Since Donald Trump entered the White House in 2016, his political behavior has become a recurring subject of debate in political science and sociology. The pattern is by now familiar: open disregard for democratic norms, compulsive self‑aggrandizement, frequent reversal of policy positions, private enrichment through public office, and systematic attacks on the judiciary and independent media. To many historians, this pattern looks strangely familiar. It appears, almost point by point, in the historical accounts of Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus – better known as Caligula – the third emperor of Rome (reigned AD 37–41). This essay does not argue for a simplistic repetition of history. Instead, it offers a structured comparison of Trump and Caligula across three arenas: first, their relationship with intermediary institutions (the Senate in Rome, Congress in the United States); second, the social mechanism that enables public acceptance of moral corruption; and third, the transformation of politics into a theatre of contradiction, where objective truth is sacrificed for tribal loyalty to the leader. Drawing on Max Weber’s concept of charismatic authority and Hannah Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism, the essay concludes by highlighting a key difference between the two cases: the role of mass media and the absence of a “Praetorian Guard” in twenty‑first‑century America.

Caligula became emperor in AD 37 after a long period of repression under Tiberius. Tiberius had alienated the Senate, exiled or executed several rivals, and confiscated the property of wealthy citizens. In that atmosphere, Caligula – the son of the beloved general Germanicus – was hailed as a return to honour and youth. During his first six months, he granted amnesty to political prisoners, abolished some heavy taxes, and staged lavish gladiatorial games. That initial popularity lasted almost two years. Trump entered the 2016 election in a climate of deep fatigue among white working‑class voters, exhausted by the trade and immigration policies of both Democrats and traditional Republicans. The 2008 financial crisis – and the subsequent bailout of banks with taxpayer money while no senior banker went to jail – had eroded trust in the political system to an unprecedented degree. “Make America Great Again” and the promise to “drain the swamp” appealed to those who felt abandoned by the existing order. Like Caligula, Trump in his first months delivered on some pledges – tax cuts for the middle class, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement – that his base saw as acts of national sovereignty. But both leaders, once firmly in power, turned against the very structures they had promised to reform. That marks the beginning of a second, far more destructive phase.

In the Roman Republic – which survived in symbolic form even under Augustus – the Senate was the highest advisory and legislative body. Caligula, in the second phase of his rule, openly humiliated the Senate. He called senators “spineless creatures fit only to be slaves.” He made them run in their formal togas behind his chariot, executed several on flimsy pretexts, and mocked their deliberations. He also abolished due process: when a judge ruled against one of Caligula’s friends, the emperor deposed the judge and confiscated all his property. Trump systematically delegitimised independent institutions during his four years in office. He called federal judges “Obama judges,” accused the Justice Department of partisan bias in favour of Democrats, and after losing the 2020 election, asked his acting attorney general to declare the election “corrupt” – a request that led to the attorney general’s resignation. His most notorious act was pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the electoral result. Regardless of the legal outcome, the behavioural pattern – contempt for adjudicative bodies, replacing procedure with personal command – is unmistakably Caligulan.

Sociologists are fascinated by a strange paradox: sometimes a leader’s popularity rises precisely when his personal corruption is exposed. After two years of rule, Caligula emptied Rome’s treasury. He imposed new taxes on food, marriage, and even prostitution. The revenue was spent on gigantic pleasure barges on Lake Nemi, golden statues of himself, and months‑long feasts. Suetonius records that Caligula sometimes had Roman roads covered with silk cloth and forced citizens to prostrate themselves from a distance. Remarkably, the Roman populace did not revolt. Why? Some historians point to an implicit bargain of spectacle. In a society where senators and provincial governors had been stealing taxes and grain for decades – discreetly and hypocritically – Caligula’s open corruption appeared as “honesty in villainy.” People told themselves: “At least he does not hide the fact that he is robbing us.” The hidden theft of the elite was replaced by the theatrical theft of the autocrat. And that, paradoxically, gave the masses a sense of clarity. Trump acted similarly, though on a different scale. He refused to release his tax returns, but he openly used government funds at his own hotels and golf clubs. His son, Donald Trump Jr., pursued family business deals during official foreign trips. Nevertheless, polls in 2020 showed that more than 85 percent of Republicans believed Trump was “morally superior to Democrats.” This paradox arises from extreme partisan polarisation: any criticism of the in‑group leader is reframed as betrayal. Trump understood that mechanism and turned transparency in ugliness into a political asset.

Perhaps the most important behavioural similarity is the deliberate use of open contradiction. Caligula changed his tax policy three times in a single month. He sometimes said “senators are my greatest honour” and half an hour later called them “enemies of Rome.” He would recognise the Senate as a legislature on one day and issue direct decrees from his throne on the next. What first appears as madness has been reinterpreted by some historians as a tactic of domination through confusion. When a leader constantly reverses himself, opponents cannot anchor their criticism on a stable position. Moreover, every contradictory order increases the dependence of subordinates, because they must keep asking the leader for his final – and always shifting – opinion. Trump deployed this tactic systematically on Twitter. In 2018, he tweeted one morning that “under no circumstances will we withdraw from Syria,” and at 6 p.m. that same day: “Time for our soldiers to come home. We have no business in Syria.” Senior White House aides have admitted that sometimes, two minutes after a verbal order, a completely opposite order would be issued. Trump’s supporters interpret these contradictions as signs of a “clever wartime general” who does not want to reveal his next move. Sociologically, this recalls George Orwell’s concept of doublethink – the ability to hold two contradictory statements as true simultaneously, provided they have been issued by the leader.

To understand why the Roman and (some) American publics tolerated corruption and contradiction, we must recall the state of their societies before these leaders emerged. In pre‑Caligulan Rome, senators and aristocratic families had been embezzling taxes for centuries; provincial governors skimmed grain supplies; the courts served the wealthy. Ordinary citizens had no way to punish that hidden corruption. Caligula stepped into this vacuum and offered a kind of spectacular justice: he executed a few wealthy senators for corruption (while stealing ten times more himself). Yet that single, token gesture was enough to make the pop ulace call him a reformer. In the United States, the 2008 bank bailouts – with no jail sentences for senior executives – produced a level of distrust that historians have compared to the late Roman Republic. The two‑party system had failed to offer a meaningful alternative. In such a void, any leader who declares, bluntly, “the system is corrupt and must be destroyed” – even if he is himself part of that corruption – gains a hearing. Trump’s slogan “drain the swamp” pressed exactly that nerve. Voters said: “Maybe he lies, but at least he is not a hypocrite like the rest.” That “honesty in corruption” is the key to his durable 35–40 percent approval rating.

For all the similarities, one difference between Caligula’s end and Trump’s trajectory is crucial. Caligula was assassinated in AD 41 by a conspiracy of Praetorian Guard officers and senators. The motive was fear – fear that his extravagant spending and erratic behaviour would destabilise the imperial administration. The Roman system was able, ultimately, to eliminate a “mad emperor” through physical violence (though his successors were not necessarily better). Trump operates in a world where no equivalent of the Praetorian Guard exists. He was impeached twice by the House of Representatives (December 2019 and January 2021), but the Senate acquitted him both times. The Department of Justice has investigated several charges, but prosecuting a former president is legally difficult and institutionally unprecedented. Most importantly, social media allow Trump to communicate directly with tens of millions of people without any filter. While Caligula had to distribute bread and stage gladiatorial games to influence the masses, Trump can become the top news story worldwide with a single 280‑character tweet. This change of scale – from analogue spectacle to digital instantaneity – makes it much harder for any institution to terminate a Caligulan figure. This difference implies that the “spirit of Caligula” in the American system will not disappear simply by removing one person. The behavioural pattern – contempt for norms, spectacle of corruption, strategic contradiction – has become a self‑reproducing source of political power. It can outlive Trump himself. Any structural remedy must therefore focus on rebuilding trust in independent institutions, enforcing financial transparency for candidates, and redefining the ethical boundaries of leadership in a republican system.

Comparing Donald Trump and Caligula should not be reduced to a personality diagnosis – “Trump is crazy” or “Caligula was a billionaire.” The value of such a comparison lies elsewhere. It shows that certain political behaviours which seem exceptional today become explicable when we examine their social and economic setting: a crisis of institutional legitimacy, extreme inequality, and a public exhausted by hypocritical elites. Neither the Romans nor the American working class “likes” corruption. They simply find hypocrisy in corruption far more repellent than frankness in corruption. From a policy perspective, the lesson is clear. As long as democratic systems fail to deliver on two basic promises – the impartial punishment of corruption at all levels, and meaningful channels for protesting inequality – Caligulan figures will not only return but will grow more popular. Rome managed to kill Caligula with a sword, but it could not stop the empire’s long decline. America in the twenty‑first century has no need for physical assassination. What it needs is a restoration of intermediary institutions based on transparency and accountability. Until then, the theatre of contradiction will continue – whether in the White House or in any other capital that ignores the silent exhaustion of its citizens.

References

Arendt, H. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Bruce, J. (2024, November 22). Trump offers ridiculous nominees to flaunt power. The Star Democrat.

GlobalSecurity.org. (2025). Trump: Restoration is Futile.

Higgins, C. (2019, March 6). Ask a classicist: is Donald Trump more of a Caligula or a Nero? Prospect Magazine.

Körösényi, A., Illés, G., & Metz, R. (2020). Plebiscitary Leader Democracy. In C. de la Torre (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Populism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stanley, J. (2018). How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. New York: Random House.

Suetonius. (121 AD). The Twelve Caesars (R. Graves, Trans.). London: Penguin Classics (original work published ca. 121 CE).

Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (G. Roth & C. Wittich, Eds.). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Winterling, A. (2011). Caligula: A Biography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Zaretsky, R. (2025, February 6). In Trump’s Gaza pronouncement, a disdain for humanity worthy of Caligula.