued, and that a judge issued a restraining order. Chabria said Trump made clear the ban was because he did not like coverage that made him look bad. The paper said Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche argued the president finally decided it was not fair to the American people and constituted a national security risk.