Gabriel Over the White House in a Time of Fascism
Watching a movie from Hearst’s America of 1933 in Trump’s America of 2019

Trump’s name came up once in a Constitutional Law class I was taking back in 2007, for no reason pertinent to the subject matter: It was the end of the semester and people were sort of bullshitting. Discussion turned to The Apprentice, and one woman in class rhapsodized about how sexy he was. This was the same class where our professor brought up the show To Catch a Predator, the one where they entrapped alleged pedophiles and aired the whole thing on TV. I said it was a crass collusion between the police state and the media to entrap people.
“WHAT IF IT WAS YOUR KID [that these suspected pedophiles were preying upon online]??” my classmates asked in all caps, and I said, “Then I wouldn’t be on the jury?”
Trump has been inexplicably attractive to some people for transparently incorrect and stupid reasons for a long time, and a lot of these same people won’t hear a word about why the law and the enforcement of it should be impartial. Justice should be vengeful and swift and not interested in a whole lot of flowery talk. If this is scary or alarming to you, consider that there have been other times in history, in America, when people openly called for a strongman dictator with the explicit mandate of God. And then maybe sit down with 1933’s Gabriel Over the White House and consider how familiar it all sounds.
Set in the contemporary America of 1933, Gabriel Over the White House casts Walter Huston as Judd Hammond, the newly elected President of the United States. A smooth-talking dandy who has no interest in going on the record with the press, Hammond is happily corrupt and disinterested in lifting a finger to better the circumstances of a nation in the grip of the Great Depression. His own hubris and carelessness cause him to swerve off the road and land himself in a coma. When he snaps out of it, he’s a completely changed man: Taking charge, delivering fiery speeches to unite the country and cavalierly firing any of his cabinet who rub him the wrong way.
Hammond’s special assistant, Miss Molloy (Karen Morley), stops being his implied side piece and starts taking part in an administration that kickstarts a massive infrastructure program to put the poor back to work. At the same time, the president seizes control of the government in a demand for autocratic control so that he can “declare war” on a sleazy criminal kingpin who pretty clearly is supposed to stand in for Al Capone (C. Henry Gordon).
The poor and starving are marching in the streets a million strong, singing “John Brown’s Body” after their charismatic leader is slain. Hammond defuses their agitation with a speech promising work and prosperity again. Before long, he’s railing at Congress to put his plan through. (He’s met with accusations of dictatorship, and then the scene transitions to a newspaper headline that says Congress apparently just gave him what he wanted, with no explanation for how on Earth he strong-armed them into it.) Hammond invites the Capone-analog into the White House and all but assures him if he doesn’t knock it off with all the bootlegging and gunrunning that he’ll just have him killed.