Menachem Z Rosensaft, Cornell University Law School professor last year before the election made this observation:
"Why does all this bring Mussolini to mind? Because the execution of such a Trumpian second term agenda would be inspired by and modeled on the Italian fascist leader's actions after becoming both prime minister and minister of the interior of Italy in 1922. In the latter capacity, he controlled the Italian police and used them to arrest his political enemies—largely communists, socialists, and anarchists—while his black-shirt squadristi, as the Italian fascist paramilitary gangs were known, continued to kill, brutalize, and generally instill a debilitating fear among the Italian public as a whole. This tactic proved to be a winner.
Within a matter of months following the assassination of the socialist opposition leader Giacomo Matteotti on June 10, 1924, by members of Mussolini's private secret police operating out of his Interior Ministry, it became evident that the man known as Il Duce had successfully placed himself beyond any judicial or parliamentary limitations on his absolute and unfettered power.
Addressing parliament on Jan. 3, 1925, in what The New York Times called "the greatest triumph of Mussolini's whole political career," he reacted furiously to a memorandum authored by a more "moderate" fascist, Cesare Rossi, that sought to hold him responsible for Matteotti's murder. Instead, Mussolini declared that "the opposition describes us as an army of bandits encamped in Italy. We have swallowed their insults and allowed them to call us brigands and assassins. Now before the Chamber, before the whole nation and before God, I alone assume full personal, political, moral and historical responsibility for everything that has occurred in Italy. If Fascism is an association of malefactors, then let it be known that I am head of this association of malefactors."
And btw, our courts are fighting back against Trump's attempts to follow Mussolini's playbook.
Today, a judge has ruled against Trump's use of the National Guard in California.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/trump-n ... ewsom.html