President-elect Donald Trump has been telling us who he is for eight years now. He admires and emulates his buddies Vladimir Putin of Russia, Viktor Orban of Hungary and Kim Jong Un of North Korea, aspiring to be a political strongman with dictatorial power.

Taking a trick from Putin’s playbook, who calls the Ukrainians fascists, Trump refers to those who don’t agree with him as fascists, thereby flipping the word on its head and rendering it meaningless, other than for branding your enemies.

In addition to trying to place loyalists who will bend to his will in Cabinet posts, there is another major hallmark of an actual fascist that he is using. He convinced enough voters that they are the victims of immigrants and transgender citizens who are going to kill them, rob them, take their jobs away and destroy the American way of life.

Based on this fantasy, the brown-skinned others are seen as an enemy to be made the victims of Hitleresque measures, like being rounded up by the military and placed in internment camps.

Having already stacked the Supreme Court with judges willing to do his bidding, Trump is poised to end female bodily autonomy, despite the fact that the majority of Americans don’t support a federal abortion ban. For Trump, might makes right.

Finally, like the fascist Putin, Trump is supported, and to a large degree controlled, by an oligarchy of billionaires who want lower taxes and increased profits, regardless of the impact of their policies on the American people.

ROGER DORBAND

Astoria