The morning after Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in the U.S. presidential election, The New York Times declared ‘America Hires a Strongman’ and that the nation now stands on the precipice of an authoritarian level of governance not before seen in its history. But is Trump really a ‘strongman’ and is it fair to put him in the same category of leaders as Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping? 

Many commentators have argued that the second Trump administration will almost certainly be more authoritarian than the first and is already being staffed with more ideologically aligned officials ready to implement Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda. But questions remain as to how serious he is with authoritarian rhetoric or whether it is mostly bluster. Will he crack down on civil liberties? Will he persecute his political opponents? Will he use the state to enrich himself and his inner circle? And will he abandon democratic allies and align America with other authoritarian so-called ‘strongman’ states? 

Join host Gideon Rachman and an expert speaker to be announced for this instalment of our Age of the Strongman series and ask your questions in the Q&A.

By the time we host this conversation Trump will have been president for much of the calendar year – so our speakers will have months of the second Trump administration to discuss and decipher.