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A man with the power to destroy the entire world announces that no one and nothing can restrain him. “I can do whatever I want,” he says. Raised without love, he has become both omnipotent and neurotic. Unfortunately, his inner circle is a group of hapless subordinates who are scared to death of him. The corporations and public-relations spinmeisters who created and sold him to the public now realize that they are powerless to stop him.
I am speaking, of course, of Homelander, the evil version of Superman who is the main antagonist in The Boys, the Amazon series based on a series of graphic novels. Homelander (played to menacing, narcissistic perfection by the actor Antony Starr) is both ludicrous and terrifying. Like Superman, he can fly and shoot lasers from his eyes, but his brain is definitely not superpowered: Immature and somewhat dim, he is ruled by impulse, rage, and ego.
Watching Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting—a three-hour-plus public ritual of sycophantic praise for Donald Trump from his lieutenants—I couldn’t help but think of Homelander. President Trump, like the sadistic superhero, is surrounded by grown men and women who are reduced to simpering flunkies in his presence. (“There’s only one thing I wish for,” the presidential envoy Steve Witkoff said during the meeting, that the “Nobel Committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since the Nobel Peace, this Nobel award was ever talked about.” Yikes.)
Little wonder that Trump sees no limits to his power: When asked about his authority to deploy the National Guard, Trump said: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger—and it is in danger in these cities—I can do it.”
If you’d like to see Starr as Homelander saying much the same thing, you can watch that here. (But be warned: The language and some of the images are definitely NSFW.)
The parallel isn’t perfect, but both the fictional villain and the real president seem to share a childlike need for adoration and are quick to anger when contradicted. And both could destroy most of the planet. Homelander could do it with his eyes and his muscles. Trump could do it with a small card he carries that would allow him to order the launching of almost 2,000 nuclear weapons anywhere he dictates.
The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke is no fan of the president and intentionally made the television version of Homelander a parody of Trumpism. But the president’s more cultish followers have embraced the satire, and during the “Million MAGA March” in the nation’s capital, back in 2020, at least one Trump admirer showed up dressed as Homelander—apparently unaware that the character is a stupid, vain psychopath. (“Um … are they actually watching the show?” Kripke asked on social media.) Trump, for his part, makes the comparison with a super-bully too easy: In only a matter of months, he has put soldiers on American streets, unleashed the Justice Department on his critics, strong-armed corporations into neo-socialist arrangements with the government, and functionally allied the United States with the dictator in the Kremlin, among other depredations.
In the end, Trump’s critics and Homelander’s enemies face the same question: However they got here, both of these men now seem unstoppable. As the former Trump aide Marc Short told The Wall Street Journal yesterday, “I think he’s learned there is not much that can really stop him from what he wants.”
I don’t know how The Boys will end Homelander’s story. But Donald Trump is not a superhero: He’s a politician whose powers and abilities are only those of mortal men. He is limited by the Constitution, by American law, by Congress (despite its current fecklessness), and especially by the courts, which seem so far to be Trump’s kryptonite. Other actions could constrain Trump further—if voters in the pro-democracy coalition have the courage and the endurance to take them.
First, everyone, including ordinary citizens, media leaders, and elected officials—especially Republicans—should speak plain truth every time Trump says something as bonkers as “I have the right to do anything I want to do.” No, Mr. President, you do not: The powers of the presidency, especially in matters of national security, are indeed considerable, but they are not boundless, and Americans should all say so, every day, to their neighbors, to the reporters and commentators they watch and read, and especially to their elected officials.
Saying things out loud is important. (Consider the courage shown this week by former CDC Director Susan Monarez, who refused to meekly go along with the Trump administration’s attempts to force her out of her position.) I am among many who are frustrated by the continual sane-washing of Trump’s statements by reporters who must contend with his gibberish, but no one should be pressed harder to speak up than elected Republicans. Unlike Homelander, Trump cannot reduce them to a pile of smoking ashes with his eyes if they anger him. He can make their lives miserable, and perhaps even cost them their jobs. But Trump turns on almost everyone at some point, so why not start pushing back now?
Everyday citizens have options as well. The president’s strength rests on obedient majorities in Congress, and that power can be stripped from him at the ballot box. Elected Republicans’ jobs are in danger at all levels of government, as the Democratic capture of an Iowa state-Senate seat this week showed. Trump is worried, which is why he’s so eager to have red states conjure up extra House seats as soon as possible.
And finally, it’s important to remember—and, again, to say out loud—how ridiculous Trump is when he launches into his woozy, narcissistic harangues. Authoritarians build their regimes by creating an aura of strength and inevitability around themselves, daring anyone to oppose them or focus on their weaknesses. Laughing in their face when they say I can do anything I want is a powerful antidote to their bullying. So far, California Governor Gavin Newsom seems to have perfected this kind of satire, and it’s clearly getting under Trump’s nanometer-thin skin.
Homelander, according to Kripke, is not invulnerable. Neither is Trump, and citizens of the United States need not treat him as if he is an eternal being in a cape. He is doing real damage to the nation, and no one should underestimate the dangers he poses to the constitutional order. But at these odd moments when Trump tries to posture like a superhero, perhaps the most effective response for Americans who care about fighting for constitutional democracy is to put aside their partisan differences—and then laugh, sue if necessary, and, always, vote.
Even Trump can’t fly away from all of that.
Related:
Today’s News
- Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, who tried to fire her earlier this week. The lawsuit says that his move was “unprecedented and illegal” and argues that it undermined the Fed’s independence.
- The White House has appointed Deputy Health Secretary Jim O’Neill as acting head of the CDC following the departure of several leaders over vaccine-policy disputes with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to people familiar with the decision. The appointment comes a day after the White House fired Susan Monarez, the Senate-confirmed CDC director.
- Last night, a federal judge upheld her order to wind down operations of Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention center within two months, over environmental violations. Florida may lose most of the value of the $218 million its government spent on converting an airport in the Everglades into the facility.
Dispatches
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