Trump 2.0 Incompetence and Authoritarianism

Laura Rozen has a good brief analysis of the cinematic emphasis of the Trump 2.0 regime. She says that the recent national security Signal Chat Group Scandal “it is the most important journalism about the Trump administration second term that has appeared to date.”

As a journalist covering US foreign policy, I spend hours trying to figure out who is making decisions and where and how decisions are getting made, under the presumption that there are deliberations taking place and it is a matter of trying to find out about them.

The “Houthi PC Small Group” Signals messages that the Atlantic published showed that those deliberations are, to a stunning degree, barely taking place in the Trump administration, even in matters of war, except the way you might debate a news article or TV show with a group of friends, while paying attention to six other things, and making dinner, over the course of a few hours. [my emphasis] (1)

Malicious and shockingly amateurish; Experts on authoritarianism will presumably not be surprised at this observation because authoritarian governments are very often not efficient because the lack of effective restraints on their actions is conducive to incompetence and corruption.

I’m embarrassed at having learned only a couple of years ago that the familiar trope that at least Mussolini made the trains run on time isn’t even true: It is a myth that, whatever his faults, Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, made the trains run on time. He didn’t.” (2)

It’s not that this is something that recently came to light. I just had never read into this particular claim before a couple of years ago. Brian Cathcart wrote in 1994:

But did Mussolini really do it? Did Il Duce, in his 20 years of absolute power, really manage to make the railway service meet its timetable? The answer is no.

Like almost all the supposed achievements of Fascism, the timely trains are a myth, nurtured and propagated by a leader with a journalist's flair for symbolism, verbal trickery and illusion. (3)

It was selected tourist trains that ran on time. And even they didn’t always:

The notion that the trains were running on time was none the less vigorously put about by the Fascist propaganda machine. 'Official press agents and official philosophers . . . explained to the world that the running of trains was the symbol of the restoration of law and order,' wrote [American journalist George] Seldes. It helped that foreign correspondents in Rome were very carefully controlled and that the reporting of all railway accidents or delays was banned. [my emphasis]

Jeffrey Goldberg, Anne Applebaum, and other journalist with The Atlantic just discussed at the New Orleans Book Festival the authoritarian transformation the Trump 2.0 Reality TV Show is implementing. (4)

A notable theme in their discussion is that the Trump 2.0 crew isn’t trying to hide the radicalism of their program.

Notes:

(1) Rozen, Laura (2025): The Hollowness of the Always-on-TV Trump administration. Diplomatic 03/27/2025. <https://diplomatic.substack.com/p/the-hollowness-of-the-always-on-tv> (Accessed: 2025-28-03).

(2) Making trains run on time. The Economist 11/03/2018. <https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/11/03/making-trains-run-on-time> (Accessed: 2025-28-03).

(3) Making Italy work: Did Mussolini really get the trains running on time? The Independent 04/03/1994. <https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rear-window-making-italy-work-did-mussolini-really-get-the-trains-running-on-time-1367688.html> (Accessed: 2025-28-03).

(4) Atlantic journalists discuss politics and media after the Signal breach. The Atlantic YouTube channel 03/28/2025. <https://youtu.be/gwCjUE-NUW4?si=p0027hbsZMQ0kko2> (Accessed: 2025-28-03).