This analysis came out earlier this month, and it's the mother of all wake-up calls. Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" would appropriate $200 billion to ICE, which the Cato Institute has called an "unimaginable sum." Some relevant quotes:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the bill will direct an astounding $168 billion of the budget to immigration and border law enforcement, and there is even more for agencies that indirectly support immigration law enforcement.
The $168 billion is, by itself, an unimaginable sum. Without H.R. 1, Congress had already appropriated twice as much money to America’s border police as all other federal law enforcement combined. In FY 2025, immigration and border enforcement accounted for at least two-thirds of all federal law enforcement.
In FY 2025—again, before H.R. 1—Congress allocated nearly $34 billion to immigration and border enforcement agencies. That’s 36 times more than what is provided for tax and financial crimes enforcement (IRS-Treasury), 21 times more than funding for firearms enforcement (ATF), 13 times more than drug enforcement (DEA), and 8 times more than the FBI budget to enforce effectively everything else. The level of border police spending is already so extreme that it has swamped nearly all other criminal law enforcement priorities for the federal government.
The House plans to distort this wildly out-of-whack law enforcement system beyond recognition. H.R. 1 appropriates $168 billion to agencies whose primary purpose is immigration enforcement. It adds $1.2 billion to all other law enforcement for the Secret Service. This sum comes on top of the $33 billion, meaning that if this bill passes, about $200 billion will be made available for immigration enforcement starting in FY 2025.
$200 billion dollars is equivalent to 1/5th of our entire military budget ($960 billion). It's more than Russia's entire military spending in 2024 ($149 billion). To say that Trump would be creating a 7th branch of the military operating on US soil would be neither an overstatement nor a conspiracy theory.
For context, this article was published by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank originally founded by Charles Koch (among others). The fact that these guys are ringing the alarm bell should be a warning unto itself. You can read the full text of the bill (H.R. 1) here.
He wasn't. He was very busy with creating appearances and atomizing the society, but Putin wasn't very popular after his first term. He managed to ride the skyrocketing oil prices as if it was his own economic restoration, but that wasn't the fascism-building kind of popularity, that was "maybe it's for the better that we don't drain this swamp yet, we are starting to live better" kind of popularity.
These numbers seem pretty high, though.
Exactly. My point is that Putin had no reason to worry about being overthrown within a year of taking power because Russia simply did not and does not have that kind of popular energy. Therefore, he could sit on his ass and be a rightwing oligarch. Meanwhile Trump is closer to the Hitler model of a fascist taking over a country with strong popular resistance. There's currently no strong popular resistance to Trump don't get me wrong, but sooner or later there will be, so he (or rather whoever is pulling the strings in the White House) needs to have Nazi levels of preparation if he wants to enforce fascism on America. It goes without saying that there will be no "we are starting to live better" under Trump. Basically I'm doubting the black hole theory because now that Trump is in power he needs to create his own SS to crush whatever resistance will pop up; right now he simply doesn't have the resources to respond if all blue states become LA.
Hitler took over in a country where his browshirts could already kill people they didn't like on the streets and the state was weak.
Strong popular resistance was driven by Nazis not even trying to take it slow, they loved demonstrative violence.
I think Trump is still more like Putin than like Hitler. He'll try to avoid significant resistance and make changes gradually. If he needs, he'll use violence, but very sparingly. Not because of being better, just because that's more effective.
I think that's a fair point. But I still don't think that King Grifter is going to do anything other than grift — the precarious position of his regime really would only seek to encourage graft, as he knows he won't be punished for it and he knows it can't last forever.