For your edification, here’s a selection of recent headlines published in our major news outlets:
“Elon Musk’s political power grab threatens democracy and the economy.”
“How Trump’s war on federal workers threatens democracy.”
“Trump showdown with courts puts U.S. on the brink of abandoning democracy.”
“Trump’s blitz to expand his power is direct threat to democracy, experts say.”
I could find a few dozen more if I wanted, but I think you get the point. The Washington swamp and its media allies have settled on their line of attack against the new Trump administration, and it’s a tired one: Our democracy is in peril!
It barely succeeded the first time around. But the second time around, it’s going to fall flat.
As I’ve explained more than once on my campus visits, America is not a democracy and never has been; few societies outside ancient Greece have ever been true democracies. Instead, we are a constitutional republic that holds democratic elections.
But let’s grant as a premise that, even if America isn’t a democracy, then our system has democratic features. The next time you run into somebody in the real world babbling about the peril to “our democracy,” I invite you to ask just a few follow-up questions. Starting with this one: “Just what do you mean by democracy?”
Then, be ready with follow-up questions. For example:
-What’s more democratic: An elected official like Donald Trump deciding where federal funds go, or an unelected bureaucrat chosen by nobody?
-What is “democratic” about a district court judge, chosen by a president who no longer holds office, issuing nationwide injunctions to try to bar an elected president from doing things like pausing taxpayer funds going to foreign countries?
-Can you name a single thing Trump is doing right now that doesn’t match what he promised to do before being democratically elected?
That last question is especially critical: Far from being a “liar” or a bait-and-switch con artist, President Trump is one of the most straightforward politicians to ever live. He runs on a set of promises, then does his best to fulfill them.
Consider DOGE, for instance. At a rally last summer, Trump overtly said he would like to name Elon Musk as an adviser to his administration. At his Madison Square Garden rally days before the election, Musk boasted about the trillions of dollars DOGE would be able to cut from federal spending. There was nothing surprising about DOGE: Trump promised to give America’s most famous businessman a wide berth to slash spending.
The American people heard that promise, and they handed Trump every single swing state and a 2.3-million popular vote margin.
So, who is undermining democracy, DOGE, or the people trying to shut it down?
Or consider this: Last summer, at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump made the following promise in the 2024 Republican platform: “The United States spends more money per pupil on Education than any other Country in the World, and yet we are at the bottom of every educational list in terms of results. We are going to close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and send it back to the States, where it belongs, and let the States run our educational system as it should be run.”
Trump hid nothing about his plans for education: Get rid of the Department of Education and let states take the lead. He ran on that pledge, and in November he won the popular vote by 2.3 million and the electoral college in a landslide.
Now, in a shocking move, President Trump has ordered the Department of Education to prepare for its own dissolution, so that education can be returned entirely to the states.
So, who is undermining “democracy?” Trump, or the people whose idea of politics is getting one unelected federal judge to decree that the Department of Education must exist forever?
This sort of thing is happening all over. Shortly after taking office, Trump ordered the removal of sex change guides and other monstrosities from the websites of the CDC, NIH, and other federal bodies. Trump promised to purge the transgender social contagion from government, and in addition, polls show his position is extremely popular.
Yet this week, District Judge John D. Bates ordered a reversal, saying that actually, it’s illegal for the administration to not provide advice on transgender surgeries on taxpayer funded websites.
So, go ahead and ask: Who is undermining democracy, President Trump, or Judge John Bates?
And then follow up by asking this: If the left are such fans of democracy, why did they try to throw Trump in prison as soon as he began running for president again? Why did they impose suffocating censorship on every social media site they controlled? What was democratic about that?
And finally, ask them this: If you don’t like the people expressing their honest views, voting for the candidate of their choice, or getting the policies that they vote for, what exactly do you like about democracy?
Charlie Kirk is the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, Turning Point Action, and host of the top-ranked podcast and nationally syndicated radio program, “The Charlie Kirk Show.”
