I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN HE WAS LITERALLY HITLER: Trump Is an Authoritarian Weakman. “Coronavirus would be the perfect opportunity for an autocrat. Trump isn’t taking it.”

Are you kidding me with this, John F. Harris?

The notion of Trump as authoritarian strongman, however, has been cast in an odd light in this pandemic. Would-be tyrants use crisis to consolidate power. Trump, by contrast, has been pilloried from many quarters, including many liberals, for not asserting authority and responsibility more forcefully to combat Covid-19. Rather than seizing on a genuine emergency, Trump was slow to issue an emergency declaration, moved gingerly in employing the Defense Production Act to help overburdened local health systems, and even now seems eager to emphasize that many subjects—closure of schools and businesses, obtaining sufficient ventilators—are primarily problems for state governors to deal with.

Trump’s apparent personal affinity with Putin, and other dictators, has caused foes to conclude that he has an aesthetic attraction to leaders who don’t let procedural niceties of democracy or law get in their way. But he has shown passivity in what by all rights would be a dream scenario for an authoritarian strongman.

Perhaps the way to think of Trump is as an authoritarian weakman.

I guess the argument here is that we’ve been cursed with a dictator who won’t dictate.

Our chattering class has collectively lost its damn minds.