Fascism creeps, slowly. It doesn’t just start with people being led into gas chambers, that’s the end state. It starts with little things, small ways to gradually erode democratic principles. If you spot fascism here, you have a chance of killing it in the cradle. By the time you have mass concentration camps it’s too late.
So, allow me to make a big deal out of Trump violating a rule prohibiting early disclosure of employment data.
Simple legal violations are not sexy. There will never be a special counsel investigation into tweets leaking employment data. But the thing about these basic rules is that they are easy to follow. This rule has been well known and understood since at least 1985, when the Office of Management and Budget adopted a rule to prevent premature release of data. Prior administrations adhered to it easily. Complying with the rule would have been easy for Trump also, even if he didn’t personally know about this. He just needed a White House staff that knew the rules and reminded him of the rules. This is how administrations work. They worked this way for decades.
If it’s not working now, it’s because the President of the United States does not want following the rules to work anymore. That’s not a good sign for our democracy. I’m not even sure what would be worse, if it turns out he just doesn’t know how these rules work, or if he does and is disregarding them anyway? Either outcome is a bad sign for democracy, because democracy inherently depends on having a government that tries to follow the laws.