Does Donald Trump really want to be a dictator?

Last week, Donald Trump promised a Christian audience that if they voted for him in 2024, they wouldn’t have to vote again in four years.

Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. … You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.

Democrats pounced on this as evidence of Trump’s dictatorial ambitions. But not all conservative Christians were thrilled about it, either.

David Lane, who leads an organisation dedicated to getting Christian leaders elected, fretted that Trump’s comments could discourage Christians from voting in the future.

“Evangelicals in 2028, 2032, and 2036 must raise their civics game to a new level if America is to return to the Judeo-Christian heritage and Biblical-based culture laid out by the founders”, Lane told the Washington Post.

Was Trump really promising dictatorship? Or claiming there would be no need for Christians to vote in future elections? Or was he just repeating a joke he made a week earlier, based on his (wildly inaccurate) belief that conservative Christians are reluctant voters?

Even jokes can be revealing, especially when it comes to the relationship between Trump and his supporters. Trump was not saying he would end elections, but he was being coyly apocalyptic about what Christians could expect from this one.

Trump identifies as a Christian, but he is not a traditional Christian politician. Conservative Christian leaders typically fight policy battles to bring or keep their country in line with their moral beliefs. But as I’ve written before, many rank and file Christian conservatives in America have been left unsatisfied by the failures of this approach, and Trump has tapped into their frustrations.

Either explicitly or through hints, Trump has repeatedly promised Christians far bigger victories than incremental policy gains or temporary reversals of fortune in the culture wars. Trump instead talks about winning the “final battle”, which reminds many Christians of the prophesied victory of God over Satan.

If anything, this election Trump has been downplaying policies that conservative Christians might want. The Republican platform for 2024 has modified the party’s hardline opposition to abortion, because Trump has said Republicans must “win elections”.

Only Trump, who appointed the judges who overturned Roe v Wade, would have the credibility to do this without fearing the loss of conservative Christian support. And that credibility is as high now as it has ever been.

In the past, Trump has enjoyed the way some Christians have likened him to righteous biblical rulers such as King Cyrus, King David, and Queen Esther. Many of his supporters took his “miraculous” survival of an horrific assassination attempt as an unmistakable sign that God is protecting him. And ever since the shooting, Trump also seems to see himself in increasingly religious terms.

When he first joked about Christians only needing to vote once, he also said

I have the wounds all over my body. If I took this shirt off you’d see a beautiful, beautiful person but you’d see wounds all over me. I’ve taken a lot of wounds, I can tell you. More than I suspect any president ever.“

Trump’s use of "wounds” would not have been lost on his Christian audience. The idea of him taking wounds for them parallels Saint Peter’s proclamation about Jesus that “by his wounds you were healed”.

Most Christians would not go as far as conservative broadcaster Wayne Allyn Root in calling Trump “the second coming of God”, but many of them trust that God is using Trump to achieve His ends and protect them from their enemies.

There are two other serious revelations in Trump’s joke.

The first is that he is counting on his base to win the election. His selection of JD Vance as his running mate was not calculated to win over groups with whom Trump has struggled in recent years, particularly suburban women. Rather, it came at the height of the Trump team’s conviction that they were destined to win anyway.

Vance has become the intellectual muscle of the Trump movement, articulating a fiercely post-liberal vision of the future. A consistent implication of Vance’s rhetoric in recent years, from his support of abortion bans and his opposition to no-fault divorce to his disparagement of “childless cat ladies”, is that the main duty of American women is to have children.

This excites Trump’s base, but Democrats have effectively cast him as “weird”, and Vance has the lowest approval ratings since 1980 for a non-incumbent vice presidential candidate at this stage of the race. If Trump is going to win with Vance against Kamala Harris, he might need even more votes from conservative Christians than the record numbers he got from the last two elections.

The second is that for all the talk of Vance being a choice for the future, Trump has little interest in the future beyond his own second term. This comes across more clearly in the original version of the joke:

They go to church every Sunday, but they don’t vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote. Okay? In four years, don’t vote. I don’t care.

Trump has remade the Republican Party as his personal vehicle. When he finally exits, no one else may be able to drive it.