“Liberals are understandably panicked” that Trump will assume the presidency with an
unprecedented degree of unchecked power, says Glenn Greenwald. Not only will he have the
launch codes to a vast nuclear arsenal, he’ll also be able to wage war without any congressional
authorisation, direct drone assassinations all over the world, and oversee “a ubiquitous system of
electronic surveillance that can reach most forms of human communications and activity”. But
Democrats only have themselves to blame. Though he came into office as a critic of George W.
Bush’s executive power abuses, Obama went on not only to keep many of the policies he had
complained about, but to extend them. He conducted thousands of drone “executions”, expanded
warrantless surveillance programmes, conducted a war in Libya even after Congress voted against it,
and pioneered new ways of using executive orders to bypass legislators. Democrats tolerated these
illiberal policies, “blinded by the belief that Obama was too benevolent” to abuse his office. In vain
did civil libertarians warn that, one day, a “right-wing authoritarian” would inherit the imperial
presidency that Democrats defended out of “partisan loyalty” to Obama. “That day has arrived.”
