Jan-Werner Müller argues Trump’s second-term power grabs can strengthen authoritarian control while also creating vulnerabilities that opponents could exploit.
10 scandals a day, rather than one a year, help “flood the zone,” he writes, but any single fiasco could still crystallize public anger and symbolize broader corruption.
Trump’s reliance on loyalty over competence — including election denial as a de facto oath — may consolidate power short term, yet repeated incompetence can produce visible failures.
Public cruelty and open illegality also carry risks, Müller says: they project impunity to loyalists but generate images and outcomes that have proved unpopular beyond Trump’s base.
Orbán and Putin provide the wider frame for Müller’s analysis, but he argues Trump differs by operating with less concern for international constraints and by pursuing corruption too chaotically to build a durable system.