Demagogues, for all their authoritarian instincts, still need popular support. President Donald Trump and his allies have too often relied on propaganda, scapegoating and half-truths to stir-up popular support at the expense of Constitutional norms and the rule of law.

One disturbing example illustrates this vividly: the Trump administration’s decision to deport undocumented immigrants to El Salvador — a nation under the increasingly autocratic rule of President Nayib Bukele, who proudly brands himself the “World’s Coolest Dictator.” Trump’s team turned to Bukele, whose government allegedly agreed to imprison deportees in the infamous mega-prison CECOT — without trial or legal process.

Some deportees may well have committed crimes that merit legal consequences. But without judicial overs

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