Trump Asserts Personal Ownership of Government by Draping His Face on Public Buildings, Including the DOJ

If filmmakers want to establish that their story is set in a dictatorship, one of the first things they might do is have the buildings of the capital draped in banners showing the name and face of the strongman leader. That is the kind of setting we live in now, and Donald Trump has taken the extra step of draping his name over the previously independent Department of Justice.

NBC News reports:

A banner featuring a photo of Donald Trump and the words “Make America Safe Again” was hung from the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington on Thursday in one of the most public signs of the president’s influence over a department that once brought criminal charges against him.

The Justice Department has traditionally operated with a degree of independence from the White House. That separation, however, has eroded during Trump’s second term as the Justice Department has gone after his perceived political foes. …

Since taking office again, the Justice Department has pursued cases against some of Trump’s perceived opponents, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after Trump publicly urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to bring charges. …

Stacey Young, a Justice Department veteran under both Republican and Democratic administrations who left the department last year and founded the group Justice Connection, said…“Hanging that banner should put to rest any doubt that Donald Trump has hijacked the independence of the Justice Department. He—not the American people—is the only client DOJ’s current leadership serves.”

Trump consistently acts as if the U.S. government and its agencies are his property and exist to serve his own personal needs and interests, not the rights and interests of the American people. Physically draping his own image on public buildings is the outward symbol of this personalist view of government.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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