Is Trump the Roman Tyrant America's Founders Feared?
Description
The Washington Roundtable speaks with Jeffrey Rosen, the president and C.E.O. of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit, about how America’s founders tried to tyrant-proof their constitutional system, how Donald Trump’s whim-based decision-making resembles that of the dictator Julius Caesar, and what we can learn from the fall of the Roman Republic. Plus, how the Supreme Court is responding to the Trump Administration’s broad claims of executive power.
Rosen, a professor at George Washington University Law School, hosts the “We the People” podcast and is the author of “The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.”
This episode originally aired on March 7th, 2025
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United States
America has followed Rome's path of empire with Continental expansion. Post WW II it has been a global empire with its dominance through military bases and the supremacy of the dollar. Thus the First Felon's will to caesarism is not an aberration as so many think. Is that why the court gave him imperial immunity and authorizes everything thru the shadow docket? And our system is riddled with corruption, cowardice, deceit and criminality. The more things change the more they remain the same.
The Roman Republic was an aristocratic empire and their conflict with Carthage was the greatest expression that it was dedicated to territorial expansion and dominance of the Mediterranean world. The Republic was dominated by the old aristocratic families. When Octavian became Augustus as the first emperor, the Republican empire transformed into a monarchial empire ruled by dynasties, some hereditary others emperors elevated by the military.