WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥 President Donald Trump, once a casino owner and always a man in search of his next deal, is fond of a poker analogy when sizing up partners and adversaries.
鈥淲e have much bigger and better cards than they do,鈥 he said of China Compared with Canada, he , 鈥渨e have all the cards. We have every single one.鈥 , he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in their earlier this year: 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 have the cards.鈥
The phrase offers a window into the worldview of Trump, who has spent his second stint in the White House amassing cards to deploy in pursuit of his interests.
Seven months into his second term, he has accumulated presidential power that he has used against universities, media companies, law firms, and individuals he dislikes. A man who ran for president as an angry victim of a weaponized 鈥渄eep state鈥 is, in some ways, supercharging government power and training it on his opponents.
And the supporters who responded to his complaints about overzealous Democrats aren鈥檛 recoiling. They鈥檙e egging him on.
鈥淲eaponizing the state to win the culture war has been essential to their agenda,鈥 said David N. Smith, a University of Kansas sociologist who has extensively researched the motivations of Trump voters. 鈥淭hey didn鈥檛 like it when the state was mobilized to restrain Trump, but they鈥檙e happy to see the state acting to fight the culture war on their behalf.鈥
How Trump has weaponized the government
Trump began putting the federal government to work for him of taking office in January, and he鈥檚 been collecting and using power in novel ways ever since. It’s a high-velocity push to carry out his political agendas and grudges.
This past month, hundreds of federal agents and National Guard troops fanned out across Washington after Trump drew on a never-used law that allows him to take control of law enforcement in the nation鈥檚 capital. He鈥檚 in other cities run by Democrats, including Baltimore, Chicago, New York and New Orleans. He also , pointing to unproven claims of mortgage fraud.
Trump, his aides and allies throughout the executive branch have trained the government, or threatened to, on a dizzying array of targets:
鈥擧e threatened to block a stadium plan for the Washington Commanders football team unless it readopted the racial slur it used as a moniker until 2020.
鈥擧e revoked security clearances and tried to block access to government facilities for attorneys at .
鈥擧e revoked billions of dollars in federal research funds and sought to block international students from elite universities. Under pressure, Columbia University agreed to a , the University of Pennsylvania by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and presidents resigned from the and .
鈥擧e has fired or reassigned federal employees targeted for their work, including prosecutors who worked on cases involving him.
鈥擧e dropped corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams to gain cooperation in his crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally.
鈥擧e secured multimillion-dollar settlements against media organizations in lawsuits that were widely regarded as weak cases.
鈥擜ttorney General Pam Bondi is pursuing of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and to scrutinize New York Attorney General Letitia James and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff.
That’s not weaponizing government, says White House spokesperson Harrison Fields; it’s wielding power.
鈥淲hat the nation is witnessing today is the execution of the most consequential administration in American history,鈥 Fields said, 鈥渙ne that is embracing common sense, putting America first, and fulfilling the mandate of the American people.鈥
Trump has a sixth sense for power
There鈥檚 a push and a pull to power. It is both given and taken. And through executive orders, personnel moves, the bully pulpit and sheer brazenness, Trump has claimed powers that none of his modern predecessors came close to claiming.
He has also been handed power by many around him. By a that rides with him through thick and thin. By a Congress and Supreme Court that so far have ceded power to the executive branch. By universities, law firms, media organizations and other institutions that have negotiated or settled with him.
The U.S. government is powerful, but it鈥檚 not inherently omnipotent. As Trump learned to his frustration in his first term, the president is penned in by the Constitution, laws, court rulings, bureaucracy, traditions and norms. Yet in his second term, Trump has managed to eliminate, steamroll, ignore or otherwise neutralize many of those guardrails.
Leaders can exert their will through fear and intimidation, by determining the topics that are getting discussed and by shaping people’s preferences, Steven Lukes argued in a seminal 1974 book, 鈥淧ower: A Radical View.鈥 Lukes, a professor emeritus at New York University, said Trump exemplifies all three dimensions of power. Trump’s innovation, Lukes said, is 鈥渆pistemic liberation鈥 鈥 a willingness to make up facts without evidence.
鈥淭his idea that you can just say things that aren鈥檛 true, and then it doesn鈥檛 matter to your followers and to a lot of other people ... that seems to me a new thing,鈥 at least in liberal democracies, Lukes said. Trump uses memes and jokes more than argument and advocacy to signal his preferences, he said.
Trump ran against government weaponization
Central to Trump鈥檚 2024 campaign was his contention that he was the victim of a 鈥 鈥 perpetrated by 鈥渢he Biden administration鈥檚 weaponized Department of Injustice.鈥
Facing four criminal cases in New York, Washington and Florida, Trump said in 2023 that he yearned not to end the government weaponization, but to harness it. 鈥淚F YOU GO AFTER ME, I鈥橫 COMING AFTER YOU!鈥 on Aug. 4, 2023.
鈥淚f I happen to be president and I see somebody who鈥檚 doing well and beating me very badly, I say, 鈥楪o down and indict them,鈥欌 he said in a on Nov. 9, 2023. And given a chance by a friendly Fox News interviewer to assure Americans that he would use power responsibly, he responded in December that year that he would not be a dictator 鈥 .鈥
He largely backed off those threats as the election drew closer, even as he continued to campaign against government weaponization. When he won, he declared an end to it.
鈥淣ever again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents 鈥 something I know something about,鈥 Trump said in his second inaugural address.
A month later: 鈥淚 ended Joe Biden鈥檚 weaponization soon as I got in,鈥 Trump said in a Feb. 22 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. And 10 days after that: 鈥淲e鈥檝e ended weaponized government, where, as an example, a sitting president is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent, like me.鈥
Two days later, on March 6, Trump signed a sweeping order And on April 9, he issued presidential memoranda to investigate two officials from his first administration, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor.
With that, the weaponization has come full circle. Trump is no longer surrounded by tradition-bound lawyers and government officials, and his instinct to play his hand aggressively faces few restraints.
