By Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
In my family, my sisters and cousins call me “Captain Obvious.” It is affectionate shorthand for the fellow who notices what everybody else has already noticed and then feels obliged to say it aloud.
If rain is falling sideways, Captain Obvious may recommend an umbrella. If dinner is late, he may report that supper probably will not begin on time. This does not always make Captain Obvious popular.
But some things deserve saying anyway.
Donald Trump calls Democrats and other opponents communists with growing regularity. At the same time, he often speaks admiringly of authoritarian rulers—men who concentrate power, silence opposition, weaken independent institutions, and do not have to worry much about losing elections.
Captain Obvious has a question.
If communism and authoritarian government are as dangerous as Mr. Trump says they are, why does he sound impressed by leaders who have built governments around those very names and habits?
That is not a trick question. It is a Captain Obvious question.
Mr. Trump has made “communist” a standard part of his political vocabulary. He has applied it to Democrats, judges, prosecutors, journalists, election officials, professors, and assorted Americans who failed to greet his latest statement as if it had arrived on stone tablets.
During the summer of 2026, Reuters reported that Trump invoked communism 81 times in two weeks. Other reporting has documented his repeated use of “communist” as a political attack against Democrats. One need not agree with Democrats—or with every Democratic proposal—to see that this is a very broad use of the word. It is broad enough to require a larger label maker.
Communism once had a precise meaning: one-party rule, suppression of opposition, government control that put the party above the citizen, and little patience for free speech, private property, religion, or an independent press.
Americans spent decades opposing communist governments—remember Korea and Vietnam. Americans served, sacrificed, and died in those struggles. The word should not be worn out merely because it fits on a campaign bumper sticker.
Calling every political opponent a communist is not the same as opposing communism. It is like calling every speed bump a mountain. Before long, people stop believing there is a mountain ahead—even when there might be one.
For years, Americans assumed Mr. Trump’s use of “communist” was a warning. We now see it may have been a calling card—the political equivalent of a burglar repeatedly shouting, “I certainly hope nobody here has been robbed.”
That brings Captain Obvious to the mystery.
Mr. Trump’s comments about Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Xi Jinping have often been warmly admiring. His defenders are right about one point: presidents must sometimes deal with unpleasant foreign leaders. Diplomacy is not a church social. A president may need to talk to people he would not invite to Sunday dinner, even if they promised to bring dessert.
But a working relationship is one thing. Repeated admiration is another.
Trump has described Putin as “very smart.” He has called Xi Jinping a “strong guy” and, while discussing Xi’s presidency for life, said he called him “King.” He said he had gotten to know and “respect” Kim Jong Un and famously described their correspondence by saying, “We fell in love.”
These are not isolated slips of the tongue. They form a pattern.
Putin rules a Russia where political opposition, independent media, and civil society have been sharply restricted. Xi heads the Chinese Communist Party and an authoritarian, one-party state. Kim rules North Korea, a hereditary dictatorship that exerts extraordinary control over political life, information, and dissent.
Calling these leaders strong is not exactly wrong. A hurricane is strong, too. That does not mean it belongs on the school board.
Captain Obvious has no objection to a decisive president. A president should make decisions. A commander in chief should not need a focus group before answering the telephone.
But “strong” is not the same as “unchecked.” In a constitutional republic, that distinction is the difference between leadership and rule by one man.
Mr. Trump once praised Putin’s “very strong control over a country,” while adding that he did not like Russia’s system. That is like saying one does not approve of arson but greatly admires the fellow’s command of matches.
The central issue is not whether Americans want lower or higher taxes, regulation, tougher immigration enforcement, or a larger defense budget. Those are legitimate political arguments. They are what elections are for.
The question is whether we still believe in limits on power.
The founders did. They had experienced kings, distant authority, and government that did not answer adequately to the people. They did not create a presidency free to overrule everyone else whenever a president felt insulted or poorly treated by the press.
They created separate powers. Congress writes laws. The president executes them. Courts interpret them. Elections allow citizens to hire and fire officials. The Bill of Rights protects speech, religion, press freedom, due process, and the ability of ordinary Americans to say, “Hold on a minute.”
That arrangement is cumbersome by design.
A president who loses a lawsuit is not necessarily persecuted. A judge who rules against a president is not automatically a communist. A reporter who asks an uncomfortable question is not an enemy of the people. A prosecutor who investigates wrongdoing is not necessarily part of a deep-state conspiracy. An election official who follows the law rather than a candidate’s demand is not a traitor.
Those principles should not become controversial because they are inconvenient on a particular Tuesday.
Captain Obvious has also noticed that Mr. Trump seems impatient with the ordinary restraints of democratic government. Courts frustrate him. Journalists frustrate him. Civil servants frustrate him. Congressional oversight frustrates him. Election results that do not go his way can be especially frustrating.
It is easy to see why strongmen might look attractive. They do not persuade skeptical legislators. They do not face hard questions from independent reporters. They do not lose cases before judges who cannot be fired on a whim. They do not worry much about peaceful transfers of power, because they have made them a custom from another century.
It is efficient, in the way that a wrecking ball is efficient.
Captain Obvious has noticed that Mr. Trump sometimes seems to prefer government with fewer checks and balances—the political equivalent of an HOA run by one man with a gold-plated gavel.
Because I live in an HOA, I should clarify that actual homeowner associations are not dictatorships. Mine certainly is not. Real HOAs have elected boards, bylaws, budgets, meetings, minutes, procedures, and residents who can develop strong views about a trash can, driveway stain, or mailbox color.
This can be tiresome. It is also accountability.
The imaginary HOA Captain Obvious has in mind would operate differently. One chairman would write the rules, announce them, interpret them, enforce them, revise them after midnight, and accuse anyone who objected of being a communist. He would then congratulate himself for eliminating bureaucracy.
The homeowners might eventually discover that they had eliminated something else: their right to have a say.
There are Republicans who believe in limited government, national defense, fiscal discipline, local control, property rights, religious liberty, and constitutional order. Those principles do not require admiration for rulers who jail opponents, restrict the press, or turn elections into public-relations exercises.
They require the opposite.
Conservatism at its best is not a belief in unlimited presidential power. It respects institutions, constitutional limits, ordered liberty, and the fact that human beings—including presidents—are fallible. Liberalism at its best makes a similar point from a different direction: rights must be protected from the whims of people in power.
A free country depends not on perfect leaders but on rules strong enough to restrain imperfect ones.
Mr. Trump may not be a communist. Captain Obvious will concede that without a hearing, subpoena, or map covered in red yarn.
But his public record raises a simpler concern. Perhaps his objection is not to concentrated power. Perhaps it is to concentrated power held by anyone else.
That would explain why Democrats, judges, journalists, and election officials can be called communists or enemies, while leaders who govern without a free press, meaningful political opposition, or independent courts are called smart, tough, brilliant, and strong.
It would also explain why “communist” has become less a warning about ideology than a shortcut around an argument. The word creates a useful cloud of smoke. It directs attention toward an imaginary army of domestic enemies while avoiding an uncomfortable question: What kind of power does Mr. Trump admire?
Captain Obvious should add that Mr. Trump did not discover the word “communist” in a campaign focus group. One of his early lawyers and mentors was Roy Cohn, who served as chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare.
McCarthy’s Senate investigations were separate from the House hearings that helped fuel Hollywood blacklists, but they came from the same national fever: accuse enough people loudly enough, and evidence begins to look like an optional accessory. Cohn later taught Trump a legal and political style built around counterattack, denial, and never admitting defeat. Captain Obvious sees a resemblance. It is subtle only if one is observing from another planet.
Captain Obvious would like an answer. Not a slogan. Not a nickname. Not a fundraising email in capital letters. Just an answer.
Republicans, Democrats, independents, and Americans who wisely refuse to answer political polls will never agree on every issue. That is all right. Disagreement is citizenship.
But we should agree on this: presidents are not kings. Critics are not enemies of the state. Judges are not communists because they rule against you. The press is not illegitimate because it asks questions. No leader deserves admiration simply because no one in his country is free to tell him no.
Democracy is slow, noisy, argumentative, and occasionally as efficient as an HOA meeting about mailbox colors. It contains judges who say no, reporters who ask questions, legislators who bicker, citizens who protest, and public meetings where somebody speaks three minutes beyond the limit.
That is not a flaw. It is a safeguard.
America’s goal is not to find the strongest man. It is to ensure that no man becomes strong enough to place himself above the Constitution.
If saying that makes me Captain Obvious, I will wear the title proudly.
***
Phil Huber is a retired Army Reserve colonel, federal civil servant, and consultant who writes on civic education. He lives in Fredericksburg.
Freud might say that Trump’s use of labeling someone as a communist is projection (an unconscious defense mechanism where one projects their own unacceptable thoughts, beliefs, feelings onto someone else). More simply, since Trump operates at about the developmental level of a 13 year old, I think it is another example that, like an insecure adolescent boy, he strikes back with name calling, e.g., communist, nasty, sick, crazy, fake. . . It’s a limited vocabulary laden with words that are heavily emotional and have no solid substance. Maybe, like the boy who cried wolf, we will become immune to his use of “communist”, so when it is staring us in the face we will be oblivious to its impact until it’s too late.
Excellent work per usual, Phil. Thank you.