Bill MacKenty

Trump Is Not Hitler; and That Matters for Understanding Power

Comparisons between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler are emotionally understandable but analytically lazy. Trump is not Hitler. The United States is not Weimar Germany. Treating them as equivalent collapses structural differences and replaces explanation with analogy.

Comparisons between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler are emotionally understandable and analytically lazy. Trump is not Hitler. The United States is not Weimar Germany. Treating them as equivalent substitutes moral outrage for structural analysis, and in doing so obscures more than it reveals.

If Trump is not Hitler, then the relevant question is not how close he came to authoritarianism, but how a U.S. president operating inside a mature constitutional system can nonetheless exercise real, and sometimes disruptive, power. That question cannot be answered by psychology or rhetoric alone. It requires an understanding of coalition support.

Presidents Govern Through Coalitions, Not Personality

Presidents do not govern simply because they win elections. Elections grant access to office, not the capacity to rule. Governance emerges only when a sufficiently broad coalition of voters, institutions, and elites decides—actively or passively—that a given president is preferable to the available alternatives.

This is as true in democracies as it is in authoritarian systems. What differs is not the existence of coalitions, but the constraints under which they operate.

Why Constraints Matter

In the United States, those constraints are substantial. Federalism fragments authority across states. Courts possess real independence and a long institutional memory of resisting executive overreach. Bureaucracies are professionalized, rule-bound, and difficult to purge wholesale. The military is normatively committed to civilian control but politically neutral. Elections are frequent, decentralized, and difficult to suspend. Media and civil society are pluralistic and legally protected.

These constraints matter. They are precisely why Trump is not Hitler.

The Weimar Republic of the 1930s lacked these stabilizing features. It was a young democracy born from defeat, economic trauma, and social dislocation. Its constitution normalized emergency rule through Article 48. Parliamentary deadlock made executive decrees routine. Political violence was endemic. Faith in democratic norms was shallow, conditional, and easily withdrawn. When elites aligned with Hitler, they did so in a system already hollowed out.

The United States is not that system. American institutions are old, deeply embedded, and culturally normalized. When they resist a president, they do not improvise; they default to habit. Trump encountered resistance not because the system was fragile, but because it was resilient. Courts blocked orders. States asserted autonomy. Agencies delayed or constrained implementation. Elections removed him from office. Power transferred without rupture.

Trump’s Coalition Was Transactional

Yet acknowledging these constraints does not mean dismissing Trump’s effectiveness. On the contrary, it clarifies it.

Trump governed because he assembled a transactional coalition that spanned electoral blocs, party institutions, and segments of the elite. Many members of that coalition did not admire him, approve of his conduct, or endorse his rhetoric. They aligned because the arrangement served their interests, or because the alternatives seemed worse.

His coalition included cultural conservatives, working-class voters in deindustrialized regions, and rural constituencies motivated by identity, sovereignty, and grievance. It also included Republican elites who prioritized judicial appointments, deregulation, and tax policy; business interests aligned with deregulation and energy extraction; and institutional actors who valued continuity over confrontation.

Much of this support was conditional. It was not a cult. It was an alignment.

Why “Cult” Explanations Fail

Explanations that rely on mass delusion or authoritarian seduction miss how coalition power actually works. Coalitions form not because people stop thinking, but because incentives line up. Institutions cooperate when they believe the system can absorb the stress. Elites tolerate disruption when they believe they can constrain outcomes. Voters accept flaws when core priorities are delivered.

Once formed, coalitions become self-reinforcing. Party incentives harden. Media ecosystems stabilize narratives. Institutional inertia raises the cost of defection. At that stage, the central question is no longer why support exists, but what would cause it to fracture.

The Strategic Lesson

Trump did not merely benefit from existing coalitions; he understood how to work them. He exploited party polarization, weaponized cultural conflict, and framed institutional resistance as partisan hostility, thereby tightening elite alignment rather than loosening it. He did not dismantle constraints, but he learned how to operate at their edges.

This is the final reason simplistic analogies are dangerous. They distract from the real lesson: coalition dynamics are not unique to Trump. They are a permanent feature of democratic politics. If Trump could assemble and manipulate them, so can others, on the right or the left.

The health of a democracy does not depend on the virtue of individual leaders. It depends on whether coalitions remain conditional, constrained, and ultimately defeatable. Trump’s presidency demonstrated both the strength of American institutions and the skill with which a determined actor can test them.

Understanding that dual reality is not an act of normalization. It is the beginning of political seriousness.