Supporters of Donald Trump in Iowa are onboard with the idea of him being a dictator in fact, they believe a dictator is just what the country needs.
Trump originally made the ‘dictator for a day’ comment during a Fox News town hall with host Sean Hannity earlier this month when asked if he has plans to abuse power if re-elected. Trump has since doubled down on his comments.
While critics condemned Trump’s comments, his supporters are unfazed and in some cases even cheered his remark.
“I love it,” a supporter of the former president told the Washington Post. “My kids call me a dictator, I thought my parents were dictators … He said he was only going to do it for a day. Like if you had a home that was in disrepair and your parents came in and they were firm and they wanted to get it done, and when you got done you had this beautiful home, how could you be mad?”
Other Trump supporters like caucus captain Carson, told WaPo that Trump made the dictator comment on purpose to “fool the media.”
“He just done that because he knew the news would go crazy,” he said.
Leann Reed, another Iowa Trump voter claims Biden is governing as a dictator. She defended Trump saying what he actually meant was that “we need somebody that’s going to move forward fast to clean up everything.”
Trump’s critics are not so dismissive of his comments, since they were not a one-off occurrence.
Trump has been compared to dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini after he called his opponents “vermin”. He has also openly discussed plans to use the power of the office to exact “retribution” against his political enemies and called for the termination of the Constitution.
Kash Patel, a national security aide in Trump’s first term who has remain in the former president’s orbit told Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House strategist that if Trump is re-elected, “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media.”
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections – we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out,” Patel said. “We’re actually going to use the constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”
These comments play right into Joe Biden’s hands. The president’s central re-election campaign message is fighting against the “unprecedented threats” facing American democracy from Trump and his allies.
Biden “has been working to protect American democracy and to unite people of all political views against these unprecedented threats,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates told reporters after Trump’s dictator comments.
