President Donald Trump is an “aspiring dictator,” likened to both Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Roman emperor Augustus Caesar, according to a Presidents’ Day Salon piece that warns his presidency is leading to the downfall of American democracy.
The Salon essay, published Monday, compares Trump to both Hitler and Augustus, arguing that he is destroying the 249-year-old constitutional republic while falsely presenting himself as its savior.
The piece, penned by author Jim Sleeper, warns that Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” carries echoes of both the Nazi Reich and Roman Empire, citing Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman, who described Trump’s presidency as a “shattering assault on the foundations of the Constitution.”
Is Donald Trump more like Hitler or Augustus Caesar? Honestly, it's both https://t.co/o3CuiL8Kgg
— Salon (@Salon) February 17, 2025
The article asserts that Trump, like Augustus, “provoked and won a chaotic, decade-long power struggle” and is now consolidating power in a way that mirrors the fall of Rome. At the same time, it argues that Trump’s “failed coup attempt of 2021” resembles Hitler’s 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, as it attempts to draw parallels between Trump’s rhetoric and Nazi slogans.
“Trump’s election has put all Americans on a playing field somewhat like the one on which Hitler was installed as the Weimar Republic’s duly elected chancellor …,” it states, describing Trump as “a wrecking ball for America’s civic-republican structures.”
The author compares Trump’s actions to Augustus’s manipulation of the Roman Senate, arguing that the president is “more contemptuous and vengeful” than Augustus in handling political rivals, “not to mention the tech moguls whom he seated together at his inauguration this year, like dogs on a single leash, after they’d abased themselves at Mar-a-Lago.”
The article also attacks Trump’s supporters, suggesting they are being “seduced and intimidated into servility and herd-like stampedes.” The essay references 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, warning that Americans, like the ancient Romans, are being lulled into complacency as Trump dismantles democracy.
“Trump has been counting on such weaknesses, as Augustus did, but he’s doing it even more recklessly and at warp speed,” the author writes.
The article even claims that Trump’s political movement is a form of mass delusion, stating that Americans “swallow Trump’s lies like poisoned gummies and demand more.”
“Trump didn’t invent the poison that has worked its way into the vitals of American society, but he’s its most prominent pusher and a carrier of its most virulent effects,” the author writes. “Millions of voters seek relief by following him because he knows their addictions so well that he can voice and channel their pain while telling them, ‘I, alone, can fix it.’”
The piece takes aim at Trump’s allies, particularly tech tycoon Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance, claiming they see “democratic politics as little more than a lubricant for their power and wealth.” It goes on to accuse Musk of “flirt[ing] with Germany’s proto-fascist Alternative for Germany party” and argues that Trump’s first moves in office — pardoning January 6 rioters, revoking Secret Service protection for political rivals, and selling crypto tokens — are signs of a leader embracing authoritarianism.
The article also suggests that Trump’s movement is built on the same rage and disillusionment that fueled the rise of Hitler. The author quotes historian Timothy W. Ryback, who argues that Hitler “campaigned on the promise of draining the ‘parliamentarian swamp’” — a phrase he claims Trump has mirrored in his calls to “drain the swamp” in Washington:
It has become possible to imagine Trump delivering a speech, embellished perhaps by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, in which he boasts that MAGA and “all great movements are movements of the people, are volcanic eruptions of human passions and spiritual sensations … and not the lemonade-like outpourings of literati and drawing room heroes.” But that celebration of a MAGA-like movement was written in 1926 by Adolf Hitler, in “Mein Kampf,” to describe his own rising movement.
The essay comes as the left-wing media continues to intensify its rhetoric against President Trump and his supporters.
Last month, on the heels of the New Orleans terror attack, a Salon piece argued that MAGA and ISIS share roots in “toxic masculinity,” likening the conservative pro-America movement to radical Islamic terrorists and portraying supporters of both as men drawn to “hateful online propaganda.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
