Cancelling elections seems like the sort of thing you don't talk about doing. As the rule goes, "Don't talk about the coup in public, do it day one or just shut the fuck up about it until you do."
What he's doing is making people freak out, which 1) makes them look alarmist when the elections happen, and 2) shifts the goalposts to that instead of all the fash shit he's actually doing. "See, you were wrong, we're having elections so that means Trump's not a dictator like you said."
He connected the dots that the "I just signed up to bomb weddings so I could get free college and escape poverty" argument could just as easily justify becoming an imperial stormtrooper, but instead of resolving that by rejecting the former, he decided to resolve it by accepting the latter
What is now happening to Lenin’s theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Leninism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Leninists” (don’t laugh!). And more and more frequently German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Leninism, are speaking of the “anarchist” Lenin, who, they claim, educated the labor unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war!
There was fault on both sides, because the USSR had over-corrected while the PRC had not yet corrected, and there were internal political factors in both countries that influenced things. Stalin and Mao may have been necessary to secure the revolution in both countries, but it's necessary at some point to transition to more civilian leadership. It's a simple fact that if you fight a revolution in order to secure peace, then the generation that grows up in that peace is going to have a different perspective than the generation that experienced the war. Unfortunately, neither side saw it that way. Khrushchev wanted to completely denounce Stalin in a way that just so happened to advance his own career, while Mao did not want to acknowledge that China would need to make that transition because it would mean he would have to step aside, and he feared that his successors would treat him as Khrushchev had treated Stalin.
The Soviet policy of "peaceful coexistence" was one of the points of contention that the Soviets were right about. They deviated from this policy with Afghanistan, and look how that turned out. Mao, on the other hand, got these weird ideas about "permanent revolution" which led to decisions like supporting Pol Pot and kicking off the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. It's pretty much impossible to defend Chinese foreign policy during that era, and Mao's attempts to cling to power and fight the natural course of history with the Cultural Revolution were disastrous (even if there were some positive aspects like the Barefoot Doctors program).
However, the Soviets also screwed over China and acted chauvinistically. From Wikipedia:
Stalin had accepted that the USSR would carry much of the economic burden of the Korean War, but, when Khrushchev came to power, he created a repayment plan under which the PRC would reimburse the Soviet Union within an eight-year period. However, China was experiencing significant food shortages at this time, and, when grain shipments were routed to the Soviet Union instead of feeding the Chinese public, faith in the Soviets plummeted. These policy changes were interpreted as Khrushchev's abandonment of the communist project and the nations' shared identity as Marxist-Leninists.
This is indefensible too. The whole situation was just a mess, it pretty much just devolved into petty drama, and there's plenty of blame to go around.
Look, going into Greenland was definitely a mistake, but now that we're there, we have to stay and finish the job. If we leave now, we'll be creating a power vacuum that Russia or China will exploit, plus we have to protect Greenland's women from Greenland's men. Don't worry, now that the adults are in charge, we will be conducting things in a much more ethical way: 50% of the drone operators will be women.
The car that I bought less than a year ago broke down and the mechanic said it's totally seized up and totaled, don't really know why. That and Venezuela was the worst first week of a year I can remember, I was in a depressive funk all weekend.
Cancelling elections seems like the sort of thing you don't talk about doing. As the rule goes, "Don't talk about the coup in public, do it day one or just shut the fuck up about it until you do."
What he's doing is making people freak out, which 1) makes them look alarmist when the elections happen, and 2) shifts the goalposts to that instead of all the fash shit he's actually doing. "See, you were wrong, we're having elections so that means Trump's not a dictator like you said."