Presidential Historian Tells CNN Trump Made ‘Good On His Promise To Be A Dictator on Day One’

Presidential historian and CNN contributor Tim Naftali argued on Monday that President Donald Trump kept his promise to be a “dictator” for a day by the volume of executive orders he signed after his inauguration.

Trump was expected to sign upwards of 100 orders by the end of the day on issues from the border to renaming the Gulf of Mexico, The New York Times reported.

The orders have been expected for some time and surprised few. Naftali told CNN’s Anderson Cooper during the network’s coverage of the inauguration that the orders were the fulfillment of a promise from Trump.

In December 2023, Trump responded to claims he would operate as a dictator if the country elected him for a second term. Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity he would not act as a dictator, “except for day one.”

“I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill,” he said, signaling the flurry of executive orders he’s set to sign on Monday.

Cooper noted that former President Joe Biden signed nine executive orders immediately after his inauguration, which Naftali said would have been considered heavy-handed four years ago. He added:

Well, and Trump himself didn’t have many executive orders the first time around on January 20th. So, he has decided to make good on his promise to be a dictator on day one. Remember that promise? I just want to make a point about how the world is watching this. Now, there are a number of foreign leaders that came to this inauguration, which was itself unusual. He also invited – the president did – invited leaders of foreign conservative, far-right governments. In a sense, we had the far right Internazionale represented at the inauguration and the president United States for the first time since 1901, in an inaugural address, talked about how this country is going to acquire new territory and threatened the sovereignty of another country.

That is a signal to the far right in the world that America is now going to play the game the way the other far-right countries play, which is what we want to take. Which means, for the first time since World War Two, we are no longer an indispensable nation. If we follow through with the rhetoric in the inauguration, we have become an imperialist nation.

Watch above via CNN.