Goldberg’s central claim is not that the Trump presidency has become benign—on the contrary, she describes it as corrosive, corrupt, and openly abusive of state power...

Trump, Resistance, and the Question of Democratic Resilience

by ChatGPT-5.2

The article “Trump Is Getting Weaker, and the Resistance Is Getting Stronger” by Michelle Goldberg presents a cautiously optimistic thesis: despite the damage inflicted during Donald Trump’s second term, the United States has not crossed the point of authoritarian consolidation. Instead, popular resistance, institutional friction, and electoral backlash are portrayed as signs that Trump’s grip on power is weakening rather than hardening. The piece is written from a clearly normative standpoint, but it raises an analytically serious question: are the forces restraining Trump structural and durable, or merely episodic and fragile?

What the Article Argues

Goldberg’s central claim is not that the Trump presidency has become benign—on the contrary, she describes it as corrosive, corrupt, and openly abusive of state power—but that it has failed to complete the transition from illiberal governance to entrenched autocracy. The evidence she marshals falls into four broad categories:

1. Mass civic resistance
   The article points to some of the largest protests in U.S. history, including the “No Kings” demonstrations, as evidence that popular mobilization has revived rather than collapsed. Grassroots political engagement, particularly at the local level, is described as exceeding even the levels seen during Trump’s first term.

2. Electoral and institutional pushback
   Examples include the defeat of an Elon Musk–backed judicial candidate in Wisconsin, Democratic gains in school board elections, and Republican state legislators refusing to comply with MAGA pressure. These moments are framed as proof that Trump cannot reliably command downstream political actors.

3. Judicial and jury resistance
   One of the article’s most striking claims is that grand juries—normally compliant with prosecutors—have repeatedly refused to indict Trump’s political enemies, even under intense pressure from a politicized Justice Department. This is presented as evidence of civic norms reasserting themselves at the citizen level.

4. Elite defections and reputational costs
   The weakening of Trump’s alliance with tech elites, corporate backlash after the Jimmy Kimmel affair, and growing unease among donors are cited as signs that obedience is no longer cost-free.

Taken together, Goldberg argues, these dynamics make it increasingly unlikely that Trump can “pull an Orbán”—that is, hollow out democracy while preserving its outer shell.

Do I (ChatGPT) Agree with This Assessment?

Partially—but with important reservations.

I agree with the article on one crucial point: Trump has not achieved full authoritarian consolidation. The empirical markers of consolidated autocracy—single-party dominance, systematic electoral manipulation, full capture of courts, and normalized political violence—are not yet fully in place. The resistance described in the article is real, not imagined, and it matters that ordinary citizens, jurors, judges, and local officials are refusing to become instruments of state repression.

However, the article risks overstating the strategic significance of these setbacks. Resistance alone does not equal reversal. What we are witnessing is not a restored liberal democracy, but a high-friction hybrid system in which democratic and authoritarian logics coexist uneasily.

Goldberg’s optimism hinges on the idea that Trump’s failures are cumulative and demoralizing to his coalition. An alternative interpretation—equally consistent with the evidence—is that these failures may radicalize rather than weaken the movement around him, especially if Trump increasingly frames opposition as illegitimate, foreign-backed, or treasonous.

Does Publicly Available Information Corroborate the Claims?

Broadly, yes—though again with nuance.

Independent reporting and academic research support several of the article’s factual claims:

• Protest scale and civic engagement: Data from civil society monitors confirms that post-2024 protest activity in the U.S. has reached historic levels, comparable to or exceeding the George Floyd protests in geographic spread, if not peak intensity.

• Judicial resistance: Scholars of authoritarian backsliding have noted that jury nullification, judicial foot-dragging, and selective enforcement are common early-stage resistance mechanisms in democracies under strain. The refusals to indict described in the article are unusual in the U.S. context and therefore significant.

• Elite hedging: Reporting on corporate and tech-sector behavior shows increasing diversification of political bets. While many elites remain opportunistic, they are no longer uniformly aligned behind Trump, suggesting a weakening perception of inevitability.

At the same time, publicly available evidence also points to countervailing trendsthat the article underplays:

• Federal agencies remain heavily politicized.

• Emergency powers and national security rationales are expanding, not contracting.

• Disinformation ecosystems remain robust and asymmetric.

• Electoral rules at the state level continue to be rewritten in ways that entrench minority rule.

In short, the evidence supports the claim that Trump is constrained—but not that the system is self-correcting.

The Deeper Structural Question

One of the article’s implicit assumptions is that American democratic “DNA” is unusually resilient. History suggests caution here. Democratic breakdowns rarely occur through sudden collapse; they occur through normalization of the abnormal. What would have once triggered constitutional crisis becomes routine. What would have once disqualified leaders becomes background noise.

From that perspective, the most troubling aspect of the current moment is not whether Trump himself is weakening, but whether the precedents he has set are hardening. Even if Trump exits the stage, the tools he has normalized—selective prosecution, intimidation of media, weaponization of regulatory power—remain available to successors who may be more disciplined, less erratic, and more ideologically coherent.

If This Situation Persists—or Worsens

If current conditions remain stable, the most likely near-term outcome is prolonged democratic degradation without full collapse: constant crisis, declining trust, erratic policy, and international unpredictability. The U.S. would remain formally democratic but strategically unreliable, with cascading consequences for global governance, security alliances, and rule-of-law norms.

If conditions deteriorate further—through war, economic shock, or a manufactured national emergency—the risk profile changes sharply. Emergency powers could provide the missing mechanism for consolidation that Trump has so far failed to achieve. In such a scenario, resistance may persist symbolically but lose institutional leverage.

Conversely, if resistance translates into structural reform—electoral safeguards, depoliticization of law enforcement, media resilience, and limits on executive power—the current moment could become a painful but bounded episode rather than a prelude to systemic failure. That outcome, however, would require sustained political courage well beyond protest alone.

Conclusion

The article is right to insist that despair is premature. Trump is not omnipotent, and resistance is neither dead nor futile. But hope should not be confused with resolution. The United States is not “out of danger”; it is in a prolonged stress test, one whose outcome depends less on Trump’s personal weakness than on whether democratic institutions can be rebuilt faster than they are eroded.

The most honest conclusion, therefore, is neither triumphalist nor fatalistic: authoritarianism has not yet won—but it has learned.