The nearly two years of Donald Trump's second term have resembled more of an absurd stand-up show in a madhouse than the exercise of presidential office in the traditional sense of American democracy.
Admiration for Putin and his authoritarian model, xenophobic rhetoric, misogyny, contempt for democratic institutions, and hostility toward America's traditional allies have become recurring themes of his political discourse.
Trump's relationship with authoritarian leaders has upended many landmarks in American foreign policy. Not coincidentally, there is a joke that if Barack Obama had not killed Osama bin Laden, he might have become a good friend of Donald Trump. It is, of course, an exaggeration, but one that captures the irony of an era in which the line between adversaries and allies has become increasingly difficult to recognize.
But it would be a mistake to confuse a possible electoral defeat of the Republicans with the end of Trumpism. Trumpism is not just the product of one man. It expresses a much deeper political and cultural mutation, which has long since transcended the borders of the United States and has found admirers and imitators including in Europe.
Trumpism, like sovereignism in Bucharest, is also the expression of a fatigue accumulated in society towards the odorless and insipid political elites, who perpetuated themselves in power with the regularity of a Swiss watch, without essentially changing much in government policies. This fatigue, gradually transformed into frustration and revolt, created fertile ground for the emergence of leaders who promise to overthrow the entire system, without explaining too clearly what they will put in its place.
The problem is that Trumpism does not necessarily offer a coherent alternative to the system it challenges. It often reacts like a monkey repeating what it sees, without necessarily understanding the meaning of its own gestures. It rejects what its opponents claim, challenges what they construct, and transforms simple denial into a political program. It is not so much what needs to be done as who needs to be contradicted. In this logic, the revolt against the establishment ends up taking the place of vision, and the spectacle of confrontation of governance.
In essence, Trumpism is a form of nationalist populism with authoritarian overtones, built on the antagonism between the “authentic people” and the “corrupt elites,” the cult of the providential leader, hostility to pluralism, and contempt for the institutional constraints of liberal democracy. It is a political culture in which loyalty to the leader comes to matter more than respect for institutions, emotion replaces argument, and factual truth becomes secondary to its political utility. Ignorance is transformed into authenticity, aggression into courage, and rule-breaking into a show of strength.
It is no coincidence that Trumpism and Putinism present such striking similarities. Beyond the differences between the American and Russian political systems, the two phenomena share a number of ideological reflexes: the cult of the providential leader, aggressive nationalism, hostility to liberalism, contempt for pluralism, and the transformation of lies into a common tool of political struggle. In both cases, loyalty to the leader tends to prevail over loyalty to institutions, and the political opponent ceases to be a legitimate competitor and becomes an enemy to be eliminated from public life.
The similarity between Trumpism and Putinism should not, however, make us ignore a fundamental difference: the two phenomena emerged in societies with radically different political and constitutional traditions.
Russia is a country where authoritarianism has deep historical roots, and experiences of political freedom and democracy have been rare, fragile, and ultimately defeated. The United States is, in this respect, the opposite of Russia. America was built around the idea of individual freedom, civil rights, and the limitation of state power. For all its contradictions and historical failures, freedom is not a mere ornament to the American constitutional system, but its very foundation.
That is why Putin was able to transform the authoritarian reflexes of Russian society into a regime in which power can no longer be changed through free elections. Trump, on the other hand, faces resistance from constitutional institutions, the judiciary, an independent press, and a civil society that continues to defend its freedoms.
A telling example of how American society reacts is the case of Nancy Lacore, a former vice admiral with 35 years of service in the US Navy, dismissed in August 2025 by the Trump administration, in the context of policies removing women from military leadership positions. In the elections on November 3, running as a Democrat in South Carolina, Lacore achieved a narrow lead over Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt, in a traditionally Republican constituency. The result is still subject to a recount.
In Russia, such a conflict with power could mean the end of a public career. In America, an official estranged from the president can run against his party and gain the support of voters. This is the difference between a system in which the leader controls the citizens and one in which the citizens can control their leaders by voting.
The paradox is that Trump's electoral defeat, instead of bringing peace, could inaugurate the most conflictual period of his presidency.
Donald Trump has two years left in his term. The US constitutional system grants the president considerable powers over foreign policy and executive branch, powers that Congress cannot fully control. It is therefore possible that what we have seen so far may seem like a mere warm-up compared to the turmoil that could follow.
It is expected that Trump will look for blame for his electoral defeat everywhere but in himself. From Volodymyr Zelensky and the Iranian ayatollahs to the Inuit of Greenland, anyone could become the target of his political frustrations. In the logic of Trumpism, the leader is never wrong. If things go wrong, it is always others who are to blame.
On the other hand, a hostile Congress could turn the last two years of his term into a permanent institutional confrontation. The House of Representatives and the Senate have important tools for controlling the executive branch, from passing legislation and exercising budgetary powers to parliamentary investigations and hearings. Ultimately, the House of Representatives can initiate impeachment proceedings, and the Senate can try the charges. Of course, the effectiveness of these tools will depend on the political makeup of each chamber.
Thus, Trump could find himself caught between his own impulse to exercise power without restraint and the resistance of American democratic institutions. And this confrontation risks producing political and geopolitical turbulence even greater than those we have seen so far.
Ultimately, the true test of American democracy is not whether it can produce a president like Donald Trump, but whether its institutions are strong enough to limit his power when he tries to exceed constitutional limits.
Democracy does not necessarily mean that people who respect its values will always be in power. It means the existence of institutions and a society capable of preventing the transformation of one man's temporary power into unlimited power. And America is about to pass one of the most difficult tests of its democracy: whether its constitutional institutions are strong enough to withstand a president who tries to overstep their bounds.
