Donald Trump himself invoked “Trump derangement syndrome” to deflect from his politicized FBI‘s raid of former national security advisor John Bolton’s home on vague charges that sound a lot like Trump’s actual mishandling of classified documents.
Let’s try making words mean something again and discuss the real “Trump derangement syndrome”: the way loyalty to Trump makes Republicans forget their principles and silence the very critiques they would have offered about past elected officials who committed similar crimes and government overreach.
Take, for example, South Dakota War College, the Pat Powers propaganda machine that helped bring us to the Trump dictatorship and the downfall of American liberty and democracy.
Last year, Powers touted Attorney General Marty Jackley’s biased and inaccurate critique of President Joe Biden’s executive order directing federal agencies to lawfully help states with voter registration. Jackley claimed President Biden’s order “violates the U.S. Constitution and exceeds the executive branch’s authority” because “voter registration is a state function and responsibility.” Yet Powers and Jackley have not challenged Trump’s March order demanding voters show proof of citizenship to register and ordering states to make other changes in their management of voter rolls. Nor has Powers offered any states’ rights response to Trump’s Putin-driven threat to ban mail-in voting.
In 2023, Powers featured Senator John Thune’s complaint that President Biden wasn’t letting schools spend federal aid on hunting and archery programs. “Schools should have the choice,” said Thune, “of spending their federal funding on programs that unquestionably meet the goal of helping to offer students a well-rounded educational experience.” Yet Thune and Powers offered no criticism of Trump’s politically targeted freezing of education funds for thousands of grants and programs. (Senator Mike Rounds did squawk a bit.) Nor did Thune and Powers complain when, after causing chaos and lasting damage to school districts, Trump suddenly unfroze those funds on condition of fealty to his ideological drive toward a narrow Hillsdalesque educational experience.
Note also Pat Powers’s ongoing and entirely justified freakout over Rep. Phil Jensen’s failed attempt to defund the Huron school district for rumor-based ideological reasons. Powers had nothing like that outrage to aim at Trump for following Jensen’s tack nationwide.
In 2024, Powers spotlighted then-Governor Kristi Noem’s critique of President Biden’s effort to require that two thirds of American automobiles run on electricity by 2032. “The American customer should be able to decide what technology makes most sense for them,” said Noem, “not the federal government.” Yet Powers and Noem have not said anything about Trump’s command-economy decision to force every taxpaying American customer to invest in struggling Intel’s technology, a socialist investment that could actually make Intel run worse.
It must be tough for Powers and other Republicans to live with their role in bringing a dictator to power. Apparently they can only deal with their grief and confusion through selective silence and hypocrisy. Such is the real derangement Trump inflicts upon his supplicants.