> the way a political figure originally came to hold their political position is not really relevant to determining whether they are a dictator
True, but Trump is a dictator because why? Because you disagree with the 77,304,296 people who elected him? Because he cracks unfunny jokes about running for re-election? Because he's corrupt? We've had corrupt Presidents before, but a dictator to me is someone who won't leave office. We do have a precedent of, despite the Jan. 6 looney toons (that he encouraged) trying to stop it, and despite all his dumb baseless lawsuits, Trump hopping on the helicopter and handing over power as scheduled. To me, that's the clear dividing line between an egomaniacal clown and a dictator.
I don't agree with a LOT of his 'policies,' (honestly sometimes describing his whims as policies is overstating it) but I would say the specific one being discussed here is not one of those open-and-shut dumb ideas. There are plenty of unemployed software engineers right here in the U.S. right now, and any US businesses saying they need H1Bs for most of those roles are full of crap.
Trump is not really a dictator due to constraints outside his control, but he certainly behaves as if he wants to be one, and this is the result: it's hard for people to believe that policy moves (or whatever you want to call it) like this are being motivated by a real concern for American workers rather than personal pique or corruption, because not only have so many of his moves been transparently motivated by personal pique and/or corruption, but he's also been restructuring the government in plain view to enable his personal pique and corrupt interests to dictate policy.
The Anthropic thing is the same: we can argue until we're blue in the face about whether the designation as a supply chain risk is legitimate based on Anthropic's policies and actions, but Hegseth is such a vain, insecure clown that any decision like this is suspect.
In short, Trump may not have achieved his dream of dictatorship, but he runs the parts of the government he has control of like a dictator would, and this has done terrible damage to the federal government's legitimacy.
> this has done terrible damage to the federal government's legitimacy.
I think one of the core issues here is that reactionary media has been creating this exact kind of reputational/institutional damage for decades (cf Obama is going to take your <blank>). So reactionaries don't see the damage as a new thing, but just something more like "now it's finally happening to them too". Of course the reality is that the former was mostly corporate propaganda (based on some legitimate concerns, but propaganda nonetheless), while now Grump is actually destroying our institutions. Which, if seen, is further rationalized by things like "they were corrupt anyway". Of course this is decidedly not a "conservative" position, but they've been mainlining the kool aid for a long time.