The Last Days of Discourse / Trump’s Petty-Tyrant Brand of Fascism The GOP president is both a dire threat to democratic governance and a clownish mob boss. Or, for that matter, when the executive is trying to enforce its cultural policy on a nation’s universities and museums? What do you call it when a senior White House aide says they are “looking at” suspending habeas corpus? Or when the government deports people without due process to camps beyond the rule of law, where internees are subject to torture? Why contribute to the climate of numbing conspiratorial speculation that proved so instrumental to Trump’s rise by granting him an additional air of hocus-pocus?